How to move or change the location of My Documents folder

Posted on October 8, 2007 at 10:55 am

By default, the My Documents folder is located in Windows XP and Windows Vista is located on the same drive or partition as the operating system. This is fine for anyone who has only a single drive or a single partition on their computers, such as the C drive, but if you have more than one physical or logical drive on your computer, it’s best to move your My Documents folder off the system drive.

So you might be asking why I would be recommending this? Here’s a couple of reasons I’ve moved my folder:

1. Free up precious hard drive space on the system partition – With all of the monthly updates for Office and Windows, my C drive was getting close to becoming full! Also, other system files like the paging file, system restore files, and hibernation files are all stored on the system partition. Once I moved the data off, I gave space-hogging Windows more space to live and breathe.

2. Easy backup and recovery of data in case of Windows crash – The best reason to move the My Documents folder is to better help protect your data. For example, if Windows crashes on you one day and you have to perform a reinstall, then all of your data will be lost. However, if your data is on the D drive, let’s say, and your Windows craps out, you can reinstall a fresh copy of Windows on the C drive and the rest of your data remains intact! Of course, this will not save your data if the entire hard drive fails physically and your My Documents folder is on the same drive, just in a different partition. But there have been many occasions in my time when Windows has become unusable due to a virus, spyware or other calamity of sorts.

How to move My Documents folder to a new location

Ok, so now to the main point of this post. Moving your My Documents folder is actually quite a simple process and can be done by anyone. Here’s how:

1. Right-click on the My Documents folder and choose Properties

2. Click Move and choose the desired location for your My Documents folder. Remember, it would be best to move it to a different PHYSICAL drive if possible. If not, move it to a different partition at least.

3. Click Ok and then click Apply. You’ll be asked whether you want to move all of the current documents to the new location or not. Choose Yes.

And that’s it! Your documents will be moved to the new location and when you click the My Documents icon on your desktop, it’ll open just as before.

[tags]my documents, change location of my documents, move my documents folder[/tags]

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One Response to “How to move or change the location of My Documents folder”

Change the location of the My Pictures folder Says:

[...] But what if you don’t want to put your pictures there? Previously, I wrote about how you can change the location of the My Documents folder, but what if you only want to move the My Pictures [...]
July 8th, 2009 at 5:28 am