Adding external drive

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If I buy an external drive, will windows automatically start using it to add space and quit telling me I am out of space?
 
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Hi pimwaddis,

you can add an external drive but that won't stop Windows telling you that you are out of space, you need to clean the drive using the following link. It needs space on the drive for system files and as updates/apps/your data are added, if you don't clean the drive, it will eventually get full!. ;)

 
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You will always need enough space on C: for Windows updates. Can be as much as 20GB.
You can move some of your directories to the external drive. Documents, music, downloads, pictures are good candidates.
 
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They recommend having 32gb of free space just for updates. Is this a desktop or a laptop? What is the total size of the C drive?
 
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A couple three Upgrades back my 4-year-old Dell 11" Notebook with a 32GB SSD wouldn't accept the change, not enough free space and the Upgrades also wouldn't accept any type External storage device nor could the SSD be changed. It only cost me $139 on unadvertised sale at Wal*Mart, not wanting throw it out it now is happily living on Linux Mint 20.
 
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If I buy an external drive, will windows automatically start using it to add space and quit telling me I am out of space?

"pimwaddis" get a new drive, preferably an SSD drive type 2.5” SATA 6GB/sec or an M.2 type drive that is twice the capacity of your existing drive (that is, whichever drive is suitable for your computer, 2.5” or M.2 type SSD?) and clone your existing drive to it, use a software like Macrium Reflect v7 to do the cloning or if you buy a Samsung SSD 2.5” or M.2 then Samsung has their excellent “Data Migration” cloning software and their “Magician Tuning’ software that you can use, also with all SSD’s use the TRIM command feature that allows Windows 10 or any supported operating system, to notify an SSD which blocks of data are no longer in use and can be safely wiped out to be writable again. Having this operation done ahead of time improves performance, as the drive won't have to spend time erasing a particular block when space is needed to store new data, ensuring the SSD reaches its advertised lifespan.

 

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