moving iTunes Mobile Applications folder to an alternate drive

I found out how to move the iTunes Mobile Applications folder to either an external drive or as in my case, from my 256GB SSD systems/application drive to a non-SSD drive on my desktop (3.0 TB in size). This is important for any iTunes users with their systems/applications on a SSD drive (i.e. on the C: drive but with constrained SSD drive space). In my case, my Mobile Apps folder is 40+ GB in size.

iTunes allows you to easily move your iTunes music folder to an alternate drive but it does not provide a means to move the Mobile Apps folder. I have confirmed this. However, in Windows Vista, 7 and 8, using the “mklink” command, you can set up a symbolic link from the iTunes Mobile Apps folder on the C: drive to the relocated Mobile Apps folder on another drive. iTunes thinks it is adding new Mobile Apps to the C: drive Mobile Applications folder, but it is actually updating the real Mobile Apps folder on the alternate drive. I’ve tried this approach and it works like a charm. The steps required are as follows:

1. Copy the existing Mobile Apps folder and its content on the C: drive to its new location on an alternate drive on your desktop or to an external drive.

2. Note and record the exact detailed path to the existing Mobile Applications folder as well as the exact detailed path for the new Mobile Applications folder

3. Delete the existing Mobile Applications folder (You cannot create a symbolic link to a directory that already exists on that same drive)

4. Open a Command Prompt (admin) window on your desktop. On Windows 8, this is easily done by right clicking the start icon on the bottom left of the desktop screen and selecting the Command Prompt (admin) option.

5. change directory to C:\ (i.e., enter cd c:\)

6. enter the mklink command and press enter (format mklink /d link_address target_address) for my Windows system this looked like the following:

mklink /d "C:\Users\Marv\Music\iTunes\Mobile Applications" "D:\Music\iTunes\Mobile Applications"

This command recreates the Mobile Applications folder on the C: drive in the exact place it was before, but only as a pointer to the real folder on the alternate or external drive. The link is transparent to iTunes and my 40+ GB Mobile Applications folder can be on a large drive rather than on my 256GB SSD systems/applications drive.