Move Programs or Apps to a Different Hard Drive Without Reinstalling


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Even though hard drives are getting larger while getting cheaper at the same time, many people still find themselves running out of room as they save more files and install more software on their computer. And if your computer gets too low on space, you will not be able to install any additional apps and even risk having performance issues and crashes.

If you happen to have a secondary hard drive in your computer, you would think you could simply move your programs over to the other drive but most of the time this will not work since Windows has a record of where your applications are installed and if you move them, they will most likely stop functioning properly and give you error messages. In this article, we will be showing you how to move programs or apps to a different hard drive without reinstalling. You can even move them to a different folder on the same hard drive if necessary.

Moving programs or apps to a different hard drive without reinstalling can be done using symbolic links. A symbolic link in Windows is a file system shortcut that acts as a pointer to a file or folder. It allows users and applications to access the linked item as if it were in the symbolic link’s location, without duplicating the data.

This can be done manually if you know how to do so, or it can be done using a free app called FolderMove which can be downloaded here. For our example, we will be moving a program called Notepad++ from its original location at C:\Program Files\Notepad++ to a different hard drive under E:\Programs.

Windows Program File directory

To move this program to a different hard drive, we will simply open the FolderMove app and browse to the location of the Notepad++ program folder in the Move From section. For the Move To section, we will type in or browse to the new location which will be E:\Programs. We do not need to make a folder for the program because it will be moved there with its original folder structure.

Once we have everything set, we can just click on the Move and set Symbolic link button to have the app moved to its new destination.

Move Programs or Apps to a Different Hard Drive Without Reinstalling

Once the program is moved to the other hard drive, you can go back to the original location and still see the Notepad++ folder there, but it will have a shortcut icon telling you that the files are not actually located there but rather just a shortcut or link to the files in the new destination.

Move Programs or Apps to a Different Hard Drive Without Reinstalling

If you right click the folder in the original location and choose Properties, you can see that the location is still on the C drive in the original folder.

Move Programs or Apps to a Different Hard Drive Without Reinstalling

But if you go to the Shortcut tab, you will see that it’s pointing to the new location where the files were moved to.

Move Programs or Apps to a Different Hard Drive Without Reinstalling

For our next example, we will move the Adobe Reader app to the same Programs folder on the E drive but this time we will check the box that says Set original folder to hidden so we will not see it in the original location.

Move Programs or Apps to a Different Hard Drive Without Reinstalling

After the move is complete, you can go to the original location and the program folder should not be there any longer. But if it does show the original folder but faded out as seen in the image below, that is most likely because you have the show hidden files, folders and drives setting enabled in the File Explorer options.

File Explorer Folder Options

Now that we have moved two programs to the other hard drive, we can go to that drive and see them listed there.

Move Programs or Apps to a Different Hard Drive Without Reinstalling

This method to move programs and apps to a different hard drive without reinstalling may not work smoothly for all software. For example, once you move Adobe Reader and try to open it, you may get a message as shown below. In this case, using the open with protected mode disabled might work or you can try to do a repair of the program from the Apps setting or Programs and Features settings in Windows to get things working again.

Adobe Acrobat Protected Mode error

If you want to reverse the process and move the programs back to their original location on the original hard drive, you can simply delete the symbolic link shortcut folders in the original location and then move the folders for the program from the new destination back to the original source location.

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