I'm a long-time BOINC volunteer and have never had an issue I couldn't easily find an answer to... until now. I've just recently noticed that BOINC is saving project data to every hard drive I connect to one of my computers. This is especially troublesome on my server as I am constantly connecting customer's HD's to backup data or run virus scans etc.
I am running BOINC Manager 7.2.42 (x64) in Win7 x64
The folder it keeps copying files to is %ROOT%\Users\All Users\BOINC
It consumes 3.2Gb, most of which is a sub-dir called projects. In \Projects\ there are files from Einstein@Home, World Community Grid, LHC@Home, SETI@Home and many other projects I haven't had active tasks for months now.

When I say these files are copied to EVERY HD attached to my machine, what I really mean is every HD with a Windows Install on the drive. It only seems to be copied over when there is a folder \Users\ in the root. Connecting drives without this directory don't have the same issue. I've looked in BOINC options and computing preferences but I can only find settings for how much space projects can use, not which drives they store files on.

I'd greatly appreciate you're help!

It sounds like the manager is getting confused on which hard drive it is supposed to use. Maybe it's detecting the Windows install on the other drives and thinks that those are main hard drives as well. The only thing I can think of is exit BOINC before connecting them. You could also try re-installing the manager and changing the data path to somewhere else.

Forwarded to development, as I find it strange as well. Never noticed I have a full copy of my data directory in that users directory.

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It would appear that for some reason or the other, a directory full of symbolic links is made in \All Users\, I'm waiting for an answer as to why that's done.

Quick question, do you have Virtual Box installed?

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You both might find it helpful to refer to some of the available reference material on "special folders", such as

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_folder
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee176604.aspx

In short, these are two different addresses for the same place, rather than two different places.

Great, so it only affects things in the C:\Programdata\ directory, meaning that if the original user moves his BOINC data directory to some place else, it no longer happens.

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Great, so it only affects things in the C:\Programdata\ directory, meaning that if the original user moves his BOINC data directory to some place else, it no longer happens.

Yes, I tend to put my stuff into c:\BOINCdata or D:\BOINCdata, and there's only a single address for locations like that.

(unless you give them a network share name, which is a whole 'nother kettle of fish)

It would appear that for some reason or the other, a directory full of symbolic links is made in \All Users\, I'm waiting for an answer as to why that's done.

Wait a minute! That sounds familiar! Some programs (ok, Minecraft) store their info in the AppData folder, and the easiest way to get there is to type %appdata% into a folder! This is a system variable, kind of like a shortcut! Maybe BOINC is using the system variable for \All users\, and detecting the shortcut in the other drives!