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"
Top comments (17)
life saver
thank you!!
Thanks very much for sharing. This is super helpful!
Kinda useful! 🔥 Thanks for sharing!!!
Thank you for sharing
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
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/...
Thank you very much.
Can I set path on initial install?
That worked, mostly. The WSL2 distro that I imported can't run GUI application anymore for some reason.
Great Post!!!
Thanks my friend!!
Can wsl_export be deleted after running the last command?
No!! Don't do that!
THANK YOU!!!!
Super solution! Thank you @mefaba
