Move Special Folders like My Documents to a different path

If you want to move folders that are automatically created by windows xp on your c: drive to another path or folder you might face a problem. Simply moving the folders won’t work which means there must be another way to relocate them. The easiest way that I’ve come up with is to use the freeware called Folder Redirector which makes it simple and fast to redirect the following folders to a different folder or drive on your system.

It works on Desktop, Favorites, My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, Send To, Shared Documents, Shared Music, Shared Pictures, Shared Video, Start Menu, Startup, Temporary Internet Files, Common Startup and Common Desktop. I can think of two occurrences where relocating such folders would be a good idea. The first one would be if your c: drive does not have that much space and you want to remove everything that reduces space on that drive.

A second option would be if you dislike the default folder structure, why did they add Documents and Settings to the root folder of the windows partition ?

Back to the tool itself, as I said it is very easy to use. You pick the folder that you want to move to a new location and browse to that new location afterwards. (or type it in manually) Once done you click apply and the path will be changed. The 17K tool even features a backup routine to backup the files if you want to be on the safe side before moving them.

The restore default option turns everything back to the way it was at the beginning.

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Tags: microsoft, my documents, special folders, windows tips
Categories: Operating Systems, Windows

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2 Responses to “Move Special Folders like My Documents to a different path”

1. Magnus says:

   November 7, 2006 at 9:47 am

   I have a third reason for you. Moving documents away from “C:\Documents and Settings” is a good idea in order to separate system and data on different partitions. For example I want to be able to format my C: partition, without loosing my data, or to share data between Windows and Linux, without giving access to each others system partitions.

   I will definately try this tool (as I have previously tried doing it manually in the registry and failed).
2. Magnus says:

   November 16, 2006 at 11:51 am

   I have now tried it. Works excellently, also for restricted users. Recommended.