Moving the Videos Library

Video files tend to be large—very large. It is not unusual to have video files that are multiple gigabytes in size. Because of this, you may want to move your entire video library to an external hard drive, such as a fast SSD drive. (SSD drives don't rely on mechanical parts; they are memory-based, so they can transfer data very, very quickly.)

Since the Videos library is a folder, you can move files into it, like .mp4, .wmv, etc., and create sub-folders in it. As a system folder, though, if you want to relocate it to another drive, you need to do it a little differently. As an example of how you can move the Videos library, let's assume that you want to move it from its default location to D:\Videos. (You can only move to an existing folder, so you need to make sure that D:\Videoes actually exists.) Follow these steps:

1. Open either a Windows Explorer window (in Windows 7) or a File Explorer window (in Windows 8 or Windows 10). The easiest way to do this is to simply press Win+E.
2. Navigate to the folder C:\Users\<user>. (Replace <user> with your user name—the one you use to log into Windows.) You should see the My Videos folder (in Windows 7) or the Videos folder (in Windows 8 or Windows 10) listed in the Explorer window.
3. Right-click the My Videos folder and, from the resulting Context menu, choose Properties. Windows displays either the My Videos Properties dialog box (Windows 7) or the Videos Properties dialog box (Windows 8 or Windows 10).
4. Make sure the Location tab is displayed. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. Changing the location of the Videos folder.

5. Enter the path to where you want the Videos library located. In this case, you would enter D:\Videos.
6. Click on OK. Windows prompts you to ensure you want to make the change and whether you want to move the existing video files to the new location.
7. Click Yes (to signify you want to move the videos).

That's it; the Videos library is now moved. Note that if you ever want to move things back to their default location, you can go through the same procedure, but click the Restore Default button on the Location tab of the dialog box and everything will be moved back.

 This tip (12861) applies to Windows 7, 8, and 10.