Folder changes under Win7

[Mychael]

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?

 

[TrainableMan]

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.

 

[Mychael]

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.

 

[Elmer BeFuddled]

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??).

 

[TrainableMan]

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).

 

[TrainableMan]

When I first installed Seven, as expected my DVD drive was D:\. But so was my Data partition.

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.

 

[Mychael]

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.

 

[TrainableMan]

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.

 

[Elmer BeFuddled]

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

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

 

[Mychael]

So you have two music folders, two video, etc, one on C: and the big one on D:.
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.
View attachment 2296

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.

 

[TrainableMan]

Well you should use some back-up software on your data, if not W7 back-up then something.

 

[Mychael]

I do but it's a physical backup. Probably a carry over from my mainframe days in computer operating. I have a standalone drive clone device and as my HDD are 30secs to remove from case I do a clone about once a month or sooner if I've made significant changes.

 

[Mychael]

Made a little discovery. Before I ran 7 I had a 'c' drive and a 'd' drive.
I've run 7 a second time with the 'd' drive plugged back in and now when I look at devices under XP my 'c' is still C but a now have a 'd' of only a few hundred meg and a new 'e' which was my 'd' in the past.. Still can get to all the stuff that was on it before so I suppose it does not matter.

 

[TrainableMan]

Oh that's the drive W7 creates. I don't know what it is that I do differently but I've never gotten that in any of my installs but I've heard it mentioned in posts.

You can't get to the files on E:? From XP or W7 or both?

EDIT: Yoda says it's a boot partition so don't try to merge it.

 

[Mychael]

Yeah can access the files okay. Just drive letter has changed in 'my computer'. Well I assume I can see them in 7, not tried yet, can see them in XP.

Another query bit unconnected my 7 desktop seems to be accumulating icons called desktop.ini what are they, can I delete them and why are they appearing there?

 

[yodap]

Mychael, that 100MB is the boot partition. Don't screw with it unless you want to reinstall W7 and try to avoid as TM did on his install.

On my dual boot machine with XP, I find it convenient to rename the drive partitions rather than worry about the drive letters across OS's.

Tell you what. I'm going to dual boot into xp and edit or reply to this post with pictures. Hang on buddy.

 

[Mychael]

Hanging on. (sent from Win7)

 

[yodap]

Okay first picture is from W7. Second from XP.

My 3 hdd's total 7 partitions. In W7 I chose to hide the 100MB boot partition from view by removing the drive letter. Also I disabled the XP C drive from from view in Computer Management. 5 are visible. In XP I chose to hide the entire W7 hdd from view. Thats 3 partitions leaving 4 in view.

So the drive letters change across OS's but the names don't. There are no issues with the paths to the data because each OS has their own path to the corresponding drives.

 

[Mychael]

Thanks, yes. that's what I have as well. 7 has for some reason renamed my 'd' again. it went from being d to e to g. weird.

What are the icons on my desktop and labeled desktop.ini ?

 

[Nibiru2012]

Answer regarding the "desktop.ini" icon from TechRecipe.com

What is the Desktop.ini file? This hidden file is placed in every folder to tell the operating system how to display and customize the viewing of that specific folder. For example, this allows a folder to have a custom icon. Microsoft has more boring info about customizing folders with this file.

Why did this file suddenly appear?
The file is typically set as both a hidden and system file. Most people start to notice the desktop.ini file after globally setting their system to show hidden system files and folders. Often it is most noticeable on the desktop. By resetting this setting to hide these files, the desktop.ini files will no longer be visible.

Can I just delete these files?
Deleting these files will just remove any customizations set by the desktop.ini file. Although it should not hurt your system, trying to delete these files can be frustrating as the Windows operating system may rebuild them.