Login at Kodi Home

PantsOnFire · 2011-10-02, 01:06

Hi there,

My C: drive is getting low on space. Checked my xbmc userdate folder (under users\username\appdata\xbmc) and its at about 10GB !

I don't want to lose all that, and I'd rather not have to re-generate thumbs all again (yes, my xbmc install is old in the tooth (since march this year)), but it's solid.

My system needs more freespace on C: Is it possible to re-locate the userdata folder to another drive?

cheers.

**Martijn** · (This post was last modified: 2011-10-02, 01:12 by Martijn.)

Yes. The easiest way is to install xbmc on the other drive and run it in portable mode. This way the userdata will be kept on that drive to. After install don't.start xbmc. First edit the shortcut and put ' -p ' in the command line and run it one time. Close it and.now copy all userdata inside the portable-data folder that is located in the install folder.

PantsOnFire · 2011-10-21, 01:33

thanks for the reply.

So just to clarify, Im basically installing a new copy of xbmc, to a different drive (not my space-precious C: !) and then copying over to that installation, all of my userdata which I had in my old installation.

Also, I will obviously do the parts about running in portable mode, etc. that you mention as well.

My setup has been strong since March this year, I have a feeling that something catastrophic will go wrong.. I have done quite a lot of tweaking! It's just hard to remember exactly everything I have done, and so to migrate it all! (scared!)

jhsrennie · 2011-10-21, 10:57

If you install XBMC to e.g. D:\XBMC then when you run it normally it will just be using the same data as the installation on C: - so far so good.

Now modify the XBMC shortcut(s) to add -p to the command line. Start XBMC from the shortcut and it will start up with a new default setup. Close XBMC then copy everything in %appdata%\xbmc to D:\XBMC\portable_data. Now when you open XBMC from the "portable mode" shortcut it should look just like the old version. Note that any changes you make will now only be saved in D:\XBMC\portable_data and won't apply to your original installation.

This should be a pretty safe process. At the worst you might accidentally start the new XBMC without the -p and it will simply use your old profile data.

JR

tungmeister · 2011-10-21, 11:05

Or you could just move the XBMC folder from you're appdata folder to another drive then replace it with a symbolic link which is a kind of shortcut, this would mean that as far as xbmc was concerned the userdata folder would still be in the same location but in actual fact it would be on another drive e.g.

move c:\users\%USERNAME%\appdata\Roaming\XBMC to say d:\XBMC

then create a symbolic link:
mklink /d c:\users\%USERNAME%\appdata\roaming\xbmc d:\xbmc

and your C Drive space issues will be solved without any alterations to xbmc.

PantsOnFire · 2011-11-17, 01:41

tungmeister Wrote:Or you could just move the XBMC folder from you're appdata folder to another drive then replace it with a symbolic link which is a kind of shortcut, this would mean that as far as xbmc was concerned the userdata folder would still be in the same location but in actual fact it would be on another drive e.g.

move c:\users\%USERNAME%\appdata\Roaming\XBMC to say d:\XBMC

then create a symbolic link:
mklink /d c:\users\%USERNAME%\appdata\roaming\xbmc d:\xbmc

and your C Drive space issues will be solved without any alterations to xbmc.

This seems to have worked nicely! Back up to 15gb free on C:
Thanks for the tip, I never knew it before, learn something new every day. I think it will come in handy in the future also.

~~Ned Scott~~ · 2011-11-17, 07:12

You can also use pathsubstitution on the pre-Eden nightlies for things like the Thumbnails folder, which is probably the biggest offender in taking up space. You can even do this to a network share (or just do it to another local drive). For example: http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=837103&postcount=2

Arcko · 2011-11-17, 08:45

Good instruction, thanks everyone for sharing this.