How to Customize Windows 10 Update Download Path?

No doubt that Windows 10 is one of the best-operating systems around the world. Even though some users are having a hard time with Windows 10 Update feature as it regularly downloads and installs the Windows 10 Updates, patches, and drivers. The Windows 10 Updates download all content into the system drive, and after some updates, it can occupy dozens of GBs. This can lead to insufficient storage space in the C system parturition, especially if your PC has a small size system drive. A fully occupied system partition can cause a plethora of issues such as slow performance, unable to install new software, and can’t save files on the system drive.

Thus it is indeed important to keep your system drive in healthy shape, and this means you should never use more than 70% of your C drive. You might try to move some files and programs to other partitions, but in many cases, that doesn’t help you in the long run.

Windows 10 automatic updates will no doubt fill up that freed up space soon again in the near future. That’s why many of you are eager to learn whether they can change Windows 10 update download location.

You can change the download file path of Windows 10 Update service, but there is no official way to make this happen. Microsoft has designed Windows 10 in such a way that users can’t turn off the automatic updates, or neither can they change its download location.

So How Exactly Can You Change The Update Location On Windows 10 PC?

We are going to find the current Windows Update download folder, and then we will rename it as old. Then we will create a new folder in another drive, and we will make this folder your new download path for Windows 10 Update service. We will use the symlinking technique in order to make the new folder the default download location for the automated updates.  

The biggest concern is for those who are using the emmc storage laptops. Most Emmc laptops come with 32GB storage and Windows 10. For those users, it is very important to choose a different Windows 10 Update download path to save the disk space since their system partition has hardly 28 GBs.

Let’s learn how to do this!

Change Download Path for Windows 10 Updates

First of all, you have to grant administrator privileges to make this happen.

Your current location of the Windows 10 Update Download folder is C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution. So that means SoftwareDistribution is the folder where your all files downloaded by Windows 10 Updates. Let’s make a new downloading path for it.

Step 1: Creating a new path for downloading Windows 10 Updates

Now we will make a new downloading path for the Windows 10 Update in another drive such as D or E drive.You can name it as WindowsUpdateDownload for easy recognition.

1. Go to the drive-in which you want to Windows 10 Update to download its content.  
2. We have created a folder in the D drive and named it as WindowsUpdateDownload.
3. So the path of this folder is D:\WindowsUpdateDownload.
4. Now press the Windows Logo + D keys at the same time on your keyboard to get to the desktop.
5. Then hit Ctrl + Alt + Del on your keyboard to trigger the Windows Task Manager.
6. After that, head to the Services tab from the top menu.
7. Find the wuauserv service and then perform a right-click on it.
8. Choose the Stop option to turn it off temporarily.
9. Go to C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution. 
10. Then rename the default Windows Update Download folder by adding .old at the end of the name.  
11. Now it should appear as SoftwareDistribution.old.

Step 2: Setting UpSymlink for Windows 10 Update Download Folder

1. Press the Start button on your keyboard.
2. Then put in CMD.  
3. Right-click on the best matching result.
4. Choose the run as administrator.  
5. After that, put in “mklink /j c:\windows\softwaredistribution d:\WindowsUpdateDownload” and then press Enter.
6. Once that command succeeds, your system will consider the new location as the default downloading location for the Windows Update service.
7. Now make sure to start the windows update service once more.
8. To do this, use the same way that you used to stop it temporarily in Task Manager.

From now on, your Windows 10 Update download folder will be the new one you created in the D drive, and all files will be stored there. Now your C drive will not be occupied by the Windows Update download files. When you realize that everything is working fine with the new settings, you can delete the old folder to create free space in your C drive.

Lucia Mandela is a Microsoft Office expert and has been working in the technical industry since 2002. As a technical expert, Lucia has written technical blogs, manuals, white papers, and reviews for many websites such as office.com/setup.

source : Customize Windows 10 Update