SOLVED Acer mini laptop

[Iceboy]

My son's giving me a mini Acer laptop with windows and 65g hard drive, is there any way I can direct windows updates to go on a external hard drive as I know the small drive won't handle them?. Or turn this into a Linux machine?.

 

[Grizzly]

Windows update always uses the 'C:\' drive for updates and cannot do this on external or secondary drives. Many issues arose with small drives like yours in many forums. the perfect solution however has never been found. Windows needs about 16-20GB to be able to do the updates which does not leave much space to use the computer. My old laptop is using only 26GB for the Windows installation, however I have put my files (docs, pics etc.) on a different drive so I am using the 'C:\' drive only for the system.
Is there maybe a way to increase your drive by replacing it with a bigger one??
If that is not the case, you are stuck in regards of Windows. I do not have any experience with Linux in general so I cannot give any advice for that.

 

[Wolfie]

mini Acer laptop

Hi Iceboy,

what model is it?, maybe we can help you further with more system specs?.

 

[Bighorn]

64GB drive should be fine but just don't overload it with all the programs you think will be nice, just essential stuff. I got a Dell Inspiron 11 3000 11" 3 years ago, Wal*Mart PA announcement of half price, $139. It's great but the 32GB drive wouldn't take the last 3 Version 1909 Build updates and wouldn't use USB thumb drives or SDHC card for additional storage it needed so it is now running Linux Mint 20 quite easily. Linux only needed about 12GB space for a full install and a couple of Mah Jong games, most needs were included such as LibreOffice and VLC/Video LAN media plus Firefox. It only updates when I want.

 

[Iceboy]

I'm more than sure it was an Acer Aspire from 2017- 4g by 65g emmc storage type.

 

[Bighorn]

I'm more than sure it was an Acer Aspire from 2017- 4g by 65g emmc storage type.

I wouldn't have any issue with that but it's possible that [like with mine] the storage drive is soldered onto the motherboard and not changeable.

 

[Tim Locke]

I suppose you could do a complete re-install removing everything from the machine. Get it up-to-date and then see how much space is left for any applications.

As Bighorn suggested a Linux version plus LibreOffice will fit easily. Perhaps Lubuntu or Xubuntu as both them are tuned for machines with limited resources. Ubuntu takes 25G of disk space when installed. I would think that Mint ( derived from Ubuntu would be about the same.

 

[Iceboy]

I'll have to wait till he brings it, hopefully he can get in the loft next weekend and give it me before the tiers begin to take hold. Thanks for the replies, I'll leave the thread open till I get it.

 

[Bighorn]

Just checking, my Linux Mint 20 32GB drive is showing ext4 formatted size at 28.63GB, used at 19.3GB and 9.19 free space.

 

[eionmored]

Laptops and mini PCs have no significant difference when it comes to pricing. In general, mini PCs are more affordable than laptops like acer swift 3—just like their larger counterparts are relative to laptops. For the same price, you'll get a much more powerful mini PC than laptop and yes you can use external hard drive for this!

 

[Bighorn]

I suppose after over a year the issue has been resolved. There's a lot of good values with Refurbished machines with Win10 that are still good until 10/14/2025.

 

[Iceboy]

Sorry I forgot to mark this solved..the machine in question blew. But I was thinking of another, but every time the
updates came around it kept saying not enough space, don't know why they keep making em if they don't work.

 

[Bighorn]

I have an 11" Notebook with the 32GB SSD, couldn't update couple years ago due to not enough room and wouldn't allow SDHC or Thumb drives, now is happily running Linux Mint 20 with nearly half of the drive free space. The only 'real' issue with Linux is having some programs not available that can be with Windows but the ones I need on it are VLC and LibreOffice, both are cross-platform. Comes with Firefox.