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

Ok, that's work fine, the trouble is that YOU MUST MOVE your user folder "iCloud Drive" to the final destination you wish, if you don't move that de mklink don't work properly and all files appear in both destinations.

Of course all iCloud processes must be closed before.

The mklink function does not work guys. It might look like it does but it doesn't. Well it certainly didn't for me

Using either the /j (junction) or /d (symbolic link) functions just ends up duplicating the data. Try it you will see during syncing that data in both the default location c:\users\(username)\iclouddrive and d:\iclouddrive will duplicate. You can see it filling both drives.

It is hardcoded into the icloud app to sync all data to c:\ all the mklink function does is copy it again

Apple come on with all your dollars you thought you could have written into the UI a change in drive location ike you do for photos. defo not a flexible product. I am moving to OneDrive where you do have this option.

Thanks, that explains why I saw the same thing on my Windows 7 machine. Now I have a new box with Windows 10 to share with my Macs, and there's no fix there either. However, OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Box all relocate to the storage drive without a hitch.

For what it's worth, I just got off the phone with Apple phone support about this very issue. The guy I spoke with looked hard to find a fix (iCloud is choking my SSD), but all he could find was a link to this discussion. I would hold out hope for Apple to make this possible, but this is Apple we're talking about. Users needs are never as important to Apple as deciding for us what we need.

Sigh.

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.