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I am in search of moving 'Local' and 'Roaming' folders inside the AppData folder in C:drive to D:drive. In this regard i have been searching and this site has been of great help. Here is a question asked over three years ago (Can I move my AppData folder in Windows 10?) which tells to move folder using location tab in the folder properties and then create a symlink. I did it for the roaming folder but when i create symlink it shows in cmd "cannot create a file when that file already exists". I am adding screenshot. here is the screenshot I am running cmd as administrator.Does it mean that this version of windows 10 automatically creates symlink?

Now regarding 'Local folder' location tab is not available in properties.You can look at my windows version in screenshot. it is [Version 10.0.18362.30]. Does this option is not available beacuse of my windows version, i mean that is this available in any updated one? If not what is the way around it.My C: drive is on low space. I am new so please forgive if i made some technical mistake or some else.

Ali
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  • %LocalAppData% should not be moved, as doing so will result in OS instability and user profile corruption since it contains hard links (such as %LocalAppData%\Application Data, .\History, etc.). If you're wanting to move it due to storage constraints, use a program to find large directories, such as %LocalAppData%\Temp, and symlink those to a different location. – JW0914 May 17 '21 at 12:45
  • @JW0914 ok but any folder in the Local does not give you the Location tab in properties(option to move location), so how to go around it, is it an option to manually cut and paste files from a folder such as you mentioned 'Temp' into a folder in other drive and then symlink – Ali May 17 '21 at 14:03
  • The Location tab is only shown on user profile folders that are 100% safe to move without OS/app stability or user profile corruption issues, whereas any other individual folders would need to be moved then symlinked via mklink /J. There's only a handful of folders within %LocalAppData% that would be in excess of 500MB, such as Temp, browser folders for any web browsers used, and a handful of other programs. If you use VS Code, it will auto-download files back into %LocalAppData%\Temp for any extensions used, which can be in excess of 7GB (location can likely be changed in VS Code) – JW0914 May 17 '21 at 14:09
  • @JW0914 Thank you this junction process worked for me,i moved some big folders from local to D and created junction and its ok, one thing left is about Roaming folder which i moved from the location Tab in the properties, does i need to create a symlink for that as well or that is good as it is? – Ali May 17 '21 at 15:13

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