How do the User and Shared Folders relate to the main drive? Can we delete?

Question

I'm curious how the User and Shared folders relate to the main hard drive and if there is duplicate files in these folders and the main hard drive. Some software programs I have seemed to have loaded content/info into these folders and I'm wondering why they put files in there instead of just the regular main hard drive pathing. These 2 folders are more confusing than anything. I can see that might be of use to a family and each family member wants to keep files in a personal file, but when I'm the only one using my computer, it seems like I should have the option to remove these folders completely, but I don't because I feel like I would be deleting some important files that I wasn't aware were in these folders.
Another thing is, when I click on User folders (at least I think it's the User and not Shared folder), it brings up my name and 'Shared' in 2 seperate subfolders. Is anything in these folders duplicates of what's on my main hard drive? Is there anything significant about these folders if I'm the only user on my computer?
I would nice to get rid of clutter and to eliminate options for software to install things by deleting these folders and not have home/user/shared folders. Is that possible?

Answer 1

stikygum wrote:
Yeah, I'm really low on space, so I'm going about a bunch of different consolidating options. But I mainly posted my main question to help me understand what 'stuff' is in the User and Shared folders and whether or not they act like an Alias, in order to help me make an informed decision what is best for my needs.
They are not aliases; it is a hierarchy, and there is intentional duplication at different levels. This is a feature.
First thing is that Users and Shared are at different levels. Users is at the top level, but Shared is one level inside Users, at the same level as any other user account you have created.
Therefore, if you delete the Users folder, you delete all user accounts, which means you delete all personal data. OS X probably won't even let you delete the Users folder unless you start up from a different hard drive, because you can't delete your user account while you are running in it.
Now, more about the hierarchy. The intentional duplication is so that documents and software can exist for individual users or all users. For example, there are multiple Applications folders:
Hard Drive\Applications - applications any user can see, installed at the system level
Hard Drive\Users\username1\Applications = applications only that user can see
Hard Drive\Users\username2\Applications = applications only that user can see
In the same way, there are multiple Preferences, Cookies, Application Support, etc. folders at different levels, for the same reasons.
If you do not know what you are doing and you delete one of these folders that "looks like a duplicate" you could cripple some essential part of your system or your account. That is why people are telling you not to do this.
The Shared folder is there because if you are in one user account you are prevented from seeing the files inside other user accounts. (Because you don't want other accounts to be able to see your personal data.) If you want to share files with others in your house using the same Mac, that's a problem. But the Shared folder solves this. if you want some files to be accessible to all users, like some photos or music, just put them in the Shared folder and now anyone with an account on that computer can see those shared files.
The reason shared files are not simply stored at the top level is because everything above the Users folder is supposed to be reserved for the system. User-specific are supposed to stay in the Users folder. That is why they put the Shared folder in there.
If you are not using the Shared folder and are just eyeing it because you want to free up some disk space, well, it probably won't help to delete it. Because if you are not using the Shared folder, it is probably not taking up much space, even though you see stuff in there. And if there is stuff in there taking up space, first figure out if someone put it there for a reason before you delete it.