Special Folder Manager 2: move special folders easily across partitions on Win 7 and Vista

There is a growing trend to move special folders, such as your “My Documents”, “My Music”, and “My Pictures” folders off the main OS partition to another one. This enables the user to create a ‘perfect’ image of the main partition in it’s smallest form, and to put all of the user data in another partition where it is easier to manage and/or backup.

But wait: before you tell me that it is very easy to move special folders on Windows 7, consider this; Special Folder Manager 2 (Save Me 2) will move all sorts of user folders, some of which you would expect (My Music, My Pictures, User profiles, etc) and others that you would not (e.g. Appdata, Local Appdata, Administrative Tools, Cache, Cookies, etc.) And it will do this in batch, within a single operation.

It even moves some folders which frankly you wouldn’t want to move off the C:\ drive, such as your start menu, your startup folder, and others. Needless to say use this with some caution, and only move those folders that you are familiar with.

Here’s some PROS and CONS:

• Wizard Style interface: check all the folders you want, then go to the next step(s)
• Filtering: you can check “user folders” and/or “common folders”; or you can type something in the search box to filter via a text string.
• Move many folders in batch: everything can be done quickly and easily in one go (as opposed to doing it manually, serially one by one).
• Can move the existing contents of the folders to the new location: which is optional. It can also delete the old location off the hard drive for you (also optional).
• Can handle user folder and common folders: both
• Can grab the size on disk of specified folders: you need to check them first though, then click ‘get size’
• Revert folders back: to their original location, is supported.
• Portable: no install needed

CONS:

• Will move your folders into the exact same folder structure on the new drive. I.e. it will not let you move, say, your user folder to the root D:\ drive. This is not necessarily a bad thing, although if you do it manually you can move any special folder to any location.

Wish list:

• Filtering by non-default locations: I wish you could tell the program to only display the special folders on a system that are not in their default locations. Which shouldn’t be difficult.

The verdict: an excellent program that I will be using whenever I am re-installing an OS or setting up a new machine. Beware, though, that you should only undertake moving special folders if you know exactly what you want and what you are doing.

Version Tested: 2.0.1.133

Compatibility: 32 and 64 bit Windows Vista/2008/Windows 7 (for Windows XP use Save Me 1)

Go to the program home page to download the latest version (approx 2.61 megs).