Change AppData\Local\rancher-desktop on Windows

[ymebrugts]

We cannot use the C disk for some of our clients so I'd like to change the locations Rancher Desktop is using to another disk. For instance "D:\rancher-desktop-vmdata"

The folder with the most impact is "AppData\Local\rancher-desktop".

How can I do this? Preferably without Symlinking.

I already looked at the issues below:
Ability to choose VMs location #3228
Selectable location for storage of VM #369
Where are images and vms stored? #1551

[jandubois]

I don't have access to my Windows machine right now, so this is untested, but I expect it to work.

Rancher Desktop is using 2 WSL distros, rancher-desktop and rancher-desktop-data. The first one includes the software and is basically fixed size. The second one includes all the container images you build or pull from repositories, and can grow quite significantly.

Make sure you quit Rancher Desktop before trying to move the data. Note that the rancher-desktop-data.tar file will be quite large too, so put it on a disk with sufficient free space:

wsl --shutdown

wsl --export rancher-desktop-data rancher-desktop-data.tar

wsl --unregister rancher-desktop-data

wsl --import rancher-desktop-data D:\rancher-desktop-vmdata rancher-desktop-data.tar --version 2

You can move the rancher-desktop volume the same way, if you need to.

Once you have verified that everything works, you can delete the rancher-desktop-data.tar file.

Note that doing a "factory reset" will delete both distros, so they will be recreated in their default locations, and you would have to move them again manually.

And please report back here if this actually worked! 😄

[razvan-pro]

I tried this just now and it worked for me - thanks @jandubois! 👍