Windows 10-Where else is Firefox accessing on my boot drive when it's installed to a secondary drive?
Took me a while to figure out how to get the full installer to install to my faster and larger D drive, but I finally did.
Then I discovered it was still accessing C: under: D:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Local D:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Roaming
So I now have my Mozilla folders in both locations pointed to D: with a symbolic link or whatever.
But it STILL seems to be accessing C: to do SOMETHING, and I'm not sure what or where, as searching C: for Firefox or Mozilla turns up nothing.
It still thrashes my C: drive though, especially noticeable if I'm using it for something else at close to 100% and Firefox for example loads a Youtube page that was unused/not in focus for a while.
Somehow it's STILL causing as much activity on C as D and I'm not sure why...if I was maybe I could point more directories to D with more Symbolic links (or whatever they're called...I may be misremembering since I set this up a few weeks ago, but they seem to work fine).
(I gave up on Chrome...I can point a bunch of stuff at D, but sooner or later it breaks its ability to do updates until I move stuff to C...I'm guessing maybe the updater "fixes" something in the background that breaks it. Thankfully Firefox seems to update just fine (I do NOT use the background process, I just check every day), and I got 122 today seemingly fine. No idea why browsers are so weird about getting installed on an alternative drive compared to other programs...it's a pretty common thing to want!)
All Replies (6)
Firefox normally use a relative path to the profile folder in AppData and in that case there are two locations used, one for the main profile and another location for temporary files. This profile data is stored in profiles.ini and installs.ini. You can simply use the Profile Manager to locate the profile on the D drive, you merely need to create a dedicated folder on that drive to be used uniquely only by Firefox and use "Choose Folder" to select this folder. In this case only one folder is used, both for the main files and the temporary files, and Firefox only accesses the C drive for profiles.ini.
cor-el said
Firefox normally use a relative path to the profile folder in AppData and in that case there are two locations used, one for the main profile and another location for temporary files. This profile data is stored in profiles.ini and installs.ini. You can simply use the Profile Manager to locate the profile on the D drive, you merely need to create a dedicated folder on that drive to be used uniquely only by Firefox and use "Choose Folder" to select this folder. In this case only one folder is used, both for the main files and the temporary files, and Firefox only accesses the C drive for profiles.ini.
Thank you! That profile manager is handy.
I double checked and everything there is redirected to my D: drive, so I don't know what the deal is.
Maybe it's not even Firefox directly but accessing some Windows resource stuck on my main drive, I don't know.
But anyway, thanks, I'm sure I'll have use for that profile manager at so6me point!
The media disk cache uses the system temp folder. You can modify it with the TMP and TEMP environment variables in a .bat file:
SET "TEMP=D:\temp" SET "TMP=D:\temp" "D:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"
zeroknight said
The media disk cache uses the system temp folder. You can modify it with the TMP and TEMP environment variables in a .bat file: SET "TEMP=D:\temp" SET "TMP=D:\temp" "D:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"
Ooooooh, thanks! I bet that might solve it, so I've just moved those temp locations. There really wasn't much stored there, so you'd not think this would matter, but yet it makes sense that that's letting it still thrash the hard drive-mostly I've noticed it when switching to long unused youtube tabs.
I'll see how it goes!
Good grief, I set the temp folders to the other drive using environment variables, and Firefox STILL thrashes my boot drive, at least when playing from a long dormant Youtube tab
It must be cashing or something in yet another location, but I have no idea what
Does it still happen if you change browser.privatebrowsing.forceMediaMemoryCache to true in about:config then restart the browser and watch videos exclusively in private windows?
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