Can I move my AppData folder in Windows 10?

Question

I have 3 Drives, Boot(C:), Data(D:) and Restore(E:) My C: , which has 116 GB is full, and most of it is in my Appdata\Local (50GB) My D: has 377GB Free Space and I wanted to Know if it is safe to move the AppDta folder to it.

I did this with the Appdata\roaming yesterday and it did not work but after a restart it was back to normal and this time I searched for it on google and made a User\username\AppData folder in my D: drive and went to the properties of Local and manually moved it to the new folder like the search told me and after opening the Local\ElevatedDiagnostics Folder which had admin rights it was possible for me and it is copying everything right now

Will this work? and if not, will it be easy to return back to the previous state like with the roaming folder?

score 50 · Answer 1

Just moving the folder is not enough.

Once you have moved it, you must replace the original with a symbolic link to the new location. This will make windows think the data is still located on your C drive, while it actually is on your D drive.

Do note, this does work with AppData, but not with Program Files nor with the Windows folder, as it will break things like Windows Update.

To create the Directory Junction (Symbolic Link) do the following:

Open a cmd window with administrative privileges.
Navigate to c:\Users\username\appdata
execute the following command: mklink /d local d:\appdata\local
replace d:\appdata\local with the actual path of where you moved the appdata to.

If you cannot move/delete the original copy, create a 2nd user, make it administrator, login with it, and retry the option. This should ensure that no files are in use.

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