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I'm in the same boat that it appears a lot of users are in. Precious little SSD space and an set of AppData folders in my profile that are constantly expanding in size. I would like to move this stuff off to a much larger non-SSD drive (E:).

I followed this piece of advice to move that bloat and, at first, it seemed to work. I was able to go to the properties of these three folders in AppData:

  • Local
  • LocalLow
  • Roaming

And each had a Location tab in properties, giving the option to relocate these folders. The relocate process appeared to work fine for LocalLow and Roaming, but the process sputtered and fizzled on Local with these files (they couldn't be moved because they were in use):

  • UsrClass.dat
  • UsrClass.dat.log1
  • UsrClass.dat.log2

Now, even though it appeared that the relocate process for LocalLow and Roaming worked, it actually didn't: when I navigate into those folders from my profile on my desktop, these folders are all still pointing to their original locations. All of these folders point to C:\Users[MyAccount]\AppData... instead of E:\Users... like I had wanted.

As well, the Location tab is now gone from the property dialog. I'm not crazy; I know it was there before.

So, two questions:

  • Why is the Location tab now missing from these folders' property pages?
  • Is there actually any way to relocate these files?
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  • 1
    Open the registry (regedit.exe) and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer, review the values under the keys 'Shell Folders' and 'User Shell Folders'. Do they show what you expect?
    – Peter Hahndorf
    Nov 2, 2013 at 18:56
  • @peter-hahndorf, good tip. I see these values correctly as "E:" instead of "C:" paths.
    – Chris Simmons
    Nov 4, 2013 at 5:45

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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You can not relocate some files while they are actively loaded in memory.

  • Boot from windows CD
  • Select repair
  • Select command prompt
  • You need to be inside the AppData folder.

  • Move the Local folder to E: drive

    mklink /j C:\Users[MyAccount]\AppData\Local  <Full path to target>
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  • 3
    No need to boot from a CD, just log out of the account you want to move files for and log into another account to change the locations.
    – Peter Hahndorf
    Nov 2, 2013 at 18:42

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