A few weeks ago, I explained how to relocate the My Documents folder. I’ve had lots of positive feedback to that tip, so it seems like a good time to talk about (in my best Paul Harvey voice) the rest of your data.
If you only back up your My Documents folder, you’re in for a rude shock if you ever have to restore that backup. Any files you had saved on your desktop will be gone. Your e-mail files (Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and Mozilla Thunderbird, for instance) will have disappeared. Your address book will be missing in action, as will the settings for most programs. And your Internet Explorer Favorites and your Firefox bookmarks. And your Word document templates. And so on and on and on.
To learn where these “other” data files are stored, it helps to understand how Windows XP organizes your personal data. Everything starts with your user profile, which consists of a set of subfolders within a folder in the Documents And Settings folder. Your user profile folder normally has the same name as your logon name. Two exceptions: First, if you’re creating a domain profile, your name and the domain name are both part of the folder name, with a dot separating the two elements. Second, if your Documents And Settings folder already contains a folder whose name is the same as your user name, Windows will tack a number onto the end of your profile folder.
Inside your user profile folder are a number of subfolders whose purpose is to store data that you and only you will use. The two most important are Application Data and Local Settings\Application Data, both of which are hidden by default. (For details on how to work with hidden folders, see this tip.) Well-written Windows programs store user-specific data in these locations, which is why you’ll find your Outlook data files in Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. Your Outlook Express folders are in Local Settings\Application Data\Identities, with each identity getting its own subfolder and a cryptic 32-character alphanumeric name. And your Mozilla Thunderbird mail files are in a randomly named subfolder of Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles.
Confused? Your best strategy is to back up your entire user profile folder. If you use the Windows XP Backup program (click that link to learn how to install and use this great hidden utility), this option is the default choice in the What to Back Up screen when you start in wizard mode. If you use any other backup program, be sure to point it to the top-level folder for your user profile.
An alternate strategy (one I don’t recommend) is to configure your most important programs to store their data in the My Documents folder rather than in your user profile. This process is cumbersome for most programs, and there’s no guarantee you’ll get it right.
Update: If you’re looking for advice on how to actually use the backup program after it’s installed, see this article I wrote in 2003, which is still accurate: Windows XP Backup Made Easy. Thanks to Frank for the comment suggesting I add this information.
Ed Bott 
Ed, this is another great practical tip. But when Microsoft Backup backs up the user profile folder and subfolders, do image or music files suffer any degradation because of recompression? Can you tell Microsoft Backup simply to copy the files to your backup media (in my case an external UBS hard drive) without first compressing them?
And thanks again for posting the free Beethoven links.
You’re welcome, Ken!
Microsoft Backup doesn’t compress anything. That’s good news. Even if you were to use a backup program that does compression, it wouldn’t affect the integrity of the original files, because Zip and other similar compression algorithms such as those used in backup programs are, by definition, lossless. When you decompress, the information is identical to what it was originally. JPEG and WMA/MP3, on the other hand, are “lossy,” so editing and saving in these formats causes loss of information.
This is a good tip, but you should point out that in order for the user profile to be the default setting in Windows Backup, you need to start Backup in the wizard mode. If you start in the advanced mode you’ll need to select what to backup yourself.
I’ve always wondered why there is both an Application Data folder and a Local Settings\Application Data folder.
Good point, Frank.
If you follow the links, you get to an original article I wrote for Microsoft’s Expert Zone that makes that point with screen shots and everything. I’ve added that link to this post.
Ryan, I was all set to write about the distinction between the two folders, but this tip was already long enough!
Basically, the Local Settings folder is for data that is not intended to be part of a roaming profile. For most home users, that distinction is meaningless, but for corporate users it’s very important – you (and your network administrator) don’t want a 1.2GB PST file being copied every time you log on from a computer using a roaming profile, especially when you’re doing so over a dial-up connection. You also don’t want your browser’s 100+ MB of cache files to be copied as part of the logon process.
There’s a good explanation here that includes this summary:
Hope that helps.
Ed, thanks for mentioning your Expert Zone article on Microsoft Backup. I confess that I never use it, but I might start. Usually I back up important files in My Documents by simply copying them to my UBS external hard drive. It can be a pain doing it manually, but I was under the impression that Backup compressed image and music files. Now I know better. 🙂
Obviously I missed last ‘weeks’ post and probably the ‘weeks’ before but I have a problem and it’s really frustrating me.
I’m unable to restore a user profile. See one of those lovely ‘winxp fix’ patches decided to take out my whole PC thanks to Microsoft and their WinXP destroy updates.
Fortunately I was able to reinstall XP and start from scratch but the trouble came after the reinstall. The old profile is still there but I am unable to restore it. I at first thought it may have been deleted (First time Xp installer) and the message said deleting winxp but I never thought it would delete the profile.
So I grabbed an undelete program but it tells me the files are still there and I am unable to get to them. Could someone please explain to me what I have do to get those files out of that folder? Simple explanations please I’m not computer retarded well maybe but the help would be greatly appreciated!
You need the system security keys and/or passwords to unlock the folder. You see when you reinstalled, instead of using the repair option on your windows xp cd, you inadvertantly deleted those and the installer created new ones. Next time use the repair option on the cd to fix your install. To do this, you have to choose setup windows xp option the first time and then when you see a similar menu the second time you pick the repair option…. you also might see if there is hacking program out there(be careful with this suggestion as it may open you up to viruses/hackers) to get the xp software system keys from the old install or by run codes at it till it works with your new install by finding the proper registry keys but it’s not going to be easy to get them any way you try.
I ran into the same problem a coupla years ago before i knew about the repair option and lost alot of stuff on my putr so hope this helps for that ever looming next time (hope not) but it does happen from time to time …by the way i still have files i still want to restore but havent found a program that will do it either…