Documents and Settings: Where Do You Keep Yours?

[Piyono]

I've got into the habit of installing Windows XP with the Documents and Settings folder on a second drive if one is available, figuring that two heads can seek faster than one, although I've never been so pedantic as to do any kind of testing to see if this practice translates into better performance than keeping Docs n' Settings on C.

For the record, I use nLite to change the folder location, and I rename it from "Documents and Settings" to the more sensibly titled "Users".

Thoughts?

 

[Will Rickards]

I just change the my documents location - not the whole thing.

 

[Mercutio]

I synchronize my home folders on various machines with a network drive I can access in multiple different ways, but I also store my images and music collections separately. I used to make a real effort to move the user folders. Now I just don't care, 'cause everything has a central repository anyway.

The fun side effect of that is that my Linux machines have an NTUSER.DAT file and my Windows machines have a .tcshrc and .login file in the root of my home directory.

 

[ddrueding]

I change my documents location to "Documents" on my network share. I don't remap the rest but keep my videos/pictures/music elsewhere.

 

[Mercutio]

The problem with only changing the documents location, at least in Windows, is that there's a bunch of stuff, like Firefox bookmarks, your address book and local E-mail that does not go with that.

 

[Piyono]

The problem with only changing the documents location, at least in Windows, is that there's a bunch of stuff, like Firefox bookmarks, your address book and local E-mail that does not go with that.

Exactly, that's why I set it up the way I do from the get-go, with Docs n' Settings on D.

Piyono

 

[ddrueding]

The problem with only changing the documents location, at least in Windows, is that there's a bunch of stuff, like Firefox bookmarks, your address book and local E-mail that does not go with that.

Why I use XMarks and GMail. The only things I miss are my savegame files, and those aren't re-mapped (stupid programmers hard-coding stuff) most of the time anyway.

 

[Mercutio]

Exactly, that's why I set it up the way I do from the get-go, with Docs n' Settings on D.

That's really a problem with the amazingly retarded way that Windows deals with home folders.

As with so many other things, *nix does it better.

 

[Piyono]

Why I use XMarks and GMail. The only things I miss are my savegame files, and those aren't re-mapped (stupid programmers hard-coding stuff) most of the time anyway.

And chat logs and photo databases and program customizations and search indexes and so on.

I still have all my counterstrike screencaps. Remember the SR team? I do miss that game sometimes.


Piyono

 

[Tannin]

I put my documents where I want them and simply ignore all the other junk that Windows insists upon. The first thing to get deleted from my desktop is the "My Documents" shortcut - that folder will never contain anything of interest to me, so I don't care where it is.

It's actually easier to make periodic manual backups of the small number of other things I actually want to keep that are stored by default in the Docs & Settings tree than it is to muck about manually moving them to somewhere more sensible, but this is because I spend half my working life rescuing other people's data from their Docs & Settings tree, so I don't have to think or wonder where stuff is: it's automatic to go to (e.g.) D&S/username/application_data/thunderbird to backup my enail.

I just do the main stuff, email and maybe bookmarks. Anything else that's stored in the D&S tree is easy enough to recreate after a reinstall, so I ignore it.

Documents and photographs and the like are far too important to trust to the asinine Windows file location defaults. They go on the drive and in the folder that I specify. It's Rule One: Me human, you computer. Me boss.

 

[Piyono]

With the exception that "My Computer" (renamed to "My Clutter") stays on as a deposit for desktop detritus, my data storage patterns sound much like yours, Tannin. My tantamount reason for moving D&S, though, is for program settings, chat logs (mine date back nearly a decade), photo databases and any other such "Application Data" that would be a) a pain to lose and b) nice for the computer to be able to access a tad faster. The only way to do that is by wholesale relocation, pre-install.

 

[mubs]

I put my documents where I want them and simply ignore all the other junk that Windows insists upon. The first thing to get deleted from my desktop is the "My Documents" shortcut - that folder will never contain anything of interest to me, so I don't care where it is.

Documents and photographs and the like are far too important to trust to the asinine Windows file location defaults. They go on the drive and in the folder that I specify. It's Rule One: Me human, you computer. Me boss.

I could have sworn I wrote that! I've been doing this since I started using Windows.

 

[LunarMist]

I don't store anything in My Documents either. C: is for OS and apps only. There are many other drives for data. Favorite are on the Y drive for example, and I use different hard drives for different regions of the country, countries, or continents.

 

[Mercutio]

The only way to do that is by wholesale relocation, pre-install.

Not true, actually.
There's a command called mountvol that can be run from Safe Mode command prompt only session that will allow you to delete Docs and Settings and recreate it as a volume mount point on another drive (preferably after copying it, first).

 

[MaxBurn]

I also put everything where I want it, on most computers it is on a seperate drive from the OS. The only things I care about that really need special attention is the firefox user folder and Trillian, both of which can just be zipped up and moved. After that game saves which are just all over the place.

 

[Adcadet]

So much of my work done from home is now work-related that I have to transport to and fro, my default place to save stuff is now an 8 GB USB disk.

 

[Piyono]

Not true, actually.
There's a command called mountvol that can be run from Safe Mode command prompt only session that will allow you to delete Docs and Settings and recreate it as a volume mount point on another drive (preferably after copying it, first).

I looked into mountvol and from what I understand it works a lot like a command line version of the Disk Management console.

No?