External Disk on the Dell

The Disk

I installed a 500 Gb disk on the Dell 5150c.

This was origianlly installed with a FAT32 filesystem. I converted this to NTFS, using the commandline convert utility. See also ...Convert FAT disks... at Microsoft Technet.

Moving Data

I want to mount the ..My Documents directories on the disk.

• How to Change the Default Location of the My Documents Folder, from microsoft.com.

the Dell Community forums, here

their best advice

Ramesh's Site

I asked for advice at the Dell Users fourms. have been advised that doing what I want, which was to move the Documents & Settings folder is exceedingly difficult without image management tools which I don't have. I have therefore adopted another correspondent's advice and used the windows xp interface to 'Move' the various user's 'My documents' folder.

I created an additional administrator user with a 'My documents' on the C:\ drive just in case.

The Plan

1. Install a new user, give it administrator privileges, I have no designated administrator.
2. Create Folders for each user on the external disk
3. Use My Documents >> Properties to amend the user's My Documents location, I might take saftey copies before I do this, but it should be all right.
4. Work out how to move the "All Users" documents directory and do it.(See above).
5. Write a motd script that reminds users to turn the disk on as they login and install it.(See below.)
6. Work out which users mail directories are best moved.

motd script

My testing shows that with the external disk off, a user with the My Documents located there will login but pressing the My Documents icon leads to an error message.

I have written a tcl/tk script to check if the disk is mounted and remind people to turn it on. I have installed Active States's tcl.tk tool set. I have dropped an info & warning .gif into the $tk_library/images folder. So I test if the disk is mounted by looking for a file I created.

if {[ file isfile "E:\donot.remove" ]} {
   set messagetext " The external disk has been turned on! "
   set buttontext "  OK  "
   image create photo infopic -file [file join $tk_library images info.gif]
} else {
   # what happend if I issue a destroy . command here, so ther is null display
   set messagetext " Please turn on the external disk! "
   set buttontext " Done "
   image create photo infopic -file [file join $tk_library images warning.gif]
}

This means that the variables messagetext, buttontext and infopic vary depending on if the program can access E:\donot.remove.

wm title . {Disk Check}
wm iconname . {diskcheck}
wm geometry . 225x65+500+100
#   
# Need some version control data 
#
frame .top 
frame .bottom
# .... assign messagetext, buttontext and iconpic see above
label .top.icon  -image infopic
frame .top.f -width 50
label .top.f.mess -text $messagetext
pack .top.f.mess -side top -fill x
pack  .top.icon .top.f -side left
button .bottom.dismiss -text $buttontext -command "exit"
pack   .bottom.dismiss
pack   .top .bottom
proc exit {} {
    destroy .
}

gathers the objects and packs them into a top level window. This program is located on c:\etc, which I created and then a shortcut placed in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup