My new laptop is running Windows XP Professional. The hard drive has been configured with two partitions: C and D. I would like to keep the C partition for system files, and move applications files to the D partition. Is there anyway I can move the ‘My Documents’ folder to partition D?

Moving your My Documents to the D drive is a relatively easy process. Go to the ‘Start’ menu and right-click on the ‘My Documents’ entry then select ‘Properties’ from the context menu. In the window that appears, click the ‘Target’ tab. You will notice this specifies the location of the My Documents folder for your user profile. To move the My Documents to the D drive, click the ‘Move’ button and in the window that appears, select your D drive. This will move the My Documents to the D:My Documents location. Of course, you can put the My Documents wherever you like, so if you wanted it in another folder (e.g. D:MickMy Documents) then create a folder named ‘Mick’ and choose that as the location to move the My Documents folder. Such an approach may be useful should you have multiple users on the computer, and you wish to move all their My Documents to the D drive (e.g. D:MickMy Documents, D:MatthewMy Documents, D:BobMy Documents, etc.).

Separating all your personal documents and data onto another partition is a very good idea, in case you need to reinstall Windows at any stage. Having your personal data on another partition should keep this data intact if you need to trash the system. You mention you also wish to keep your applications files on the D partition. By this, do you mean moving the actual programs to the D drive, or just personal data associated with those programs (e.g. Word documents, Excel spreadsheets)? Moving the actual programs is unlikely to have any benefit, since programs in Windows are generally not self contained - they also install program files in other locations (such as the Windows system directories). So, if you reinstall Windows, it is unlikely you would be able to simply run the programs on the D drive and they would work. Therefore, I suggest you just put your personal data on the D drive and keep your system and programs on the C drive.