Problems with moving My Documents folder

Hi.........

You can have a view of below mentioned link:

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/moving_documents_and_settings_folder_onto_second_hard_disk.html

http://tiplet.com/tip/how-to-transfer-files-from-drive-to-drive/

I have tried the "move" option and that is when I get the error. I only recieve the error on 4 out of the 5 accounts. One account has no issue with the transfer. I have tried different directories for each. I have also tried one directory for the seperate directories that house each user.

A couple of Things here to consider:
1. When you created the accounts, normally the first one doesn't ask you if you want to make the data on the account private. But when you create the 2nd account it usuallly asks you if you want to make the data private. If you replied "Yes" then you must either take ownership of the files or log in as the user who "owns" the files you want to move.
2. It works better if you create on the external drive a folder, lets say you call it Users and under this folder you create subfolders with each user name. Once you have this done you log into each individual account and you map the path:
\\externaldrive_name\Users\Username. (in this example lets just assume that you mapped each user to the logical drive U.

Then you right click on "My Documents" while logged in as the user, right click on My Documents and in the properties tell it to move to U:

This should solve the issue. It seems to work better when the path is mapped.
Let me know how it goes.

Bits,

Could you please explain the process of mapping the path?

Sure,

1.Open Windows Explorer or My Computer from the Windows Start Menu.

2.From the Tools menu, click Map Network Drive&. A new Map Network Drive window opens.

3.In the Map Network Drive window, choose an available drive letter from the dropdown list located next to the "Drive:" option. Any drives already mapped will have a shared folder name displayed inside the dropdown list, next to the drive letter.

4.Type the name of the folder to map. This name must follow UNC. Alternatively, click the Browse& button to find the correct folder by browsing available network shares.

5.Click the "Reconnect at login" checkbox if this network drive should be mapped permanently. Otherwise, this drive will un-map when the user logs out of this computer.

6.If the remote computer or drive that contains the shared folder requires a different username and password to log in, click the "different user name" hyperlink to enter this information.

7.Click Finish.

In your case you want to map \\externaldrive_name\Users\Username where external drive name would be the name of your external drive name, the users' folder and the actual name of the user...

Whoops, this isn't a network drive, just an USB external.

Then you are all set.....Cool!!!! it should already have a logical drive letter assigned to it....so all you need to do is to configure it as detailed above....

Just not to confuse you..... if for example your external drive has been assigned by your system the  Letter H. All you need to do is create a folder called Users in H with subfolders corresponding to each user name. Then you sign as each user and in the properties of "My Documents" you tell it to move to:

H:\Users\Username

That's it.

Its not working

The only thing that comes to mind at this time is that you take ownership of the files of one of the users (or even better: create a new user account) and use it as a test.  If it works, then you know for sure that the problem is the ".....make data private..." prompt when creating the user accounts.

Is there a work around for that? registry perhaps?

Foshon,

Lets review the issue in detail to make sure we are not missing something:

The error message you are getting "....the location you requested is not allowed as a target... was documented and confirmed by Microsoft as a problem for Win98 and WinMe in 2007:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/267691

Now, we are talking about XP......the USB drive, for all purposes, is a local drive. Im assuming that as soon as you plug it in it gets assigned a logical drive letter such as E: or F: (whichever your next available logical drive is).

In XP, by default, when you create a New User Account, you dont get prompted to assign it a password so in order to assign it a password, you would have to go into the Change Account option and select the Create a Password option.

Now if the computer is a member of a domain, you would get asked if you &wanted to make the files Private... when you were creating the account. I am NOW assuming that the computer does NOT belong to a domain, so my initial suggestion to take ownership would not apply unless you specifically made the files private:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930987

So going back to the initial problem: & the location you requested is not allowed as a target...

My thoughts on this is that you might be experiencing a problem similar to the one documented by Microsoft for WinMe or Win98&..

Accordingly you would need to check:
1.      If the external USB drive is available for each user.
2.      If the drive is formatted using NTFS.
3.      If the logical drive assigned to each user is the same.
4.      Are you right clicking on the My Documents folder and selecting move? If so, when you get the Select a Destination screen to browse for the move location, Are you selecting the Make New Folder option when you select the USB drive and creating this New Folder under the Users folder you created previously?
5.      Does this external USB Drive use a proprietary software to create new folders? If so, are the permissions enabled for Everyone  (Personally I believe the problem is here)

Please check all of the above before we go any further.
Please reply with the make and model of the external USB drive we are talking about.

The drive is a 1 TB My Book by WD. I cleaned it off and reformatted it. I made 5 partitions so each has its own drive letter. I tried to move one of the folders that was giving me grief first ( to the blank formatted partition) it failed this way also.

I did not use WD's software and I am making the folder while in the move to browse window.

Have you tried to just copy and paste to test if it allows you to do this from the user accounts you are having problems with?

Did you format each one of the partitions?.....just asking....just in case....you would be amazed the things we can forget to do....

Also....try checking the permisions on the partitions .......make sure that the intended user has his permisions properly configured......(and that the other users don't if you want to keep it private)

I have tried ot copy and paste, it went well until I hit a system file. The partitions are formatted.

Where would I check the partitions?

I'm not sure if you created partitions or folders. I see you have accumulated some expert points so I will assume that you created partitions just like you stated. If this is the case you have to have assigned a logical drive letter to each partition in order to use it (I would have not created partitions but just one big hard drive with a main folder called "Users" and subfolders with each user name).

In any case once each partition has been assigned a logical drive letter and has been formated individually, you would need to right click on the drive and select "Sharing and Security". When it opens, you would select "I understand the risk but still want to share.........."  and it would offer you basically 2 options:
1. Local Sharing and Security
2. Network Sharing and Security.

You would select the first one and check the box labeled "Make this folder private"....This you would have to repeat logged in as each individual user .........it's a complicated an unnecessary way of doing it and it is probably the root of all the problems you are have Foshon.....

This said.....I would stongly suggest that you format the drive with just one partition and create the folder Users and subfolders with each name of each user and then move "My Documents" pointing to the drive:\Users\Username location. Later.....if needed you could make each folder private but it really makes no sense since all your users are "administrators" so they could easily just "take ownership" of the folder anyway..........

If all the users are administrators there is no advantage to creating partitions or messing with permisions. Just create the folders, point to them when moving and it will work!!!!......I guarantee you this.

Just the fact that you mention above "....I have tried to copy and paste, it went well until I hit a system file...." tells me that something is not right...there should be no "System files" in "My Documents"......

Again.....just keep it simple....I insist...Partition the drive, format it and create the folders. It will go smoothly from there...

I did the entire Documents and Settings folder, I was in a hurry. I will format the drive into one partition now and try the move again thanks.

I deleted all the partitions and reformatted into one big one. Logical was not an option; Primary and Extended only, which one do I want?

Primary....

Ok single primary partition with the e:/Users/Username configuration failed also. I did some investigating of the Docs and Settings folder. There are a duplicate set of user doc folders, named "TEMP.User.random numbers".  These folders are the current aim of the documents folder. The original set of doc folders exists and contains the original documents. When I try to point from the "TEMP." folder to the original folder I get the same error.

Foshom: are you right clicking on the My Documents icon on the Desktop of each user  and selecting MOVE?

Yes

You should never have a Temp folder in the "My Documents" folder unless it was specifically created. Might be that one of your users created this by mistake and instead of being documents, they are actually temp data being created by one of your applications. Since you cannot move open files, and since one of the applications has open files, the move will fail.

I would agree with your observation that the problem could be in these temp files.....you will need to try to find out which of your applications is creating these temp files and re-configure it or reinstall it so this temp data does not live in the "My Documents" folder....

Another detail: Above you mention ".....Ok single primary partition with the e:/Users/Username configuration failed also..." it should be:

e:\users\username

Note the "BackSlash".

It was slashed correctly, I just used make new folder twice.

Ok....let me know when you find out what application created or is creating those "Temp" files in the "My Documents" folder. I strongly believe that this is key to finding out why such a simple procedure as the one you are attempting is failing. You are on the right track: if these files are currently open by some application the are what you call "locked" and you cannot copy them becuase they are open so until the application either deletes them or stops using "unlocks" them you will not be able to copy them and accomplish your task by normal means (there are procedures to copy locked files, restore points for example is one of several applications that can copy locked files through the use of vssadmin.exe) but this definitely is another story beyond the scope of your question).