Relocate a personal data folder in Windows Vista.
Introduction
Your personal data folders can be relocated to another partition, hard drive, or folder. Examples of your personal folders are Favorites, Music, Pictures, Videos, and so on.
A few good reasons to relocate your personal data folders are:
- Lack of space on your primary partition or hard drive. You can make space on your primary hard drive by relocating your personal data folders to a much larger hard drive.
- Security. In the case your operating system (Windows Vista) gets corrupted it’s much easier to recover your files if they are on another hard drive.
Relocate a Personal Data Folder
- Browse to your personal data folders by clicking the Start button and then selecting your user name at the top right of the Start Menu.
- Right-click any of the personal data folders and select Properties.
Note: Only personal data folders created by Windows Vista can be relocated. You can’t relocate a folder you created.
- Click the Location tab.
Note: If there isn’t a location tab this folder can’t be relocated.
- Click Move and browse to the new location of your personal data folder.
The new location can be another folder or another drive. Once you’ve selected the folder or drive you want the personal data folder relocated to click Select Folder.
- You’ll be asked if you want to move the files to the new location. Choose Yes. If you don’t choose yes you’ll have duplicate data that will cause a mess.
Note: It’s a good idea to point Vista’s search engine to the new location of your personal data files so they can be searched. Check out my guide on adding folders to the search engines index.
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I want to know if i can move the folder were my personal folders are located.. so if i open it from the start menu, i can go directly to another part of the HD and not to “C:\USER\xxx”
thanks
As far as I know you can only move the personal folders not the folder all of your personal folders are in (user profile) inside the C:\Users\ folder.
It’s not a good idea to move the user profile folder because everything about your login for that user is saved in that folder including files, and settings that make your desktop unique.
Help – I tried this and it didn’t work and now my files are messed up. I tried moving the ‘Contacts’ folder from my C drive to my D drive. Now I have a folder in the D drive called ‘Contacts’ which won’t open (’An error occured while trying to open…’) and the D drive is now listed in my Personal Folders and it won’t let me move the location or delete it. How can I restore the folders to the way they were?
Try right-clicking the Contacts folder, select Properties, select the Location tab, and then click Restore Default button.
Thanks – but there isn’t a Properties tab any more – only General, Security and Details. I can’t restore default on the D drive appearing in the Personal Folders either, it says I don’t have permission.