Ok my situation is this. I recently clean installed Windows 7 on a new hard drive for a new computer. I then grabbed a spare hard drive that had Windows 7 on it in a previous (now dead) computer. I installed the spare drive in my new computer to use as extra space. I didn't want to format the old hard drive because it had a bunch of stuff on it that I intend to keep but nothing I wanted to sort through at the moment. I decided to just manually delete the folders that had none of what I was looking to keep. Mainly all the Windows folders still on it. I was going through nuking stuff just fine until I hit the Docs and Settings folder. When going through the D+S folder on the OLD, not booting to anymore, just storage space HD I found a copy of the picture I was using in my NEW hd for my desktop background. For a second that gave me a start because it had me thinking I was deleting from the wrong hard drive possibly. I looked up and saw that I was, indeed, in a folder on my F: drive. I went to my C: drive and navigated to the same location and saw the same picture. I deleted it from my F: drive and it disappeared from my C: drive as well. I think I read the Docs and Settings folder in the root of your drive isn't really there and just a link put there for compatibility with older programs and all which is fine. What I'm confused about is why that folder on my F: drive would be linked to my C: drive and not the Dos and settings folders just on my F: users folder. Now I'm worried about what I may have deleted from my actual C: drive while I was only browsing around and deleting from my F: drive. I rebooted the machine and saw no errors messages and everything is running fine but I had already deleted the Public and Default profile folders from Docs and Settings and those are now gone on C:.
I'm not really super concerned if I did fudge up my windows install as I can easily reinstall windows again. I'll just be upset because I've basically spent the last 2 days doing nothing on it but installing several hundred gigs worth of games and importing all my save files over to it. I have a backup of everything that went on it so all I'd be out is the hours I spent doing all that. I just want some kind of explanation to why deleting something on one drive actually deleted it from the other. Why wasn't the Focs and Settings folder linked to the users/docs and settings on F: instead? Is it just because the drive letter changed from C to F and it's now just looking for C and not linked to the folders on the same hard drive? Like how a regular shortcut just points to a location as opposed to looking for something in relationship to itself if you get my meaning? If so I get that but man I was not even thinking that might happen because I don't see a folder as a shortcut if it doesn't have the little arrow at the bottom. I see it as a folder at that location that I can delete from that location.
I'm not really super concerned if I did fudge up my windows install as I can easily reinstall windows again. I'll just be upset because I've basically spent the last 2 days doing nothing on it but installing several hundred gigs worth of games and importing all my save files over to it. I have a backup of everything that went on it so all I'd be out is the hours I spent doing all that. I just want some kind of explanation to why deleting something on one drive actually deleted it from the other. Why wasn't the Focs and Settings folder linked to the users/docs and settings on F: instead? Is it just because the drive letter changed from C to F and it's now just looking for C and not linked to the folders on the same hard drive? Like how a regular shortcut just points to a location as opposed to looking for something in relationship to itself if you get my meaning? If so I get that but man I was not even thinking that might happen because I don't see a folder as a shortcut if it doesn't have the little arrow at the bottom. I see it as a folder at that location that I can delete from that location.