By default, the My Documents folder is located on the C: drive, the same hard drive that contains the Windows XP operating system. It is not a good idea to store your data on the same hard drive as Windows. Your data keeps growing in size, taking up more and more room on your C: drive, filling it up.
You will find yourself having to delete some personal files to make more room, or having to perform the complex task of expanding your primary disk partition. Filling up the primary disk partition or hard drive also tends to degrade Windows’ performance over time.
Combining your data with the Windows operating system can also complicate your backups, causing your drive images to become larger and larger, and having to create them more frequently. Drive images of the operating system don’t usually need to be made as often as backups of data as they don’t change as often. Therefore, your data should be stored separately from the operating system.
The need to defrag your C: drive also increases and the defrag runs slower.
If you have two or more partitions on your hard drive, or if you have more than one hard drive, it is easy to move your My Documents folder to another partition or hard drive, thus separating your data from the Windows operating system.
Before moving your My Documents folder, be sure you have enough free space on the second partition or hard drive to accommodate all your data and some extra for future storage needs.
Open My Computer, right-click on the My Documents link in the left pane, and select Properties.
Click the General tab. After a few moments, the total size of the My Documents folder displays. If you have a lot of data, it may take a little while for the size to be calculated. The larger of the Size and Size on disk values is the amount of space required on the second partition or hard drive to accommodate the My Documents folder.
Click the Target tab on the Properties dialog box. Click the Move button in the Target folder location box.
On the Select a Destination dialog box, click the Make New Folder button.
Rename the new folder to “My Documents” (without the quotes) and click OK.
The Target changes to the newly-created My Documents folder on the selected drive. Click OK.
A dialog box displays asking if you want to move all of the documents from the old location of the My Documents folder to the new location. Click Yes.
A dialog box displays the progress of moving the documents to the new location.
Moving your documents make take some time depending on the total size of your documents. Once you documents are moved, you can access them normally from the My Documents icon on the desktop or on the Start menu or from the My Documents link on My Computer.
If you want to restore the My Documents to the default location, access the Properties dialog box as mentioned earlier in this post and click the Target tab again. Click the Restore Default button in the Target folder location box.
The Target is automatically changed back to the default location. Click OK to accept this change.
The Move Documents dialog box displays again to confirm that you want to move the documents back to the default location. Click Yes.
Moving your My Documents folder generally frees up a lot of room on your C: drive. Once you have moved the documents, defrag the drive to improve the performance of Windows.
by Lori Kaufman
[...] Windows XP system and how to move the My Documents folder to a different location (see our post Move the My Documents Folder in Windows XP). The My Documents folder in Windows 7 can also be moved to avoid it residing on the same hard [...]
I have always found it easier to customize the save function in my software, MS Word, MS Excel, Roxio, etc, by creating a new subdirectory for each program in which to save my files. Also, having two physical drives in the age of terabyte hard drives gives you plenty of space to keep ALL of your creativity off the C: drive. Backups are ridiculously simple . . . just regularly copy the entire contents of the second internal drive onto an external drive. If you have ever experienced the tragedy of your work disappearing to bit heaven, have a SECOND external drive to soothe your paranoia. If you are really serious, copy your important files onto a DVD-R and make a fresh copy when you have added enough material to make it worth a 25-cent DVD-R.