Ok, I have an idea here and before I re-install my computer, I decided to run this people to see if it's a good idea, let me describe my computer's set up and reason's why it's like this:

I have 3 drives:

primary master IDE (80 GB, seperated into 3 boot partitions described below)

• C: drive (Music and stuff): This boot is used for iTunes, office, virus/spyware software and all non-gamming/development tasks
  
• D: drive (Games): much like the lable states, it's a boot for games, only games and support software are installed her (logitech g15, java, DAEMON Tools lite, ect...) but only windows and the keyboard software actually loads.
  
• E: drive (Development): this boot has any developmental software installed as I see fit, currently apache server, PHP, mySQL and a handful of other things.
  

Secondary master IDE (110GB, no partitioning)

• F: drive (Development Data): This holds data that is used when I am working on thing in the development boot, it also holds ISO files of various games that I might want to play and don't feel like looking for the CDs, also is the location of the swap files for each boot and is occasionally a installation test drive
  

SATA channel1 (300 GB, no partitioning)

• G: drive (Games and Documents): this drive holds the actual installs for some of the larger games I play as well as the "My Documents" folder for each of the drives. the "My Documents" folder is changed after the installation of each boot
  

and I got 2 CD ROM drives as the secondaries on each of the IDE channels (H, I)

I know that there is a way to change the default location of the "Documents and Settings" directory during the initial installation of windows, I also know that this is where some programs store important information under the hidden "Application data" of the user's directory. (Firefox stores the installed extensions here and Thunderbird stores the e-mails.)

I already got XP so that it will see each drive as it correct letter (was an issue because of the SATA raid controller)

I want to know if it is a good (or bad) idea to have all 3 installations (boots) point to the same "Documents and Settings" directory on the G Drive instead of having each their own, that way I'ed only have to set up one FF, Thunderbird, ect...

Thanks for any information.

after looking at a few thing, this may be a bad idea, guess no one's thought of doing this before.. gonna leave the system alone.

(Edit: one of the reason is that the application data keeps information about the program it's self which would not match when it's ran from a different drive.)

Edited October 7, 200817 yr by DaemosDaen