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Installing WSL on another drive in Windows

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)

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luizvnasc profile image
Guto

life saver

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diwakardayal profile image
Diwakar dayal

thank you!!

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kauefraga profile image
Kauê Fraga Rodrigues

Kinda useful! 🔥 Thanks for sharing!!!

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duonghb53 profile image
Maintain

Thank you for sharing

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iretex profile image
Iretioluwa Olawuyi

Thanks very much for sharing. This is super helpful!

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alexisnorthcoders profile image
Alexis Creoulo

2 years later still useful. Legend.

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legion2004 profile image
Milinda Barua

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

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ahmed2m profile image
Ahmed Mohamadeen

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/...

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funny2code profile image
Dejan

That works fine for me. Thank you a lot.

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cristianorc profile image
Cristiano Raffi Cunha

Thank You! <3

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marvinxu profile image
Marvin

Can I set path on initial install?

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kogordev profile image
kogordev

Thank you very much.

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zenitk profile image
Zenit Kovačević

That worked, mostly. The WSL2 distro that I imported can't run GUI application anymore for some reason.

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loribas profile image
Luis Otavio Ribas

Thank you !

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Sokhib Tukhtaev

If I want to move my ubuntu distro on wsl from C drive to say, F, does the F drive have to be empty? I have nearly half of it used on my native Windows OS.