Move applications from one drive to another in Windows 8

It generally happens with all of us that we use a solid state drive as our main drive but in Windows 8 I have noticed that with the installation of so many applications, programs etc. it is getting filled quickly. I wonder if I would have used a drive with much space, I would not have to face this problem.

The most important thing that I miss in Windows OS is the flexibility of moving installed programs/apps from one drive to another. With lots of efforts I have got the solution for this problem and today I am going to discuss that solution with all the readers of this blog.

Though the windows 8 apps are small in size but the users like me do have many applications and programs installed on their system. I have more than 100 apps installed on my system. If you don’t have much app installed on your system then also you may want to shift Windows App folder.

The folder where all the apps are installed can be located under c:\program files\windowsapps\. However this folder is hidden by default so you need to make some configurations in the folder options. Moreover in case you are not the administrator of the system, you won’t be able to access this folder.

“Move Windows App”

To move folders from one drive to another, you need to run the following commands. However I would recommend you to only move single apps at a time.

1.      Tap on the windows key, enter cmd, right-click the command prompt search result and select run as administrator from the options displayed at the bottom.

2.      First thing you need to do is take ownership of the folder so that you can access it and work with it. Run the command takeown /F “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps” /A /R exactly as displayed. You will take ownership of those files which can take a while as the command is run for each file and folder in the directory.

3.      Now you need to make an exact copy of the folder on the new drive or partition that you want to move it to. Run the command robocopy “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps” “D:\WindowsApps” /E /COPYALL /DCOPY:DAT andchange d:\windowsapps to the drive and folder you want to copy the files and folders to. Make sure that the summary states that there have been no skipped or failed files. Do not proceed if there have been. Delete the destination folder instead and return to 2.

4.      Now that all files and folders have been copied, it is necessary to delete the original folder and all of its data on the c: drive. Run the command rmdir /S “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps”

5.      We are now creating a symbolic link that points from the original folder to the new folder. You do that with the following command: mklink /D “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps” “D:\WindowsApps” Change the destination folder again to match the new folder on your system.

It won’t make any difference to windows if you make any these changes. The only difference is that all new apps that you install and data that apps generate are now saved on the new partition or drive and not the old. (via)

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