Installing WSL on another drive in Windows

#wsl #docker

The only way to do that is to move the linux distrubition you installed on wsl. I installed Ubuntu on windows as wsl and I showed how to move it step by step.

1.Check WSL 2 installations that are already installed in your computer.

wsl --list -v

If the installation you want to move to another drive is still running we have to stop it with following command. In my case, I want to move Ubuntu, so I am terminating Ubuntu.

wsl -t Ubuntu

2.Export to a folder. (Here exporting Ubuntu as ubuntu-ex.tar to D:\wsl\wsl_export)

wsl --export Ubuntu "D:\wsl_export\ubuntu-ex.tar"

3.Unregister previous WSL installation. When you unregister it will remove Ubuntu from the wsl2 list that we saw earlier.

wsl --unregister Ubuntu

4.import your WSL installation to a folder. This step also re-registers the ubuntu.
wsl --import Ubuntu "D:\wsl_import\ubuntu" "D:\wsl_export\ubuntu-ex.tar"

Here’s a breakdown of the command:

wsl --import: The base command to import a new Linux distribution.
Ubuntu: The name you are giving to the new imported distribution.
D:\wsl_import\ubuntu: The directory where the new distribution will be stored.
D:\wsl_export\ubuntu-ex.tar: The tar file containing the exported distribution that you want to import.

Top comments (22)

Guto • Oct 1 '22

life saver

Diwakar dayal • Oct 29 '22

thank you!!

Kauê Fraga Rodrigues • Nov 17 '22

Kinda useful! 🔥 Thanks for sharing!!!

Maintain • Dec 10 '22

Thank you for sharing

Iretioluwa Olawuyi • Dec 4 '22

Thanks very much for sharing. This is super helpful!

Alexis Creoulo • Jun 20

2 years later still useful. Legend.

Milinda Barua • Feb 6 '23

if you get a root user after exporting and if you happen to make a user or had a user already before exporting then go to settings and at the profile of the exported linux distro in the command line tab add the line : wsl.exe -d -u . the part till distro name will be same but pass the -u flag with your username and you will get the previous user that was being used

Ahmed Mohamadeen • Feb 4 '23

Thanks!
I'd like to add a reference to some steps mentioned in the default documentation like setting up a default user, because by default --import always starts the image in the root user.
learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/...