I notice that a folder called âMy Documentsâ shows up in two places in Windows, and thereâs another that seems to have the same
things in it as well. Are all these copies taking up extra space on my hard drive? Which one should I use? Can I get rid of any of
them?
Theyâre not copies.
In an effort to be helpful (which weâve heard before), Windows actually treats your My Documents folder differently ⊠itâs
âspecialâ.
Which one is real? What are the implications? Letâs look at that.
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First, letâs be clear about the issue. Hereâs a Windows Explorer where Iâve highlighted some specific branches in the displayed folder tree:
As you can see, âMy Documentsâ, or its contents, are shown in no less than 3 places in Windows Explorer.
Rest assured thereâs only one copy of the contents of âMy Documentsâ.
Two of the three locations shown in Windows Explorer are âaliasesâ or âlinksâ to the real âMy Documentsâ. In fact, you can consider all three pointers to the contents:
Which one is âthe real oneâ? In a sense, all of them are, and it really doesnât matter; theyâre all equal. In another sense, theyâre not really equal, and most people consider the one found in the hard disk path âC:\Documents and Settings\<login name>\My Documentsâ to be the âofficialâ one in Windows XP. Weâll see why that is in a moment.
So why have all those other locations?
At least one clue can be found in Windows Vista, where that âofficialâ one was moved to âC:\Users\<login name>\My Documentsâ. And yet, all of the ones above still work. How? By simply updating those links so that they point at the new location.
Hereâs the basic difference:
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References like âC:\Documents and Settings\<login name>\My Documentsâ are location specific. When you or a program uses that kind of a reference to âMy Documentsâ, itâs saying âI know exactly where this is and who it belongs to; itâs on the C: drive in this folderâ. Thatâs actually a pretty traditional way to access files. Since this is the most complete identification of the dataâs actual location on the hard disk, itâs typically what we consider the official or canonical location.
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References via the link on your Desktop, on the other hand, are location and user independent. Thatâs more like âI donât know or care where it is on the hard drive, just use the âMy Documentsâ for the currently logged in user.â
That last one is pretty flexible, since of course, you can move the âMy Documentsâ folder to another drive if you like. If you do that then the âC:\Documents and Settingsâ approach will no longer work, but the updated shortcut will.
Finally, we have this âLeoNâs Documentsâ in the example above.
As I kind of alluded to earlier, each user account gets its own âMy Documentsâ folder. Specifying the full âC:â based path name assumes you have the name of the user whoâs data you want to access, whereas the shortcut automatically points at that of the currently logged in user.
The âLeoNâs Documentsâ is a combination of abstracting out the âI donât care where it livesâ of a shortcut, while keeping the âI know whoâs documents I want to accessâ of the full path. With proper security settings, it allows multiple users on the same machine to share documents. (To be honest, Iâve rarely, if ever, actually seen this used.)
Bottom line: do nothing. Multiple âMy Documentsâ are an expected, if somewhat confusing, layout. It doesnât imply any of the contents are somehow being duplicated or taking up unwarranted disk space.
Can you delete the My documents folder on the C drive if you have moved it to another drive?
How can you make each My Documents unavailable to others, without having it on the C drive?