The special folders in the Windows operating system are presented to the user in an abstract way, they are not represented by their path, but only by their function. These are predefined folders that are created during installation on Windows and that are used automatically by the system .
For example, some special folders you often deal with are those of Documents, Music, Images, Videos, Desktop (even the desktop is a folder), recent files etc.
On Windows XP user profiles are stored in C: / Documents And Settings while in Windows 7 and 8 there is C: / Users which is given the Users alias in the Italian version.
Some of these special folders are less visible and contain the customized and saved configurations of the various installed programs, see, for example, the Application Data folder in C: / Documents And Settings or the AppData in C: \ Users \ Windows 7 user and 8.
These special folders can be either a reference to a real system folder or virtual folders.
Their function is to create unique links and paths on Windows, easy to remember, so that users can always know, whatever computer they use, where to go to search for everyday files.
READ ALSO: Move folders and documents to another disk on Windows 10
If you want to see all the special folders, including those of the user profile, in Windows 7 and 8 you can download the small tool of the Nirsoft Special Folders View .
The program displays a list of all the special folders on the computer, their paths, their names and their status (hidden, read-only, system).
In this case it is interesting to see the contents of folders such as:
- Send To : which contains the programs visible by right-clicking on a file and going to "Send to";
- Startup with programs that run automatically when Windows starts;
- Start Menu with the whole Start menu tree
- History which contains the browsing history from Internet Explorer.
These folders can also be edited in content if you know what you're doing.
Some user profile folders can grow a lot in terms of size, not only because there are documents, images, music, videos and the desktop but also those where all the personalization information of the various programs is stored.
To realize this you can go to the Users folder in Windows 7 ( AppData ) or to the Documents and Settings folder of Windows Xp (" Application Data " and " Local Settings "), access the user profile and check the existence of a lot sub folders including documents.
In general, you can change the paths of these special folders to move them to another partition or to another hard disk.
This could bring benefits in terms of performance and speed of the operating system and of the computer in general. It also preserves the Windows system files and speeds up operations such as scandisk or defragmentation or virus checking.
For example, if there were two hard disks in the computer, you could decide to save the images in a disk or a partition other than the one where the music or videos are saved.
This move is quite simple and allowed by Windows for almost all folders except system ones.
For example, if you wanted to move the Desktop folder, without risking any consequence of losing links and files, just locate the users folder ( C / Documents and settings in XP and C: / Users in Windows 7), press the Desktop icon with the right click, in the " Path " tab, change the directory which, by default, can be: C: \ Users \ user1 \ Desktop and then press the " Move " button.
The same goes for the special folders of Music, Images, Videos, Documents and so on.
Changing the paths of special system folders, for example, where the configuration profiles of individual programs or recent or temporary files are saved is easy and possible by following the guide on how to move the folders of installed programs from a disk to a other .
With this method you can also move system folders such as C: / Windows or that of Application Data or AppData which contain references regarding the installed programs.
On the internet you will find very complicated guides because, in addition to having to move files, you should also modify the registry keys for the programs to tell the computer that the configuration data is in another folder.
Thanks to the junction points, however, everything becomes simple and almost trivial.
In anticipation of a transfer to another computer, it is better to use the Windows data transfer utility which is in Start - Programs - Accessories - System Tools .
Transferring files and settings from another computer copies not only the documents but the entire user profiles so that you don't have to recreate them from scratch.
Even if, personally, beyond documents and photos, I would not take anything from an old computer and would prefer to create a new profile, for a less experienced user this tool is very useful.
On Windows 10, document folders , music, videos, apps and photos can be moved from Settings.
Open Settings> System> Storage and on the right side press the link Change the path to save new content
A program called Profile Relocator that works on Windows XP, Vista and Win7, transfers the default folder of the user profile, for all the profiles that will be created after the operation .
This means that existing profiles will remain in their original location on the main disk and that profiles created later will be stored in the new location. Profile Relocator is ideally to be used after the installation of the operating system and in any case it is always better to make a backup before use to avoid unpleasant inconveniences (a restore point should be sufficient.
In case of need, to solve the Windows error where the user profile is no longer read and a new one is created without wanting to, there is a solution .
Basically, we find ourselves having to reconfigure the programs and we no longer find the documents where they should be.
The free program for Windows 10 and Windows 7 is called Reprofiler .
I do not think there is anything else to add on this topic, except for netbooks and PCs with a small hard disk, it is better to make these shifts as mentioned at the time in the article on how to save space on the C: Windows disk.
In another help article, you can read how to change default folders in Windows when saving, downloading or opening a file.
