Moving the WSL installation of Kali Linux to a different location

Open PowerShell as an administrator
Run the following command to install Chocolatey via PowerShell (https://chocolatey.org/install)

 - Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

Set permissions to the target folder.

- Run the following in powershell

- whoami

example\chris

- icacls D:\<example_folder> /grant "chris:(OI)(CI)(F)"

Install lxrunoffline (https://github.com/DDoSolitary/LxRunOffline)

- choco install lxrunoffline

Find out your running linux version

- Run the following in powershell

- wsl.exe -l -v

*kali-linux running

If your Linux instance is running

- Run the following in powershell

- wsl --shutdown

Move Kali-Linux to another directory using lxrunoffline

- lxrunoffline move -n kali-linux -d d:\<example_folder>

Run the distribution

- Run the following in powershell

- lxrunoffline run -n kali-linux -w

Confirm that the instance is running

- Run the following in powershell

- wsl.exe -l -v

Please note: Once moving over Kali-Linux you may need to set folder exclusions so that pentesting tools would work as expected, see (https://westoahu.hawaii.edu/cyber/best-practices/best-practices-weekly-summaries/how-to-install-kali-linux-as-an-app-in-windows-10/)
Please note: If this a fresh install of Kali-Linux it is recommended that the WSL be upgraded to WSL 2. See (https://winaero.com/update-from-wsl-to-wsl-2-in-windows-10/)

Reasons to move the Kali-Linux install: By default the location of this application is in the root of C. If you are using the windows store to install Kali-Linux, it will use this default location. When using the lxrunoffline tool the registry keys which default the location are changed, and the application is moved without issues.

Sources: https://superuser.com/questions/1113906/can-i-move-the-linux-subsystem-to-a-different-drive

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