How to move the "C:\users\username\AppData" folder to another drive from C:\ drive?

Question

I have installed the windows 11 OS to a SSD drive having 100GB capacity. Its 70GB already filled up and the maximum space is taken by the Program Files, Program Files (x86) and the Users folder.
I already moved the C:\users\username(Downloads, Documents, Pictures, Music, 3D Objects, Videos) folders to a HDD of 1TB capacity, the E:\ drive. But I could not move the AppData folder there.
I want to migrate them to the E:\ drive from the source C:\ drive, so that in future whatever app I will install, every AppData will be stored by them to the E drive.

How can I do this? Please suggest me some ways.

Answer 1

I did this for the Local appdata, but when I rebooted the system after copying the contents in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local to the desired D:\ folder, bt after rebooting, every keyboard shortcuts with windows key became disappeared, like as I pressed WinKey+I to open settings, WinKey+E to open explores, but they just fetched nothing but an error sound. Also, the taskbar icons didn't appear and remained blank for the whole time. Pressing winkey didn't open the start menu, but responded with an error sound. Then I again went to the Regedit opening from file manager backup copy and there imported the untouched backup which I did at first, and reverted the all changes and restarted. Then everything became normal after rebooting. Afterwards I changed the Roaming appdata Regedit key as you mentioned above, that is OK. Changing the Roaming AppData folder location completed smoothly and produced no problem.

What should I do?
Again try on changing the folder location of Local AppData?

Hi

Thanks for your reply.

Normally the copying process is not a problem, you restart the computer after the taskbar and icon failure, it may just be that the registry directory location has changed, resulting in the icon and taskbar path changed, so you can not click to open them. Here we suggest you copy the local AppData folder to the d drive and then change the path of local AppData in the registry back to the c drive.

However, this method only temporarily shifts your AppData directory, and subsequently windows may regenerate the directory when it detects that your original c drive location no longer has the AppData part of the path. So this is not a permanent solution.

It is recommended that you install new programs in the future and install them directly in other drives so that their application data and cache will be in other drives. This way it will not take up space on your c drive.

Feel free to post back if you need more assistance. ^.^

Best regards

Derrick Qian | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

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Answer 2

If one specific directory is huge can it be moved using a symbolic link?

for example

C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Official

moves to d:\MSFS_Official

and is linked back as:

mklink /D "C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Official" "d:\MSFS_Official"