Master Your HARD DRIVE & SSD
The 15 BEST THINGS you didn’t know these powerful devices could do ✓ Share files faster ✓ Create a portable PC ✓ Turn them into NAS drives + Boost storage for FREE!
The humble hard drive isn’t necessarily the most glamorous component in your PC. But, alongside your processor and memory, it’s one of the most important. Not only is it where you store your files, but it’s also the launchpad for your PC’S entire operating system every time you switch it on. It’s a hard worker, too – scouring itself for data every time you launch a file, and constantly writing and rewriting data in the background every time you carry out tasks such as transferring photos or saving changes to a document.
In the old days of computing (in this case, that’s about 12 years ago), hard drives required a lot of ongoing care and maintenance. We don’t have to worry too much about that anymore – recent versions of Windows are now capable of defragmenting and optimising drives automatically. And with Windows 10, you can even set your PC to purge its drive of junk and temporary files automatically using Storage Sense (under
Settings, then System).
However, we’re certainly not suggesting you should just forget all about your hard drive. In fact, there are many things you can do to maximise its storage space, performance and general usefulness. Even older drives you’ve more or less abandoned can be put to good use if you know how.
Over the next few pages, we’ll show you how you can get more out of your drives. We’ll explore ways to optimise your current drives and make them easier to manage, as well as turning that collection of old hard drives that you’ve amassed over the years into indispensable accessories. And with solid-state drives ( SSDS) dropping in price, we’ll also show you how to upgrade one, and put its speed and strength to good use.
1 Share your PC’S hard drive over your network
You’re on your laptop downstairs, but the file you need is on your PC upstairs. Sound familiar? Avoid those unnecessary jaunts between computers and instead use Windows’ built-in sharing tools to make the hard drive or SSD available across your entire home network.
On the PC containing the drive you want to share, click Start, type sharing, then press Enter. In the ‘Advanced sharing settings’ window that opens, make sure ‘Turn on file and printer sharing’ is enabled. To share the drive, you’ll need to disable password protection for shared files. Scroll down to All Networks and expand this section if needed, then select the ‘Turn off password-protected sharing’ setting and click ‘Save changes’.
Now open File Explorer (Windows key+e) and select This PC. Right-click the drive you want to share and select ‘Give access to’, then ‘Advanced sharing’. Click the Advanced Sharing button, then tick the ‘Share this folder’ box in the window that opens. Enter a suitable name under ‘share name’ (such as ‘Study Desktop’ - see screenshot above right), then click OK.
On one of your other PCS, open File Explorer, click Network, then doubleclick the name of the PC with the shared drive and you should see its drive listed. Right-click it and select ‘Map network drive’, change the drive letter if you want, then click Finish.
Although this is a great way to quickly share a drive across your network, there is one drawback: the PC with the drive you want to share needs to be switched on for other computers to access it. However, there is a way around this limitation, which w’ll cover in Tips 10 and 11.
2 Search for files across all your drives
To speed up file searches of your computer, Windows creates an index – a database of everything stored on your drive. This records the names, locations and – in some cases – the content of your files. When you search for something, Windows looks into the index, rather than scouring your hard drive or SSD, which saves a lot of time and produces search results almost instantaneously.
The problem is that Windows’ built-in indexer (Windows Search) isn’t great. It can slow your computer by constantly checking for changes to your files and it can’t index files stored on drives that aren’t physically attached to your computer, such as network drives.
Windows Search isn’t the only indexing tool, however, and we recommend an excellent free alternative called Everything. This small program builds its index quickly and uses barely any system resources. It also offers more features and customisation options than Windows 10’s tools and lets you index external and network drives.
Get Everything from www.voidtools. com/downloads – there’s a portable version should you want to test the program before installing it, but the installable version is perfectly safe and the best solution for long-term use. Choose the ‘Install Everything service’ option when you first run or install Everything.
To add a network drive to your index, it will require a drive letter on your PC (see Tip 1), so click Tools, then Options in Everything. In the Window that opens, click the Folder tab on the left, then click Add on the right. Select your mapped drive from the list (see screenshot below left), then click OK twice.
To benefit from Everything’s less need for resources, you’ll need to disable Windows Indexing. Click Start, type services then press Enter. Right-click Windows Search and select Properties. Click Stop, select Disabled from ‘Startup type’ and click OK, then restart your PC.
3 Uncover and create hidden partitions
Your hard drive or SSD may show up as a single device in File Explorer, but in reality, it’s highly likely that the drive is split into several partitions – most of which you won’t see during normal use. To find out whether your drive has hidden partitions, and what’s stored on them, right-click Start then select Disk Management from the menu.
You should see that Disk 0 (your ‘main’ hard drive) is split into multiple partitions. In most cases, only one of these partitions will have a drive letter – your C: drive. The remaining partitions aren’t assigned drive letters, which means they’re effectively hidden.
One of these hidden partitions (usually