I wouldn't recommend moving the documents and settings
folder itself since it is a part of your user and
therefore a fundamental part of Windows.
If you want to store your documents and have easy access
to them through the desktop or the Common Places bar,
here's a really easy way of setting this up.
Make a folder on the drive that you want to have your
documents. Copy all the stuff you already have and want
to keep from your "My Documents" folder into this one.
Right-click on the desktop and select Properties. Under
the "Desktop" tab, click on "Customize Desktop". Remove
the check mark beside "My Documents". Click OK until
you're back on the desktop. The "My Documents" icon
should have disappeared. Right-click on the desktop and
select New->Shortcut. Browse your way either to the drive
or the folder that you just created and select ok/open.
Now you should have a link on your desktop that you can
double-click to get directly into your new documents
folder.
Ok, here's the part that you don't really need to do, but
it's kinda nice. Get yourself a copy of TweakUI. You can
get this at
http://www.dougknox.com/ under the "Win XP
Utilities" section. Install the program and run it. Click
on the plus sign beside "Common Dialogs" and click
on "Places Bar" to highlight it. In the menu to the
right, select "Custom places bar" and under the five
locations there you can put pretty much whatever you want.
I'd suggest that you have Desktop, My Computer, and the
documents folder you're now using there, plus two other
locations of your choice. This feature is really nice
because if you download or save a file, sometimes the
save dialogue will open up with a bar to the left hand
side with these 5 places. Click on one of them and you'll
be able to browse from that point on as to where you want
to save to. This will save you a bit of time in that you
don't need to search through your directories to get to
where you want to go.
As for the actual Documents and Settings folder, I would
just leave it alone. Any application data that is stored
under your profile is usually not that large and won't
really affect your performance. However, storing your
files on another partition is something I've done for
years. For example, I have about 6 GB of music on my HD.
That's 6GB that I ususally don't need to defrag or
diskcheck that often, since the files aren't changing
much. You'll also be able to search for file faster since
you're looking through a smaller volume.
Hope this helps,
Nick
(e-mail address removed)
