I just discovered something spooky when attempting to make a backup copy of my Documents folder on Vista (i.e. c:\Users\%USERNAME%\Documents) using rsync on Cygwin. I got an error that rsync wouldn’t copy the folders My Music, My Pictures and My Videos.

This was a surprise, because i didn’t even know those directories were there. Maybe they were there from when i’d restored some documents from my previous installation?

Alas, it gets spookier. On Cygwin, the folders exist. On Windows Explorer, cmd.exe and PowerShell, they don’t. Still, when i try to create a directory “My Music” under my Documents folder, i get an error that that folder already exists.

What the heck is going on? If it’s on Google, it sure isn’t there in an obvious way.

Update: I was shown that the directories were just hidden (with my Linux background, if you want to hide a file or a directory, you make its name start with a dot — i’d compleatly forgotten that you can hide Windows directories that way…) and that they are there as a bug-compatibility for lazy programmers who expect My Music et al to reside under the (My) Documents folder. No conspiracy this time.