Currently, when attempting to move a vault from one drive to another (e.g., C:\ to D:) using the built-in “Move vault” function, Obsidian fails with the following error:
Error: EXDEV: cross-device link not permitted, rename ‘C:…\Obsidian Vault’ → ‘D:…\Obsidian Vault’
This is because the underlying file system call rename does not support cross-device operations. However, from a user experience perspective, this is unexpected behavior — if an app offers a “Move” function, users reasonably expect it to work regardless of the source and destination paths.
Reproduction steps:
Open Obsidian
Click the vault name in the bottom-left corner → “Manage vaults”
Click the “…” menu next to any vault → “Move vault”
Select a destination on a different drive/partition (e.g., from C: to D:)
Expected behavior:
The vault should be successfully moved to the new location, either via copy+delete or with a clear guide explaining why it can’t be done.
Actual behavior:
The operation fails with the above error, and the user is left without a straightforward solution within the app.
Suggestion:
I understand the technical limitation of rename across devices. However, Obsidian could implement a fallback mechanism: copy all files to the destination first, then delete the original. This is a common pattern in many file managers and applications.
Why this matters:
Many users organize their vaults across different drives (e.g., system drive vs. data drive). This is especially common for students and researchers who want to keep their work (like thesis notes) on a dedicated drive for backup or space management purposes.
Would love to see this improved in a future update. Thank you for considering this!
I have searched the forum for answers, and this isn’t something covered in the forum or debugging steps.
What I’m trying to do
I am trying to move my vault from one directory on my computer, to a different directory, as I am reorganising everything on here.
Things I have tried
Moving it manually, but this is breaking things in my vault for some reason (plugins, formatting, visual customisation like custom interface icons).
Moving it through the vault manager, and selecting ‘move vault’. This would be my preferred way of moving it, and also where the main problem occurs as I get the following error each time I try: “Failed to move vault. Error: EXDEV: cross-device link not permitted, rename (current directory file path) → (destination directory file path)”.
As I said, there is very little information out there on this problem. I’d like to know why ‘move vault’ isn’t working, and how to fix it/move my vault safely.
I believe this may be due to moving across partitions (which I could be completely wrong, doesn’t work via the vault manager.)
My suggestion would just be manually move the entire vault folder to your desired location, and then just open as a new vault, all of your settings will persist as long as your .obsidian/ folder comes with it.
Windows can’t perform a simple rename/move via system call because it’s on a different volume. Windows doesn’t support “rename” across drives - it has to copy then delete.
Use ctrl+c ctrl+v or
powershell
Copy-Item “C:\OldVaultPath” -Destination “D:\NewVaultPath” -Recurse
Similar is in Linux. “oldpath and newpath are not on the same mounted filesystem. (Linux permits a filesystem to be mounted at multiple points, but rename() does not work across different mount points, even if the same filesystem is mounted on both.)”
I.e. you can’t move between file-systems with a system call, so what mv does is a user-space copy and delete.
Use terminal:
cp -r /old/path/to/vault /new/path/to/vault
Just moved my vault to new drive wo any problems. all settings, plugins preserved. Copy the entire vault folder (including ‘.obsidian’ it is hidden if it is in eg windows explorer) e.g. use command line for that. verify that ‘.obsidian/snippets/’ and ‘.obsidian/plugins/’ were included.
I opened Obsidian using my ‘Main’ vault.
I went to the ‘open another vault’ section (3rd icon from the bottom on the left).
I selected my Film vault (D:\Vaults\Film)'s hamburger menu and selected “move vault”, hoping to move it to C:\Data\Vaults.
I get the error
Failed to move vault. Error: EXDEV: cross-device link not permitted, rename ‘d:\Vaults\Film’ → ‘C:\Data\Vaults’Film’.