Firefox Tip: Move Disk Cache To Another Location Or Second Hard Drive

With all the great features and ease of use, one item that Firefox does not include in the Options configuration menu is the capability to move the disk cache to another location or to a second hard drive.

Instead, all you can do is clear or change the allocated space that is reserve for the cache along with modifying some offline settings.. To see these settings, click on Tools \ Options from the menu, then click on the Advanced and Network tabs.

This is some what surprising since there are several benefits with moving the cache location, such as better browsing performance, faster video loading, more disk space for the cache or just being able to get to the darn cache directory.

By default, Firefox cache directory is buried deep under your user profile folder. You can easily view the location by typing about:cache in the address bar (for more information, see - How To View Contents Of Firefox Cache Location).

So, how can you move the disk cache to another hard drive location?

It's actually simple.

• Just type about:config in the address bar (location bar) and click on the "I'll be careful, I promise!" button (to acknowledge the warning message).

• On the config page, right click anywhere on a blank space and select New \ String.

• In the New string value box, enter browser.cache.disk.parent_directory for the preference name and click OK.

• Then for the string value, type the new location for the cache directory and click OK. For example: C:\ffcache or D:\Firefox\diskcache to move it to another hard drive.

NOTE: Firefox will create the folder for you along with the sub-folder called cache.

Now close Firefox and re-open it.

You should see the new folder on your hard drive and verify the location by typing about:cache on the address bar (location bar). If everything looks good, you can delete the old cache directory (if you want to).

One thing you should be aware of with creating new strings and values in about:config. You cannot delete them.

Instead, you just need to modify the value. So if you want to move the cache directory to another folder or to it's original location, just modify the value of the browser.cache.disk.parent_directory by re-editing using about:config.