Windows 7 Junction points – free up C: drive

So this is a well known procedure but if I repeat it here I’ll know where to go when I need it again.

As I’ve been using SSD’s for my C: drive for a while now space is limited. I can’t believe I was able to operate with a 40GB drive for Windows 7!

I’ve now got a 120GB SSD however a couple of  programmes still take up a huge amount of space and I like to try to keep my C: drive from filling up so I need to move the data out. The two programmes are

  • Apple iTunes (for my wife’s phone)
  • Armory (Bitcoin wallet)

The issue is they store their data in my user profile so it’s not a simple case of installing the programmes in my other drives. This is where Windows 7 junction points come in to play. Simply:

  • Close program down
  • move the data to it’s new location
  • Remove the empty source directory
  • open an administrative privileged Command Prompt
  • use the mklink /J command to create the junction point pointing new location directory to the old directory location

For example I moved the the iTunes backup directory’s contents from:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

To:

D:\phone\phone_<wife’s name>

I then removed the empty iTunes backup directory.

Then started an admin Command Prompt and ran the mklink /J command:

C:\>mklink /J “C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup”
D:\phone\phone_<wife’s name>
Junction created for C:\Users\zander\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\B
ackup <<===>> D:\phone\phone_<name>

C:\>

Open iTunes and make sure it still sees the backups!

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