How to change the home dir of iCloud Drive (Windows version)?

Warning, not good, when new location of drive is disconnected for any reason such as removal of USB drive or external drive from the PC all my data was assumed deleted by iCloud drive and it proceeded to synchronized delete all my data from the cloud, iPad and iPhone as well. Not good at all. Had to restore from the 30 day history and thank God it did not pass 30 days.

Any one know to to remove the mklink.

I've verified that this method works, and I've confirmed that it doesn't use up any extra space on my C: drive when I properly link it with my D: drive.

Make sure you're doing this right; Jaco.XiliX's instructions can be a little confusing. As mentioned (but not explicitly instructed) as part of step 1, make sure you *delete the iCloudDrive folder* in your c:\users\<username>\ directory before moving on to step 2. Our goal is to re-create *this* folder as a link/alias.

Once you follow the remaining steps to create the iCloudDrive folder on the larger drive and create the link, you'll see the iCloudDrive folder re-created in c:\users\<username>\, only this time, the folder's cloud icon will have a little arrow on it. This indicates that the folder is only a *link* to the real location. Now take note of the disk space remaining on your C: drive, and start copying files over to either your linked or real iCloudDrive folder (it doesn't matter which one). Once the copy is complete, check your disk space on C: again... it shouldn't have changed.

Good luck!

Based on this solution...

I want to store my iCloud docs on my D drive (data drive) instead of my C drive (SSD boot drive). By default, it installs on the C drive. By doing mklink /J "C:\Users\<username>\iCloudDrive" "D:\Users\<username>\iCloudDrive", will my files instead reside on the D drive and only have references from the iCloud folder on the C drive? The files won't reside on both drives. Is that correct?

Hi Spodeworld,

Yes, that's correct. As I mentioned in my previous post, you'll first need to *delete* your "C:\Users\<username>\iCloudDrive" folder (you'll have to disable the iCloud tasks / services that are running on your PC in order to do this). Then create the iCloudDrive folder on your D: drive and use the mklink command to set up the link. P.S., the folder on your D: drive can just be set up as D:\iCloudDrive; there is no need to include the \users\username subfolders unless you want them there.

Lastly, I just wanted to mention that I've cancelled my iCloudDrive account. Shortly after uploaded everything, it stopped uploading new or updated files. It just froze on "uploading 199 files" forever... Googling the issue didn't come back with anything useful so I went for a Google Drive account instead. It's soooo much better as you can easily move your GoogleDrive folder anywhere you want, and you can actually see which files are being uploaded at any moment. So far I haven't had any issues with it freezing up.

Cheers,

Visor

thanks for your post, it helped me on Win7 after Win10 crashed hilariously and refused to work even after fresh reinstallation.... Microsoft ist ridiculously bad when it comes to programming, still marvels me why they still exist....

thank you so much, I have 200GB iCloud space and having this all on my C drive was impossible. Thats kinda a life saver, still its almost 2018 and you cant change the path in the iCloud App for Windows. Great Job Apple.

Is this real? almost 2018 and there is no solution to this?

One of the basics in setting up a cloud app: the path of the folder.

and yes, apple! we are not assigning much space to c:, especially when we are talking about SSDs.

i wont use iCloud until this issue is solved.

Thanks.

It's entirely possible Microsoft, the developer of the host operating system, may have placed this limitation on Apple. I don't believe they would be given free reign to do as they wish.

Or an educated guess is that the C:/ drive, if the PC is running, is always present and available. Other drives? Not so much for various reasons.

use a symlink if you wanna move it, this should do the trick.

Great question! Same problems with system drive limited space.

Yep, I have a relatively small SSD as my boot drive and need to move the iCloud Drive folder to my Documents drive. Hope there's some way to do this.

Same here. I'm looking for the same answer as well. I would like to have an "option" on iCloud Drive to change directory just like you can with iCloud Photos. In the iCloud Photos option, you are able to change the directory. This would be a neat feature for Drive because I'm running out of space.

Hi Everyone looking for a solution to this.

I came across this thread looking for the same answer. Here is how I did it (on a Windows 7):

1. Very important: disable the iCloud Drive from the control panel. We will be delete this folder and as a result, the delete may remove everything from your iCloud Drive (it may also be necessary to quit all iCloud related processes from Task Manager).
2. The next important thing to keep in mind is the actual name of the iCloud Drive folder it is "iCloudDrive" and not "iCloud Drive" (notice the missing space; it is just set-up to appear like that).
3. Now create the destination folder on your other drive (or where you would like it to be). I suggest using a folder name like "iCloudDrive" or "iCloud Drive" (to easily know what is inside).
4. Now open Command Prompt (PowerShell should also work) in Administrator mode.
5. Type in the following command (the following variables are used: <username> - the Windows account's username; <destination> - the path to the destination folder, including it's drive letter):
   1. mklink /J "C:\Users\<username>\iCloudDrive" "<destination>"
   2. What this does is create a Directory Junction type symbolic link. In short it allows you to have more than 1 path to get to the same content (iCloud Drive will use the C-drive path, whereas to data will reside on your destination drive).
   3. When this command have been performed, Command Prompt will give a message that the link have been created (In your user folder, you will see a shortcut folder with the name "iCloudDrive").
6. If you had to quit all iCloud related processes, restart your computer for them to correctly startup.
7. Now go to iCloud Control Panel and re-enable iCloud Drive (it may take a while for all your data to download).
   1. If it worked, you will find all your data in the destination folder. When going to the original location, it should still be a shortcut folder, and when accessing it, you may notice that the path remains on your C-drive (this is what iCloud Drive will use to add the content).
   2. You may also notice the difference when checking the properties of original's and destination's properties.
   3. If it did not work, retry, this time quitting the iCloud related processes.

This is what worked for me, I posted this hoping it can help someone else. Use of this instructions at your own risk.

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of course it works. I wanted to post that yesterday and didn't, thinking that most people wouldn't bother trying. The crucial thing here is of course to deactivate iCloud photo first to unlock the original folder, then move it and once done go through CMD with the mklink line. Done this for tens of apps in the past, and it always perfectly worked.