Move your models off C: — Ollama and LM Studio on Windows

My C: drive is full of models

作者 Jakub Rusinowski

错误信息

Error: write /Users/you/.ollama/models/blobs/sha256-...: There is not enough space on the disk.

1. 1

   Find out what is actually using the space first

   Before moving anything, check the size of the store and what is in it. ollama list shows every model you have pulled with its size — most people find two or three they downloaded once and forgot. Removing those is faster than moving 200 GB to another drive, and it is free.

   PowerShell复制

   # PowerShell — how big is the store, and what is in it?
   "{0:N1} GB" -f ((Get-ChildItem "$env:USERPROFILE\.ollama\models" -Recurse -File |
     Measure-Object Length -Sum).Sum / 1GB)
   ollama list
   
   # Remove one you no longer use
   ollama rm llama3.1:70b

   生效了吗？Re-run the size command. It should drop by roughly the size ollama list reported for the model you removed.

   PowerShell复制

   ollama list

2. 2

   Move the existing store to another drive

   Move the directory first, then point Ollama at it — doing it the other way round leaves Ollama looking at an empty folder and re-downloading everything. Quit Ollama completely from the system tray before you start; a running process holds file handles inside the store and the move will fail or, worse, half-succeed.

   注意：Use Move-Item, not a copy-then-delete you finish by hand. If the move is interrupted, verify the destination has everything before deleting anything from the source — a half-moved content-addressed store looks fine and fails on the models whose blobs did not make it.

   PowerShell复制

   # PowerShell — quit Ollama from the system tray FIRST
   Move-Item "$env:USERPROFILE\.ollama\models" "D:\ollama-models"
   
   # Point Ollama at the new location (persists for your account)
   [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("OLLAMA_MODELS", "D:\ollama-models", "User")

   生效了吗？Start Ollama from the Start menu and list your models. Every model you had should still be registered — if the list is empty, Ollama is not reading the variable yet.

   PowerShell复制

   ollama list

3. 3

   Restart Ollama properly — quitting the window is not quitting

   This is where most attempts fail. Ollama reads OLLAMA_MODELS when the application starts, and closing its window leaves the tray process running with the old value. Right-click the tray icon and choose Quit, then start it again from the Start menu. Setting the variable through Settings → Edit environment variables for your account has the same requirement: existing processes never see it.

   PowerShell复制

   # PowerShell — confirm the value that will actually be read
   [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("OLLAMA_MODELS", "User")
   
   # Confirm nothing is still running before you relaunch
   Get-Process ollama*, "ollama app" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

   生效了吗？ollama list shows your models and a fresh ollama pull writes into the new drive rather than C:.

   PowerShell复制

   ollama pull gemma3:1b
   Get-ChildItem "D:\ollama-models\blobs" | Select-Object -Last 3

4. 4

   Decide what to do about LM Studio's separate copy

   LM Studio has its own models directory, configurable in the app under My Models, and the two applications do not share a store. If you have pulled llama3.1:8b in Ollama and downloaded the same weights in LM Studio, you are holding both. There is no supported way to point one at the other's store — the layouts are different, Ollama's being content-addressed by digest and LM Studio's a normal folder tree of .gguf files. The realistic options are to pick one tool for a given model, or to keep both knowingly.

   PowerShell复制

   # PowerShell — what each store costs you
   "{0:N1} GB Ollama"    -f ((Get-ChildItem "$env:USERPROFILE\.ollama\models" -Recurse -File -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Measure-Object Length -Sum).Sum/1GB)
   "{0:N1} GB LM Studio" -f ((Get-ChildItem "$env:USERPROFILE\.lmstudio\models" -Recurse -File -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Measure-Object Length -Sum).Sum/1GB)

5. 5

   Know that uninstalling does not reclaim a custom store

   Ollama's own documentation is explicit: if you have changed OLLAMA_MODELS, the installer will not remove your downloaded models when you uninstall through Add or remove programs. People uninstall expecting 200 GB back, get a few, and conclude the numbers were wrong. If you are removing Ollama for good, delete the model directory yourself afterwards.

   注意：This permanently deletes every model you have pulled, and they are multi-gigabyte re-downloads. Run ollama list and note anything you want back before you do it.

   PowerShell复制

   # PowerShell — after uninstalling, and only if you want the models gone
   Remove-Item "D:\ollama-models" -Recurse -Force

6. 6

   Or stop needing the space — a smaller model is usually the real answer最常见的修复方法

   Moving 200 GB to another drive is worth doing once. Downloading 200 GB you cannot run is worth stopping. Most of the space on a full drive is models too large for the machine's VRAM, kept in the hope they will be usable. Check what your card can actually run before the next pull, and the disk problem stops recurring. If it is the application rather than the models eating C:, OllamaSetup.exe /DIR="d:\some\location" installs it elsewhere at install time.

   PowerShell复制

   # PowerShell — install the app itself on another drive
   .\OllamaSetup.exe /DIR="d:\Ollama"

   检查哪些模型适配你的硬件see which model sizes are worth the disk space on your machine打开显存检查器 →