Tip: How to get free space for your Windows Tablet SSD / Moving Windows Applications to a SD-Card

Hello Folks,

maybe you sometimes need some space for your Windows Tablet SSD to install new Apps or whatever but without loosing any other Application. One way is to move an Application to the SD-Card but how?

First of all this will not work for Application installed thru the Windows App Store! So don’t touch the “WindowsApps” folder in the C:\Program Files directory, do also not touch C:\Windows folder or the folder where your Windows OS files are located. Second: I will not take any warranty if you damage you system, you do this modification on your own risk!

Steps (Administrator rights are required!):

1) Create a folder on the SD-Card where you want to move the applications, i’ve used “d:\Program Files (x86)” to identify the location in a simple way.
2) Move the application folder from the “Program Files” directory located on drive C: to the new created folder on D:, in advance make sure that no component from this folder is already running! I recommend to do this directly after a reboot.
3) After you have done this start a Windows command line with Administrator permissions (Important!).
4) Now create a Link with the commandline tool “mklink”, don’t use the “normal” way thru Windows Explorer to create the Link: This way fails during all my tests!. The mklink commandline should look like this “mklink /J “c:\Program Files (x86)\*foldername here* “d:\Program Files (x86)\*foldername here*”, replace *foldername here* with the Program folder name you have moved.
5) Verify that a link for the folder is created in c:\Program Files (x86) and start the Application thru the Start Menu do verify it’s working as it should be.

That’s it, repeat this for Applications you want to move too. If you want to move an application back to c: delete the “linked” folder in c:\program files and move the folder back from the SD-Card to the SSD/HDD drive.

I’ve tested this with VLC Media Player, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Office 2013, Microsoft MapPoint Europe 2013 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2013, in all cases i did not discover any issues incl. the deployment of updates. Moving Apps installed thru the Windows App Store is not possible, once the folder is moved and the link is created the Apps will not start anymore, i’ve tested this a few times and always with the same negative result; no need to waste your time with this.

Cheers

Michael

P.S.: As said… Anything you’re doing in this way is without any warranty!

P.S.: It would be great if Microsoft could add a feature in the Windows App Store to move applications quite simple and without any issues like now.