Hello everybody!
In today’s video, I’m going to show you how to move such folders as Downloads, Documents
and Desktop to another disk in a Windows
operating system.
Moving user folders is not as difficult as it may seem, but before doing it, it’s important
to understand why you need it, and ask yourself: is it worth it?
For starters, let’s see when relocating user folders elsewhere is necessary.
It makes sense to transfer system folders such as Downloads, Documents and Desktop somewhere
else if your system drive has little capacity and the files you save to user folders reduce
its free space very quickly.
An operating system requires at least 10% free space on the system drive to be able
to work properly and without lags.
Another reason is trying to preserve important information.
As you know, user folders on the system drive are the default location for all programs
to save their data.
Unless you changed the path for saving your documents or projects, you can lose them easily.
The matter is that if the operating system can’t boot one day, all the data on the
system drive will be lost for good when you try to reinstall Windows.
So the choice is yours: either change the directory where your projects are saved, or
move the folders to another disk.
If you relocate Documents, Downloads and Desktop folders to a different drive, all your documents
and files will be preserved even if you have to reinstall the operating system.
One more thing to make you think about moving system folders away from disk C is extending
the lifespan of the solid-state drive, as this type of disk is increasingly used as
system drives.
So if you follow this popular trend, and have Windows installed on an SSD, moving the said
folders elsewhere will make its life longer.
All of us know that SSDs have a limited number of write cycles, and data in these folders
gets overwritten all the time.
Summing up, it’s a good idea to take Downloads, Documents and Desktop folders away from the
SSD to reduce the number of overwriting operations and extend the drive’s lifespan considerably.
Now that we know why moving these folders can really matter, let’s study the process
itself.
In fact, there could be other reasons as well, but I think you have already decided on your
personal benefits from that, so let’s start working with the actual folders.
You would say - oh well, I’ll just copy the folders to another disk and that’s it.
Actually, things are not so easy, and it’s not for fun that these directories are called
system folders.
Dragging them to another disk will only copy them, but never move.
This simple action doesn’t change anything in the system registry and Windows will still
see them in the system drive, and continue to save corresponding information by the default
path.
Talking of system folders, some of them are hidden from the user by default, as under
normal circumstances, no user would ever need to access hidden folders - and they are hidden
for security reasons too.
Wrong actions by inexperienced users may cause errors of the operating system, that may lead
to system recovery operations.
Watch this video to see how to move the following folders: Downloads, Documents, Desktop, Pictures,
Videos, Music and so on.
You can find them in your user profile.
If there are several users registered for this computer, each of them will have their
own user folders.
You can move the folders in several ways.
Moving Documents to another disk - method 1
To begin with, let’s move the Documents folder to another disk with the first method.
Other folders from the user profile can be relocated in the same way.
To move Documents to another disk, do the following:
On another disk (usually, it’s disk D) create a folder with the corresponding name.
If there are several users for one computer, create folders with user names on the other
local disk, and in each of those folders, create folders (Desktop, Documents, Downloads
etc) where you will move the system folders from disk C.
If the newly created folder on the other disk has a name different from that of the system
folder, such folder will be renamed anyway so that it has the name of the corresponding
system folder.
Got to the user profile following this path: C:\Users\User (C:\Users\User_name)
Right-click on the Documents folder, select Properties from the context menu.
In the window “Properties: Documents” open the tab “Location” and click on “Move.”
In the window named “Select a destination” specify the new folder where documents should
be stored.
In my case, it is disk D, “Documents.”
Click on it first and then on “Select folder.”
The Properties window for the Documents folder will open again.
You will see the new location - now it’s on another disk.
Click “Apply.”
In the window “Move folder” agree to its new destination and click “Yes.”
Now just wait until all files are copied.
Go to the new location of the folder and here you are - now it has become a system folder.
To make sure that the Documents folder has been moved to disk D, follow the older path
only to see that the Documents folder is no longer there.
Other available system folders can be moved in the same way.
However, it can be done in a different way too.
Moving Desktop to another disk - method 2 I’ll be using the second method to deal
with the Desktop folder.
You can find it in the same user profile on the system disk.
Many users keep files and folders on the desktop, but it’s quite dangerous – this data can
be lost when you have to reinstall the operating system.
In this case, it’s better to move that folder to another disk.
The second method involves the registry editor.
Open it by pressing the key shortcut Win+R, and type “regedit” in the Run window.
When the Registry Editor opens, follow this path:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
On the right, select “Desktop”, right-click on it, then choose “Modify...”
In the window “Edit String” find the field entitled “Value Data” and enter the full
path to another local disk in your computer, then click “OK.”
After that, close the editor and restart the computer.
After that, you can find the Desktop folder on the other disk.
Follow the new path to see that the Desktop folder has been moved to its new location.
Moving Downloads to another disk - method 3
Finally, the last method, and I’ll use it to relocate the Downloads folder.
To me, this method seems the easiest.
Open the File Explorer and create a User folder on another disk.
Then open another File Explorer window and go to the user profile folder on the system
disk.
C:\Users\User (C:\Users\User_name) Press and hold the “Shift” button, then
use the left mouse button to drag the Downloads folder to the folder opened on another disk.
Under the folder you are going to move you will see the line saying: “Move to local
disk (D:)”.
In your case, the disk letter may be different.
Also, you can select several folders at once, and then drag them to the desired destination
while holding the Shift button.
When the files are transferred, the Downloads folder will be in another local disk of your
computer.
As you can see, moving such system folders is quite easy even for novice users.
With the help of these three methods, you can relocate all available system folders
from the user profile on the system drive.
That’s all for now!
I hope this video was useful for you.
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Thank you for watching.
Good luck.