Folder changes under Win7

Assuming my install works and my dual boot also works I'm wondering what happens to files/folders/drive letters if I swap between XP & 7.

I have a seperate internal SATA drive on which I have all my photo's/files/videos etc etc.
Currently listed as drive 'D' under XP and my seperate folders named to reflect what's in them with sub-directories etc.

I also have an external USB drive enclosure which has two HDD drives labelled k & L. on this is backups of all my stuff on 'D' with folders named and structered the same way. It's not on all the time, I only turn it on when I want to backup stuff to it.

So my question is if when I've booted into 7 will the drive letters and everything I've arranged get changed by 7 and will this then mean it wont be how I had it when I next boot into XP.?
What happens if I turn on the USB drive (as I do now) only when I need it and after the O/S is up and running. In XP it's no issue it's just plug and play but what will happen in 7?

In W7 you can name the drives any letter you like in disk management but generally external drives when turned on take whatever the next available drive letter is after C: (This isn't really different than XP).

I'm going to guess in XP you have C: OS, D: Data, E: DVD-Rom, F: flash or other internal drive probably, G:/H:/I:/J: Multimedia Device Reader, and this is why your external drives get K: & L:.

I guess what I'm saying is try it and go to Disk Management and set them how you are comfortable. The only issue I might see is when you plug in your USB drives, as I'm not sure it will remember from use to use what letter you assign. Mine just uses the first available letter after C: so, my two drives, as well as my USB flash/thumb drives, always get assigned F:. In the rare case when I turn on more than one at a time, the first one is F: and the others are H:, I:, etc (skipping over my Multimedia Device I manually set to G: in Disk Management). So you can change the external drive letters but you may need to change them every time you plug them in.

Personally I don't like my multimedia device taking 4 drive letters when not in use. I only ever use one slot for my camera memory card so I disable all the rest in control panel; I used to disable them all and only enable it when I plugged in the card but I have come to tolerate one "(G Removable Disk" in my Windows Explorer folders panel.

Ok, cool. So 7 wont change all my folders to libraries or anything like that when it notices the data drives? Yes, you are correct.. C=O/S D is for Data and 2 optical drives and then the multimedia reader.

When I first installed Seven, as expected my DVD drive was D:\. But so was my Data partition. Windows 7 kindly (I mean that) renamed my Data to a.n.other but a quick visit to Device Manager, a few mouse clicks and a reboot meant that from the Start Menu, Quick Launch (yes, Quick Launch) and shortcuts in other partitions, D was now Data again. and the DVD was R (Re-write??).

All libraries are are pointers to actual folders.

In W7, My Documents is listed under libraries with Music and Pictures, etc but My documents also has pointers to My Music, My Pictures, etc. I find this redundant so I have removed them from under My Documents. And My Downloads does NOT have a library by default but is instead listed under Favorites. Well I do not like the Favorites section in Windows Explorer and have deleted it so I created a Library entry for Downloads and pointed that to my My Downloads folder.

In XP I didn't really use their folder naming conventions such as My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos. By default W7 sets up library pointers to these folders so I have sorted my data into these folders now and it works quite well for me but you can add additional folders to the libraries as you wish (and delete too). When you moved your data to D: did you actually MOVE the My Pictures, My Music folder to D: from C: (which changes the pointer in the registry) or did you simply start using a new folder on D: ? In W7 would recommend actually making My Documents, My Videos, etc point to your D: drive as then the files take on that data type which controls how they are displayed in Windows Explorer and it also puts them under the protection of proper classification for UAC and for back-ups etc so you really do want the registry to know My Documents is on D:, not just not use My Documents and over on D: you have some folder (mine was actually called DATA ).

So even in XP you could MOVE those folders (even to another drive) and call them anything you wanted (by moving the folder the registry was changed to point to the new location) but if you were like me you simply stopped using My Documents and simply used D:\Data. In W7 I have corrected this and I would advise others to do the same. In XP you could set Windows Explorer up so each folder displayed how you wanted or you could apply it to all folders; in W7 there are different layouts depending on whether it is a document, music, video, picture, or general. You can assign any folder to any of these types but if you put it under the right My documents, My Music etc then it is set up as this type automatically.

Basically Libraries is extremely customizable and I find I rarely use other folders with the exception of when I am tweaking my start up menus or messing in the program files folders or if I plug in a flash drive (I disabled autostart so I view folders on the flash drive via Windows Explorer).

Two drives can't both be D: so it had to rename one of them.

I don't really recall much of a change to my lower drive letters, just to the stupid multimedia reader - personally I wish it functioned like an external drive or flash and only showed up when actual media is plugged in.

When I started with an empty 'd' drive. I simply left clicked on file> new folder then gave it a name. Depending on what was in it I may or may not have created sub folders.
So on 'd' I have folders called music, photo's, videos, documents etc. When I want to save something new I'll click 'save' then direct it to the appropriate folder.
Short term things that I'm either working on or wont be keeping I still allow to go to "my documents" on the 'c' drive.
Then every so often I'll select a folder in my 'd' and copy paste it across to my external USB drive for backup.

So you have two music folders, two video, etc, one on C: and the big one on D:. Well if you wish to continue to do that on W7 you can but you probably will want to go to the highest level folder and in the properties ... customize tab assign it to the right folder type, example music, and check the box under that so all the subfolders take on that formatting.

Also when you use Windows Backup or tools like WET (Windows Easy Transfer) you should select the advanced options and make sure the files/folders on D: are included correctly.

And you may want to add pointers in "Libraries" to the D: drive as well.

Yeah, missed out the "obviously". One finger typists eh?

Yes, but I don't put stuff in the 'c' drive folders. Except for itunes which has my iphone and itunes store as back up media. I try to keep 'c' free for the O/S and programs.
I'm hoping my 'd' drive will remain unmolested by 7 so I wont need WET or backup.
The programs that I have, assuming they work in 7, I have the disks for or can just download again straight into 7.