Move WSL to another location

Running low on C drive space? Follow this step-by-step guide to safely move your WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) distribution and Docker data to a new drive location using the wsl --export and wsl --import commands.

November 3, 2023 · 2 min read

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Christophe

Markdown, WSL and Docker lover ~ Insatiable curious.

Cet article existe aussi en français — lire la version française.

This article is over a year old but was reviewed on July 30, 2026 — the content is still accurate.

This article is part of the WSL2 - Install, move and use it series:

Move WSL to another location

https://dev.to/mefaba/installing-wsl-on-another-drive-in-windows-5c4a

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TL;DR

This article shows how to move a WSL2 distribution off the C: drive to free up space, using wsl --shutdown, wsl --export to a .tar file, wsl --unregister to remove the original, and wsl --import to recreate it on another drive — the same export/unregister/import pattern also works to relocate the Docker Desktop WSL partition.

By default, the Linux distribution is installed on your C: drive. If, like me, you have a D: drive with almost nothing on it, it can be really interesting to move Linux to that second drive.

Once moved, nothing else changes: your distribution keeps working exactly as before, including opening your Linux folders in Windows Explorer.

To do this:

Run wsl --list --verbose from a PowerShell console; you will get the name of your distribution (Ubuntu in my case),
From an administrator PowerShell console,
- Run wsl --shutdown to shutdown WSL,
- On your second drive, create a temporary folder like d:\wsl,
- Run wsl --export Ubuntu d:\wsl\ubuntu.tar,
- When finished, run wsl --unregister Ubuntu and then,
- Run wsl --import Ubuntu d:\wsl\ubuntu d:\wsl\ubuntu.tar --version 2
- Run del d:\wsl\ubuntu.tar

You will need to do this for every distribution you have installed that you want to move.

Information

If you have Docker, you can do the same and move the Docker partition to your second disk.

Powershell

$ wsl --export docker-desktop d:\wsl\docker-desktop.tar
...
$ wsl --export docker-desktop-data d:\wsl\docker-desktop-data.tar
...
$ wsl --unregister docker-desktop
...
$ wsl --unregister docker-desktop-data
...
$ wsl --import docker-desktop d:\wsl\docker-desktop d:\wsl\docker-desktop.tar --version 2
...
$ wsl --import docker-desktop-data d:\wsl\docker-desktop-data d:\wsl\docker-desktop-data.tar --version 2
...
$ del d:\wsl\docker-desktop.tar
...
$ del d:\wsl\docker-desktop-data.tar
...
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Once done, restart your computer to finalize the move.

This article is part of the WSL2 - Install, move and use it series: