Go/User: Data
The top portion of the Go menu allows quick access to special locations, providing access to data which the user may require.
For a definition of virtual folder, see here.
My Computer
This is a virtual folder which displays
- all volumes on the computer. A volume is a single storage location, usually with a single, drive letter unique to the computer. It can be an entire hard (or floppy) drive, a partition within a drive, a removable (eg. USB) drive, an optical drive (ie. CD, DVD or Blu-Ray Disc™, or a "drive" (with a drive letter) assigned to a folder in the NTFS file system.
- virtual folders, such as Control Panel
- renamed real locations such as Bob's Documents (probably C:\Documents and Settings\Bob\My Documents) and Shared Documents (probably C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents); drive letters may vary with different installations of Windows.
Note that My Computer may contain different items, or may display differently in each version of Windows.
My Documents
This is a real folder (probably C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents - drive letters may vary) which Windows creates as part of its installation. The purpose for this folder, at least as intended by Windows, is to act as a parent folder for all the user's documents and data. This may not suit each user's purposes, but many programs default to this location for data storage.
My Music
This is a real folder (probably C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\My Music - drive letters may vary) which Windows creates as a subfolder of My Documents, intended to house digital music files (eg. MP3, WAV, etc.).
My Pictures
This is a real folder (probably C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\My Pictures - drive letters may vary) which Windows creates as a subfolder of My Documents, intended to house digital image files (eg. JPG, GIF, PNG, etc.).
Desktop
Desktop is a virtual folder, considered by Windows to be the parent (ie. the topmost item in the hierarchy) of all items in the virtual tree shown in the Folders pane. The practical use for Desktop is that it always contains all items shown on the user's actual desktop (ie. the Windows screen when no application windows are visible).
Although Desktop is considered to be a virtual folder (for purposes of the computer's virtual tree), it is really comprised of 2 real folders
- C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Desktop, and
- C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop
The (root) drive letter may vary with different installations of Windows.
