How to use Symbolic Link to move Google Chrome AppData folder to other location

Few months back I bought a new high end laptop with i7 processor and 16GB of RAM. Decided to give a shot to “SSD hard disc” over conventional hard disc. Performance of my system is incredibly fast, I have SQL Server, Jenkins, Command line Dataloader jobs, Apex static code analyzer all running almost at same time. Windows OS boots up in almost 2-3 seconds only, as compared to 15-25 sec previously. However because of decision of “SSD Drive” I had to compromise storage capacity. My “C” drive is only around 150 GB however D drive has lot of space. After analyzing many folders, I found that google chrome browser creates its temporary folder in “C” drive even though I have installed it explicitly in “D” drive. I wanted to move “Appdata” folder of google chrome to “D” drive to make sure I have enough space in “c” drive.

I came across “Symbolic link” concept in operating System. In “Symbolic link” folder points to other location and its very useful technique to solve problem of storage. We can create symbolic link of many folder from “c” drive to any other location where we have good enough space. 

So, I wanted to point Chrome folder of “C” drive to “D” folder. For chrome it would be still in “C” drive but physically all files will be stored somewhere else. Let’s see how I did it.

Open Command prompt, you may need to open it as administrator if you will face any error in next steps.

Run Comman prompt as Admin
Run Command prompt as Admin

Make sure before running below command, “C:\Users\<Your_user_name>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome” should not exist and destination folder in my case “D:\G2\ChromeAppData” should exist. You would like to take backup of existing folder, delete it and paste it to new location.

Below command is used to create symbolic link

mklink /d “C:\Users\Jitendra\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome” “D:\G2\ChromeAppData”

Using mklink command of Windows
Using mklink command of Windows

After running above command, your folders will look like :

Reloacating Google AppData folder to other location after mklink command
Reloacating Google AppData folder to other location after mklink command

This technique can be used at many places, I did same for Outlook folder as well.

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3 responses to “How to use Symbolic Link to move Google Chrome AppData folder to other location”

  1. stevland Avatar

    Brilliant! Thanks.

  2. Anthony Carter Avatar
    Anthony Carter

    I just used this to move my Spotify cache (the built-in option doesn’t work; it creates a folder in the desired location but doesn’t actually use it). This forces it to work. Thanks!

  3. StoneyCreeker Avatar
    StoneyCreeker

    Yes this is a great tool.
    Thank you for explaining it so well.
    Worked for me to move my cache file to a RAM disk to help reduce I/O on my HD.
    AMD has a great Ram drive tool, Radeon Ramdisk. It runs at the speed of your RAM and never wears out.

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