Move your files
Transfer files elsewhere – on to another drive or into the cloud.
The march of technology leads to increased demands on your system, particularly if you’ve discovered a space-hungry hobby such as gaming or 4K video editing. If you’re simply looking to expand available storage for your files, you have two basic options. The first is to buy additional storage. Desktop users can check whether their PC case has room for a second internal hard drive – with 4TB drives at under $200, you can solve all but the most demanding needs with a single purchase.
Before splashing out, power down your PC, open the case, and verify there’s a spare drive bay. Also, check your power supply has a spare SATA power socket (if not, Google “molex to sata power adapter” to find a cheap adapter) and a spare SATA slot on the motherboard. You also need a SATA data cable – these can be had for under $1, but ensure it’s SATA III (6Gb/s), and consider a right-angled connector on one end for hard-to-reach sockets.
Other upgrades
An internal hard drive is better than an external model for reasons of speed, but this isn’t always practical – for example, if you have a laptop. External drives may be more suited to long-term storage such as backups or archiving, but they can at a pinch be used for day-to-day use, although it’s still a good idea to keep frequently accessed files on your internal drive.
If you want to go down the external drive route, you have two options: USB or NAS. USB prices are incredibly competitive – slightly cheaper, in fact, than internal models—so you can pay $150 (or less!) for 4TB or push the boat out and get 6TB for not much more. All models should now be USB 3.0, so for best performance, be sure to plug them into a USB 3.0 port (typically marked in blue) on your PC. Expect to pay a small premium for smaller, laptop-friendly 2.5-inch external drives, or consider network attached storage (NAS) instead. These solutions are slower, but use your network connection, so may be a more practical alternative should you not wish to have your laptop permanently connected to a USB drive.
Once your new drive is set up, you’ll want to transfer your data across – the guide below-right reveals how to do this for all your user folders, which are where the bulk of your data is.
Move some apps
If you’re running Windows on a very small boot drive – say 32GB – it’s not enough to move data off your system drive, because you’ll quickly run out of space for new apps, too. Where it’s not possible to upgrade your system drive for a larger model (see over the page), you can also investigate ways of moving your programs from your system drive to your data one. One caveat: In most cases, your new data drive will be slower than your Windows drive, particularly if you boot from an SSD, so be prepared for a performance hit, and try to keep those apps you use most often on your boot drive.
There are two ways to move apps to a new drive: First, Windows Store apps (including those pre-installed with your PC, such as Photos) can sometimes be moved via “Settings > Apps > Apps & features.” Click the app in question and look for a “Move” button – if it’s not grayed out, click it, select which drive to move it to, and finally click
“Move” again.
Regular programs are so well integrated into the operating system that you can’t simply move their folder
from the “Program Files” folder to your new drive. One option might be to uninstall and reinstall, but that comes at a cost of losing your preferences, and assumes the program in question allows you to choose where to reinstall the program.
A simpler, foolproof option is to use SteamMover ( www.traynier.com/ software/steammover). This clever tool moves your program files to your data drive, but leaves a “symbolic link” in its place. This shortcut fools Windows into thinking the programs are still on your C drive, so they continue to work seamlessly. It’s easy to use: Click “…” under “Steam Apps Common Folder,” and select “C:\Program Files.” Ctrl-click the programs you plan to move, based on their size and how frequently you use them, then click the right arrow button to move them all across. Changed your mind? Simply select your program and click the left arrow button to move it back, no questions asked. Windows 64-bit users should also check the “C:\Program Files(x86)” folder for 32-bit apps to move.