Using a separate drive for My Documents for multiple users

Question

I would imagine that using an SSD as a system drive and a hard drive as a data drive, both attached internally via SATA, is common. My question involves pointing My Documents to that data drive instead of the system drive. Steve Winograd answered the question for one user at http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/move-the-my-documents-folder-to-another-drive/a41eaabb-2c5b-4502-85ba-fd49a007fd82.

I understand that My Documents is simply a pointer which can be aimed at any drive. But what happens when multiple users do it? For example, the data drive is partitioned as one big drive, so does the second user overwrite the first pointer or will all users simply point to the partition name, allowing all users to share the drive?

Answer 1

Just make sure that you have unique folders on the other drive for each user

There are various methods to have your documents in a location other than the original default location.  Steve Winograd showed one.

Suppose you have two users, Alice and Bob and you want to have documents on your D: drive, which is a traditional spinning hard drive rather than C:, which is an SSD.

If you are following Steve's directions, you would do the following:

1. Log on as Alice
2. Create a folder on the D: drive named Alice and then a new sub-folder in the Alice folder named My Documents.  That is, create D:\Alice\My Documents
3. Follow Steve's directions starting with step 2, using D:\Alice\My Documents as "the new folder"
4. Log on as Bob (you can just click the arrow on the Shut Down button and select "Switch user"
5. Create a folder on the D: drive named Bob and then a new sub-folder in the Bob folder named My Documents.   That is, create D:\Bob\My Documents
6. Follow Steve's directions starting with step 2,, using D:\Bob\My Documents as "the new folder"

Your directory structure should look like this:

Answer 2

You're welcome.  If you have any problems, come back and ask.

In the step where you "Drag and drop the files to the new folder," because the source and target are on different drives, the default behavior is to COPY the files.  To be prudent, complete all the steps and check things out before you go back and delete the files from their original location.

Drag and Drop behavior explained --> http://www.thewindowsclub.com/windows-explorer-drag-and-drop

Answer 3

Thanks so much for that. I was hoping someone would give a detailed response. I had a funny feeling that creating folders on the data disk for all users would be the solution and it looks correct for non-experts who happen to peruse that drive.

Answer 4

Each user would have his own folder on the drive so they would have their own pointer to their home folder, it wouldn't affect other user's folders and home paths.

John