I received an interesting question, to which I considered it necessary to devote an entire note. The question was:
How to move the “My Documents” and “Desktop” folders?
Based on this lesson, you can move not only these folders, but also other service ones, for example, the “Favorites” folder.
You may have a question - why is this necessary? Well, they are sitting in one place, well, let them sit, why change them?
The point is that “My Documents” and “Desktop” folders, like other service folders, are located on . And many people like to store folders with movies, music, photos and games right on their desktop, I’ve seen this several times already.
Therefore, for such lovers it will be very useful material. Since all this information stored on the desktop or in the “My Documents” folder will be located on the system drive, which is usually smaller than the rest of the computer. And if you fill it to capacity, I’m talking about the system disk, then your computer may start to work poorly, or even stop booting.
But when you point workplace “My Documents” and “Desktop” folders on another drive, for example, drive D, then this problem will simply disappear.
You will be able to store all the information that another local drive can hold, without worrying about the performance of the system drive.
Now let's start implementing the technical plan.
Some of you may already know about the Windows Registry. For those who don’t know, I’ll say it briefly - all system settings are stored in the registry, including the programs to be installed. From the registry you can change almost everything!
But, I must warn you that you need to poke around there with extreme caution, since one wrong step and the functionality of the operating system may be disrupted. And then it will be difficult to find your joint! Since there are a great many entries in the registry.
However, if you have 7 installed and not XP, then you won’t have to go into the registry at all. Since everything can be changed in the folder settings. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to give complete detailed material on Windows XP, since a week ago I installed Windows 7.
But I still remember how you can change the storage location of these folders.
Moving the “My Documents” folder in Windows XP.
Moving it is quite easy, since it is a service folder, all you need to do is click on it right click mouse in the menu “ Start" Select from the drop-down menu last point “Properties”, then, in the window that appears, open the “ tab Destination" There you can specify the path to store this folder. Moreover, there should be a button “ Move”, when clicked, the entire contents of the folder “ My documents” - will be transported along the path you specified.
If this folder is not in the Start menu, try finding it on your system drive in your profile folder.
But, you can force the “My Documents” folder to appear in the “Start” menu. To do this, just right-click on the “ Start”, from the drop-down menu select “ Properties”, and press the button “ Tune" A list of Start menu items will appear, and there you will find the item “ My documents” and set it to appear as a link or menu. Don't forget to press the “ OK” so that all changes take effect.
Moving the “Desktop” folder in Windows XP.
I would like to note right away that I cannot provide pictures for the topic on Windows XP, since I don’t have this one, but perhaps it is possible move the “Desktop” folder as well as the “My Documents” folder. Just find it on your system drive and open the “ Properties”, if there is a tab “ Destination” - just change the path and click move; if there is no such thing, you will have to go into the Windows registry. Again, I can’t check this myself.
To enter the registry, run the command “ Start” - “Execute”.
In the window that appears, enter the following command - “ regedit”, without quotes. Press the key “ Enter” and you will see a system registry window.
Let me remind you once again, don’t try to fake anything there if you don’t know what you’re doing, as the consequences can be very unpredictable.
And so, the registry window is open in front of you, and now you can change the destinations of the service folders; in order to do this, you need to follow the following path (in the left column):
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
It is in this path that you can change the location of the “Desktop” folder (the right side of the window), and not only that, all service folders are registered there. And so, we go along this path, there you will see several more folders, and one of them will be called “ Desk" or " Desktop” (in Windows 7 this folder is called this way, perhaps in XP it will be the same).
Here we select “Desktop” or “Desktop” in the right half of the window, see the picture below, however, this is a snapshot of the Windows 7 registry:
Click to enlarge.
Please note that the “Change string parameter” window will appear and you just need to double-click on the list item, in my case “Desktop”, I have highlighted it with a red line.
A window appears in front of you where the path to the folder is already registered. Inscription " %USERPROFILE%” means the path to the user entry on the system disk. What to do now? When have you already opened such a window.
Create a folder in the location where you want it to be located, for example, on drive D, create a “Desktop” folder and indicate instead of the inscription “ %USERPROFILE%\Desktop” - “D:\Desktop”.
That's it, we apply the changes, and your desktop is already in a different location. Just don't forget to transfer everything from your old desktop to the new one. You just need to copy them to new folder, and you can delete the old one.
Moving the “My Documents” and “Desktop” folders in Windows 7.
Everything is simpler here, we won’t have to go anywhere, since everything can be changed through the folder settings. You can apply everything, as I said above, through the “ ” menu, everything, almost exactly the same, you can apply everything through the registry, or you can simply find these folders, since they are all located in one place and you can call up properties directly from Explorer and change their location default location, which is what we will do now.
We go along the following path:
System disk :\ Users \ The name of your profile in the system.
Or in the start menu, select his name in the top right, under your profile picture. See the picture below.
After clicking on the name of your entry, you will immediately be taken to your personal folder, where all service folders are located. Then simply select the desired folder, right-click and select “ Properties” and in the window that appears, select the “ tab Location”:
Then create a folder in the place where you need it, press the “ Move”, in the window that appears, indicate this folder. After these simple steps, your desktop, like any other folder, will move to a new location.
Please note that the path (I have highlighted it with a red line) has changed. If it remains the same, change it manually and click apply.
To restore everything to its original position, simply select the “ Default”.
I think everything is here, as we can see, there is nothing super complicated here, and any beginner can cope with this.
PS: if you have Windows XP and you have found some simpler method, please post it in the comments. Since I can no longer have more detailed information.
operating room Windows system by default provides users with special folders to save their data, such as Documents, Music, Videos, Images and so on. Most programs are configured to save user data in these directories. By default, all these folders are located on drive C: in the section Users. However, if your operating system If you become depressed and the only method of treatment is a complete reinstallation with disk formatting, then all your data will be lost forever. Therefore, I want to remind, especially novice users, a simple way to avoid these troubles.
So, to safely store your data even if Windows fails, you must first take care of transferring it to another drive. It's best if your computer has two physical drives, but another partition of the same drive will work too.
The first step is to open your home directory, which is located at
C:\Users\Username
Then select the folder that we want to transfer, right-click on it and select to context menu paragraph Properties. In the window that appears, go to the tab Location.
Here we see three buttons, we are interested in the middle one - Move. After clicking it, a folder selection window appears in which we must specify the new location of the standard directory. All that remains is to confirm your choice by clicking OK, and then allow the files to be transferred to a new location in the pop-up dialog box.
Such easy setup, applied to all the folders with your data you need, can save huge amount nerves and time in case of sudden failure of Windows. You simply reinstall the system, then again specify the path to your data folders on another drive and get back all your photos, movies, music, documents and even your Desktop. I recommend that you do this simple maneuver immediately after installing the system.
The Windows operating system allows you to change the path of some user folders that are located in the user profile. So if you suddenly need to change the location of the folder Downloads on your own. This may be useful for those users who often download large files from the Internet using Microsoft Edge or other Internet programs. This article will show you how to reassign your own path for the Downloads folder in two different ways. .
Each time after the next update of the Microsoft Edge browser core, the path to the Downloads folder will have to be updated again. Don't lose sight of this moment.
In the article How to add Save As to Microsoft Edge? I considered the possibility of changing the file download dialog for Microsoft Egde and now every time you download any file, the browser will offer you the option to save the file as. But if you don’t need such functionality, but just need to change the Downloads folder to your own, then read this article further.
Change the location of the Downloads folder in Explorer
Let's first look at the easiest way to change the location of the Downloads folder using the properties of this folder.
Open Conductor on a computer with Windows 7, 8, 10. Right-click on the folder Downloads in the navigation pane and select Properties.
Downloads - Properties
In the window that opens, go to the tab Location and enter a new path for the desired download folder.
New Download Location
In this case, you can move already downloaded files to a new Downloads folder. Then press the button Yes to move all files from the old location to the new one. Otherwise, click No.
Move a folder
Now the download folder will have a new location, and all files downloaded through Microsoft Edge will end up in it.
Changing the path to the Downloads folder in Registry Editor
If you prefer to work with Windows registry, then this method will allow you to change the path to the Downloads folder using the registry.
Run registry editor and go to the next section:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
Find key with string %USERPROFILE%\Downloads. By double-clicking on the line, change the parameter to the value of the path you want to set.
Windows Registry Editor
Close Registry Editor. Now the Downloads folder has new address location. Restart your computer to save your changes to Registry Editor.
It should be noted that files that were located in the Downloads folder at the default address will not be moved to a new location, unlike the first method. If you need to have these files in a new location in your Downloads folder, move them to the new folder yourself.
We are all familiar with the folder My documents, it is located in the user’s personal folder, namely at this address: C:\Users\Name\Documents(in the Russian edition, Users are displayed instead of Users, and My Documents are displayed instead of Documents).
There are situations when it would be very good to place this folder in another location, for example on another disk or partition - this will save space on the system disk.
By the way, if you have two physical disks, then it is better to install games on another disk, and large programs too, all this will distribute the load - the system disk will be less loaded and Windows will work more responsively than if you installed everything on one disk .
How to set a new folder for documents in Windows 7?
This method will allow you to make sure that all new documents are stored in a different place. That is, the folder My documents will remain in its place along with the files in it, but the default for documents will be the new folder you specified.
In Windows 7 there is such a thing as “libraries” and their number is four - Videos, Documents, Images, Music. But we are only interested in one - Documents (other libraries can be configured as well).
Go to folder properties Documents(to do this, open Computer, and on the left in the list there will be Libraries):
One library can have several folders, and you can add them all yourself (click Add folder...):
For example, I'll add the folder C:\Documents, but you can create such a folder on another drive, I just have one drive C and that’s it:
After this, the folder you just specified will appear in your list. For it to be the main one now, you need to click on it and select Set the save folder:
That's all, after this you now have a new location for your documents.
But you just set a new default folder; files from the old folder will not be moved to the new one. Of course, you can do this yourself, but it is better to use the method that I will describe below.
How do I move the My Documents folder?
To do this, go to the folder properties My documents(which is located in the library Documents).
As a rule, all files downloaded from the Internet: programs, music, movies, torrents, ISO images, and so on, are saved in the “Downloads” folder, which in Windows OS is located by default on the system drive (C:). Over time, the size of this folder can reach quite impressive sizes - from several to tens of Gigabytes, and become one of the reasons for the catastrophic lack of free space on drive C or even lead to its overflow. Therefore, it would be very advisable to change the location of the “Downloads” folder, choosing for its location not the system drive, but another local drive, for example (D:).
How to move your Downloads folder to another drive
There are at least several ways to do this.
First (change the location in the folder properties):
- Open "This PC" in Windows Explorer 10 (...or From → Users → Folder with your username → Downloads) → right-click on the “Downloads” folder → select “Properties”;
- Location → change the default path manually, or, using the “Move” button, specify the path to the desired folder on another local disk→ Apply;
- "Do you want to move all the files from the old location to the new one?" → Yes → OK.
Second method (easier)
Third method (via the system registry editor):
As a result, regardless of the chosen method, all previously downloaded files will be transferred to a new location, freeing up space on drive C, and new downloads will no longer be saved on the system drive, but in the folder you specified.
In addition, you can similarly change the location of other custom folders, transferring them from disk (C:) to another disk (volume): music, videos, images, documents, desktop and others.