'My Documents' on a different drive

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Mansize_tissue

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When i get a new rig in soon, i am going to have vista on one drive and everything else on another. Would i be best to put 'Documents and Settings' onto the the D: (secondary) instead of the C: (system) drive, since i want to keep the OS install 'clean'? If i leave the 'My Documents' folder on the same drive as the OS, all my games saves and stuff will be on the that drive too, which is what i'm trying to avoid.

Thanks in advance.
 
I personally never keep anything in the My Documents folder on the C drive... Just my os and programs.. and everything else goes on my data drive.

I don't really game anymore, but I'm pretty sure you'll want to keep your games on your os drive.
 
Installing things to different drives isn't going to make any difference. Just put it all on a single drive and make backups to another.

Installing to another drive doesn't keep windows "clean" as everything as to be installed the registry and that's where windows can get alittle screwy over time.
 
digital_exhaust said:
I personally never keep anything in the My Documents folder on the C drive... Just my os and programs.. and everything else goes on my data drive.
Click to expand...

I don't usually keep anything in the "My Documents" folder, either. Only, that's the default location for gamesaves and other files for be placed.

Archer75 said:
Installing things to different drives isn't going to make any difference. Just put it all on a single drive and make backups to another.

Installing to another drive doesn't keep windows "clean" as everything as to be installed the registry and that's where windows can get alittle screwy over time.
Click to expand...

Okay, maybe not "clean", then. But i don't want too much stuff getting on the OS drive, since this will increase seek times (for games, too, if they are on the OS drive). Are there any disadvantages from having games on a different drive to the operating system? And since i have no need for backups or 'data storage', i don't need a second for that; so i thought i might as well split the OS and games in a setup with 2 hard drives.
 
i always kept everything seperate.

Documents and settings folder I left in where it was at.

my documents I changed the target to a seperate drive.

video's on another drive.. kept my music, pictures, random files with my documents directory.

programs have a seperate drive as well. why? because if the disk fails that has the OS on I just replace the drive or reformat, nice and simple.

if you only have two drives then just leave one with the OS and partition the other. if you have just one I really would consider getting another one.
 
Even if you have apps and games on another drive, if the main drive fails you have to reinstall EVERYTHING. The apps won't run due to missing registry entries.

And no, having everything on one drive won't affect seek times. Just keep the drive defragged.
 
For starters Vista doesn't use the 'Documents and Settings' or 'My Documents' terminology. The overall folder is now called 'Users', and there are separate structures for 'Documents', 'Pictures', 'Music' and 'Games'. For each of the latter you can right-click -> Properties and alter the location on the 'Location' tab.

To relocation your entire 'User' folder, rather than relocating the individual pointers, you need to do some tweaking, as I've mentioned here:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1162021
 
Thank you, everyone. I'm not too worried about installing everything if the OS drive is pushing up the daisies, but i thought that seperating the OS and page file from the games would yield a performance boost, no matter how small. I'm just weary about the problems caused by installing games on a drive other than that of which the OS is installed on, if any. Catweazle, it was actually that guide you mentioned, which i was reading earlier, which got me thinking about this more.

Having the games on one drive and the OS and page file on another means they can both be read at the same time, right? So wouldn't this be a better option than having them on a single drive? One more thing, doesn't having games, programs etc. installed on the OS drive reduce boot times, or even any reading of the OS, even if only minimally?

Thank you for your help everyone, it's much appreciated.
 
I know you can set folder redirection through group policies on My Documents for XP clients on an AD domain, you should be able to do the same with the local policy. I don't have an XP machine in front of me to verify it, but try searching Google for folder redirection. Hope that helps.
 
Mansize_tissue said:
I don't usually keep anything in the "My Documents" folder, either. Only, that's the default location for gamesaves and other files for be placed.
Click to expand...
Very true, which is why something like SyncToy make sense. Just have it set to backup the gamesave directories to your data drive.
 
Mansize_tissue said:
Thanks Ckamc, how would i go about changing the target of "My Documents"?
Click to expand...

Start menu -> right click on my documents and to properties

and well right in front of you should open up first as the Target tab... so yeah change it.

My reason isnt really performance... its just to make things easier when you lose your main drive for some reason or another...

because then you can fix the issue and have the peace if mind of all your other data still being there.

Only problem? if the data drive dies... :(
 
I keep games and apps on my main drive which is my SATA drive. The rest of my stuff, data, music, documents, etc are all kept on a 200Gb IDE drive I have.
 
DeadlyAura said:
I keep games and apps on my main drive which is my SATA drive. The rest of my stuff, data, music, documents, etc are all kept on a 200Gb IDE drive I have.
Click to expand...

I am half way into SATA... used be all IDE and now my music/pics/games/apps/os are on my sata drive.

buying another sata drive so I can move everything again... maybe another 320 or push for a 500.
 
My usual line of action would be to do what most people do and have an OS/apps drive and a data drive; only on this gaming machine, there's not really going to be much 'data' so i only need to store the OS and apps which i can either have on one drive, or separate them since an extra drive isn't going to break the bank. Will it cause any problems if i separate the OS from games, since the only problem i can think of is that games will have a hard time finding files (like game saves) which are automatically saved onto the OS drive.

Thank you.
 
Mansize_tissue said:
When i get a new rig in soon, i am going to have vista on one drive and everything else on another. Would i be best to put 'Documents and Settings' onto the the D: (secondary) instead of the C: (system) drive, since i want to keep the OS install 'clean'? If i leave the 'My Documents' folder on the same drive as the OS, all my games saves and stuff will be on the that drive too, which is what i'm trying to avoid.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
That's exactly what I do. It doesn't really matter - but if you reinstall your OS a lot, it makes life a little easier. It's just personal preference, it doesn't work better or anything...
 
In XP it's super simple. Just open a D: drive window, click start menu and drag and drop your "My Documents" icon into the D drive. Voila, it forever changes your default location to D:My Documents.

In Vista I found it to be a bit of a faff, having to right click, properties and change the location of each of the user folders to point to equivalent ones on the D: Drive.
 
Thank you, Finkus. When i get Vista i will probably just leave the user folders in their default locations, now i've thought about it. Although i'm still going to have the OS on one drive and games on another.
 
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