Here is a short article for those looking to change the location of the downloads folder in Google Chrome. You might want to do this for a variety of reasons, but for most people it is probably due to a lack of local hard drive space. I have moved my downloads folder to my NAS (network attached storage) device. Since it is online and always connected, I don’t need to worry about it being disconnected suddenly.
I’ll cover what happens if you change the location to an external hard drive that can sometimes turn off. First, let me show you how to actually change the download location in Chrome.
Change Downloads folder in Google Chrome
First, click the three dots icon in the upper right corner and select Settings.
Then scroll down and tap Advanced.
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Now scroll down until you reach the Downloads section.
Go ahead, click the “Change” button and select a new location. As I mentioned earlier, you can select external drive, shared folder, network drive, etc. to save your downloads. There are really no restrictions. Now if the download target suddenly disappears, i.e. E. You unplug your external hard drive, etc., what happens then?
In my first test, I selected a different folder on my C drive and then deleted it. Well, I was hoping that when I first installed Chrome, it would return to its default location (Downloads folder), but that didn’t happen. Instead, it does something I never expected! In my case, it created a folder at the path I specified and then saved it there. However, this was most likely because I selected a different folder in the system partition.
When I tried to change my downloads folder to an external drive, and then disconnected the drive and booted, I got a Save As dialog box.
So, basically, if it’s a path that it can recreate, it will create a path and store the download there. If not, then a dialog box will just open where you can choose a location to download. The Save As dialog box will appear until the destination drive is available again. That’s all! If you have other questions about Chrome, feel free to leave comments. Enjoy!
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