Change Download location

I want to change the Download folder to a different drive as there’s limited space on my SSD. I tried creating a symlink but that didn’t seem to work,

Any guidance would be appreciated.

That should work fine, what happened when you tried?

When you create symlink, the target can’t exist.

I can’t think of any reason a symlink wouldn’t work, but if it doesn’t you could always use a bind mount.

Create a directory (whatever name you like, even Downloads!) elsewhere. Copy all contents over. Delete the existing Downloads directory after erasing its contents (after checking!). Make sure the other location is mounted in fstab - perhaps under /mnt. THEN create your symlink. If any trouble with doing it then, ask for details… specific to your system.

you can use fstab to mount the drive and bind it to ~/Download folder: as example.

UUID=17771405-f675-4657-8379-5bc75461efe1  /mnt/Download  ext4    defaults,noatime 0 1
/mnt/Download    /home/username/Download/ none    defaults,bind   0 0

This will mount the drive with the uuid 17771405-f675-4657-8379-5bc75461efe1 under /mnt/Download
and bind it to user Download folder… so the Download folder acts like it is on the same drive but all is saved to the other drive.

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Welcome aboard! :smile:

Please show exactly what you did, like the full command(s) and possible error message(s).

Saying “something didn’t work” is not enough information letting us help you.

So something like this? Will this override anything in ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

UUID=7CA4FD93A4FD505E /mnt/Downloads ntfs defaults,noatime 0 1
/mnt/Downloads /home/username/Downloads/ none defaults,bind 0 0

Personally, I would just mount it under /home/(USERNAME)/Downloads, and I would skip /mnt altogether. Also, I would not use ntfs on it, but I would reformat it as ext4.

If you use ntfs for your downloads drive, every file you download will have its permissions messed up (set to 777), and if you decide to copy a file from your downloads directory to your Linux filesystem, you will have to set permissions for it. Rather annoying, in my opinion.

So, I would wipe the ntfs partition from that drive, make an ext4 partition, and then mount it like this in /etc/fstab:

UUID=(enter uuid here)    /home/(your username here)/Downloads     ext4     defaults,noatime   0 2

Before you do that, make sure the directory Downloads exists in your home directory and that it is empty.

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and the fstab thing will only work with internal drive… if it is USB drive you need some options in addition :wink:

Well the drive contains Windows Users folder, however I could re partition the drive and create an ex4 partition for the Downloads.

Once again, would this override default locations contained in ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs??

No, your default locations will still be the same.

Your /home/username/Downloads directory will be the partition on your new drive. But all locations will remain the same.

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Does an emtpy Download folder also need to exist on the destination Drive??