Open your %appdata% folder, and then right-click and go to Properties of each of the subfolders (local, roaming) and you can change the location just like you do with your Documents. Hope this helps.
User AppData folder taking up too much space
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Anonymous
Hello!
My laptop, running Windows 8.1, is set up with a 128GB SSD (for OS installation, C:) and a 750GB HDD (for data, D:). When I first got my computer I knew immediately that I would need to redirect my User data folders: "My Documents", "My Music", "My Pictures", etc. to my HDD for storage purposes and the majority of my programs would be downloaded to my C: drive for speed. Everything was working beautifully for a while until recently when I realized my C: drive was 3GB away from being full. I found the culprit to be the "C:\Users" folder. However, when I opened up the folder and its subfolders they were all empty (remember, the usual folders have been redirected) until I realized the true storage hog was "C:\Users\user\AppData".
I have used Disk Cleanup among other things to try to free space but have only gotten away with about 2GB, AppData is still consuming about 50-60GB. I have read nothing that solves this issue. I have also read that it is hard (maybe impossible, or at least not recommended) to redirect or entirely move the "C:\Users" to my D: drive.
Thank you in advance,
Derek
Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage
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7 answers
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Anonymous
2014-12-12T19:40:28+00:00 Thank you! I pinpointed the culprit to be Apple's iTunes backups and performed a Directory Junction on that folder to my D: drive which freed up about 40GB! Instead of entirely redirecting the AppData folder, I think this work just fine.
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Anonymous
2014-12-12T18:35:11+00:00 Hi Derek,
The AppData folder contains the roaming folder and a local folder which contains information, settings and app related data about your Microsoft roaming account as well as local information.
If the AppData folder is consuming too much space on the hard drive, it could be due to some of the files related to certain application installed on the computer which you may not know about. You might browse around a bit and find out which one it is in the folder. If any of the file name that looks or related to any application which you do not use or require on the computer, you may go ahead and uninstall the application from Control Panel.
Go to the AppData location and check which folder is consuming more space.
Hope the information helps. Please let us know if you have more queries on Windows.
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Anonymous
2017-11-02T20:35:39+00:00 Hi , and you know how this will affect the performance of programs?? Because I think AppData as a buffer. not shure
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Anonymous
2014-12-12T19:41:32+00:00 Hi, thank you! Instead of redirecting the entire AppData folder I went ahead and performed a Directory Junction of the problem folders within AppData to my D: drive which has freed up about 40GB!