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External Hard Drive..Help!!

799 Views 7 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  _02, 
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After reading a couple of forums I've heard that there is no such thing as a default hard drive. I just bought a 1TB external hard drive and transferred all of my music and photos to it. Now that I transferred the music and photos to the external drive I deleted all of them from my internal C: drive to free up space. The problem that I'm having is now that I've deleted them from the C: drive I can't access my music and photos from quick tabs on the start menu. I though that I could just change the C: drive which is where all of my programs and files are tranferred to. To my F: drive where my external hard drive is located and make the F: drive my primary storage drive. Question: Is there a way that I can change the start quick tabs to automatically read my music and photos stored on my external hard drive and make the F: drive my primary storage drive? I'm using windows vista home edition. My system is a HP Pavilion. Your help is greatly appreciated.

I'm not a expert when it comes to computers. Would you happen to have step by step instructions on how I can make the F: drive my new primary(default)drive ? And is it possiable to make the F: drive a main/root drive? I have other external devices that that automatically searches the C: drive for music, pictures and video under the user name which I'm guesting is a is tide to the C: drive as well.
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There is no such thing as a "default storage drive"

The shortcuts you have created have LITERAL paths, meaning they are in a very specific location down to the folder, not just on a default drive in the music area. I believe you will need to create new shortcuts to the files in their new location.

The only sense of a default drive would be the root, or C:\\ drive on your computer. This is default in the sense that it is bootable, and contains your operating system. environment variables can be created so that windows can locate files, but in your situation I think that you will need to recreate those shortcuts.

If you had your music in the "My Music" folder, for example, and moved them to another drive, you would indeed need to create a new shortcut to the new directory and replace the shortcut to the "my music" folder.

I prefer this method anyway, as you can choose the directory names and structure, and just make shortcuts for what you feel is necessary.

If I have misunderstood - please correct me
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A
So what your saying is to create a short cut for my music files from my external HD and then drag the short cut to my C:music file. Is that correct. I'm trying to free up space on my C: drive. Won't that just refill my C: drive with my music files that I just deleted from it?
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I would recommend opening a window where you can see the folder that currently has your msuic in it (on the external)

Right click the folder, and drag it to your desktop (or wherever you want the shortcut) and then click "Create shortcut".

This will place a shortcut on your c:\\ disk back to the music folder on your external drive.

Only a tiny shortcut gets saved on c:\\, everything remains on your external drive.

For example:
I have a shortcut on my desktop to my "benchmark" folder.

That folder is on my F drive so that I can open it from my desktop without storing the apps on my C drive
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Gameace
Yeah a shortcut just tells your computer where to look... It does not actually contain the data.
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A
What do you know that worked!!!! Thanks for all your help... I appreciated it very much. YOU ROCK!!!!!!
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A
Ya know I may have jumped the gun. Even though I was able to transfer the short cut to my music. My other external devices is not reading them. I going to try to restart everything and see what I get. BRB
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What external devices are you using?

You may have to go into their preferences and set the directory to point to your new music directory. It may be scanning the default locations (on your C drive) and the music is no longer there.
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