My Documents = My Music + My Pictures + My Videos... Can I break em up?

[dhaltom]

Okay, so My Documents is composed of My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos. Can I have those separate things on different drives? I have all kinds of gadgety-goodness floating around the house but the common limitation is that most of them will only find the files shown from My Documents. The problem is, My Videos alone is at well over 400GB, and My Music is creeping up there in size as well. Factor in My Pictures, and it gets a bit too big for one drive all by itself. Unfortunately, I have a 300GB HDD and a 500GB HDD free for storage but I don't want to lose 200GB via RAID. Now in the registry at My Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders it shows where each of those (My Music, My Pictures, My Documents) is set to be, so could I just change those to reflect having My Videos on a separate drive than My Music and My Pictures? Is this going to screw anything up? Will it show properly on other devices once I share them? I would just put them on different drives in different folders but unless it is a part of My Documents, it no worky. Anywhoosles, any suggestions, help, death threats, etc... are more than welcome.

[soybean]

I have all kinds of gadgety-goodness floating around the house ...

Please clarify.  Exactly what do you mean?

  I would just put them on different drives in different folders but unless it is a part of My Documents, it no worky.

Hmmm, "no worky".  What mean "no worky"?  Have you tried it?  What happens? 

[soybean]

Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Documents.   Under "Other 'My' folders", it says TweakUI can move the "Other 'My' folders".  So, I'd download and install TweakUI and use it to do this.

[Comp Guy]

Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Documents.   Under "Other 'My' folders", it says TweakUI can move the "Other 'My' folders".  So, I'd download and install TweakUI and use it to do this.

soybean, I have TweakUI and it only changes the four links on the side of the open/save dialogue box. I think dhaltom is attempting to actually change the default opening folder for his programs. Most image programs open to My Pictures by default, and so just changing thos five links will not help.

dhaltom, I do not know if that would mess it up or not, I have never tried it. Try to Google your question.

By the way (this is not related to the question), TweakUI is it a cool little tweak utillity. So even if it will not solve your problem, you can still get it.

[soybean]

This may help:


How Windows will behave after moving one or more of the "Other 'My' folders", I do not  know.  I haven't tried it.  But, dhaltom, I'm inclined to think you try it and if it doesn't seem to work right, reverse the move.  Also, I'd backup my registry and create a Restore Point before doing this unless you already have a very recent Restore Point. 

[Comp Guy]

Okay soybean, thanks for the correction. For some reason I didn't remeber that option.

[ianbell]

You want to store this stuff in a different drive, right?   So in drive "D" create a new folder (double click on My Comp, double click on drive D, click on File, click on New , New Folder and name it whatever).
Then go to the file you want to move, click on it, click Copy:  then go to your new folder and right click, and then Paste and you have your new folder with all the info without any risk of losing the info.  Once you check the file contents you can then go back to drive "C" and delete the old file.

[dhaltom]

I have all kinds of gadgety-goodness floating around the house ...

Please clarify.  Exactly what do you mean?

  I would just put them on different drives in different folders but unless it is a part of My Documents, it no worky.

Hmmm, "no worky".  What mean "no worky"?  Have you tried it?  What happens? 

In response, I have an Xbox 360, a Nintendo Wii, and an original Xbox running Xbox Media Center. There are also two other computers, but they don't have any problems finding things that aren't in My Documents. The Problem I had *was* that none of those devices would read anything from my computer unless it was stored in My Documents. So, as an example, I would go to videos on my 360, connect to my computer, and all it would show was the files in My Videos, which *was* with the others, My Pictures and My Music, but if I had any videos at any other location, such as on a different drive, it would not show them, even if they were shared.

After messing with a number of settings I still couldn't get it working, so I gave up. I went on to get a virus and had to reinstall my OS, which, as it turns out, was the problem all along. Somehow, my networking stuff had gotten messed up, and it wouldn't share things properly. After the reinstall I was able to share things, and they appear to be working. I did change the registry to reflect having My Videos on a different drive, and there have been no adverse problems as of yet.

To be honest though, I ended up having to do the reinstall a few times, and had experimented with Network Magic for all my networking needs, but after the latest, I was able to get it working on my own. Next chance I get I am going to see if I can get ahold of another original Xbox and use it downstairs to share my media, and then I will be fairly well set. Anyways, thanks to everyone for their help, I appreciate it greatly. (Would have been back sooner to give thanks but I have spent the last 5 days getting things back to normal on my computer, which is leading to a renewed interest in backing up my system regularly...)