Move Windows OS to a different internal drive
February 18, 2022 1:29 PM Subscribe
My Windows installation is running out of room. I want to move it from what is now the C drive (capacity 117 GB) to what is now the D drive (capacity 915 GB). Both drives are partitions of a 1T SATA internal drive.
The computer is an HP ENVY All-in-One - 27-b119. It came with Windows installed on the smaller of these two internal partitions. (Why?) My Windows folder is now 34 MB and I have no more room for updates.
Is there any way to switch the contents of the C and D drives?
I have upper-intermediate level Windows knowledge and skills, but no deep technical knowledge. (For example, I've replaced a couple of system hard drives and a laptop screen on previous computers. Can use the MS Disk Management Console.)
The computer is an HP ENVY All-in-One - 27-b119. It came with Windows installed on the smaller of these two internal partitions. (Why?) My Windows folder is now 34 MB and I have no more room for updates.
Is there any way to switch the contents of the C and D drives?
I have upper-intermediate level Windows knowledge and skills, but no deep technical knowledge. (For example, I've replaced a couple of system hard drives and a laptop screen on previous computers. Can use the MS Disk Management Console.)
My son had a similar problem on his PC, and it's not because Windows had outgrown the space on the C drive. It's because his user account became clogged with files in /Documents /Downloads, /Desktop, etc.
Moving a licensed Windows installation to a new drive is not easy. I'd recommend downloading a free program like WinDirStat and see what is really chewing up the space on C. You might find that cleaning out old downloads and moving your /Documents to D will solve the problem.
Your Windows installation also has a free tool to help clean up stuff that isn't needed anymore.
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:35 PM on February 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
Moving a licensed Windows installation to a new drive is not easy. I'd recommend downloading a free program like WinDirStat and see what is really chewing up the space on C. You might find that cleaning out old downloads and moving your /Documents to D will solve the problem.
Your Windows installation also has a free tool to help clean up stuff that isn't needed anymore.
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:35 PM on February 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
Second vote for using WinDirStat first. See why it's full, then make decisions.
posted by kiblinger at 3:22 PM on February 18, 2022
posted by kiblinger at 3:22 PM on February 18, 2022
The answer to the question of why Windows was installed to the smaller drive is because it is a faster solid-state NVMe drive which allows the computer to load and run programs more quickly. It's smaller because NVMe storage is more expensive than the equivalent storage you can get in a spinning disk drive. Your other drive is a bog standard spinning disk drive that will make your computer very slow if you move Windows to it, so I'd recommend against doing that.
Seconding that what you want to do (most likely) is move your Documents, Pictures, Videos, Downloads and possibly other folders to your D: drive. WinDirStat and similar utilities can help you pinpoint what you need to do. Disk Cleanup is also something useful to run, especially if it turns out a lot of your disk space is taken up by stuff like temporary files or old Windows update files and the like.
(In theory you can probably upgrade the NVMe drive to a larger one, but you'd need to open up the machine to install it, and if your computer doesn't have two working M.2 slots, transferring data to the new drive is not trivial.)
posted by Aleyn at 3:41 PM on February 18, 2022 [5 favorites]
Seconding that what you want to do (most likely) is move your Documents, Pictures, Videos, Downloads and possibly other folders to your D: drive. WinDirStat and similar utilities can help you pinpoint what you need to do. Disk Cleanup is also something useful to run, especially if it turns out a lot of your disk space is taken up by stuff like temporary files or old Windows update files and the like.
(In theory you can probably upgrade the NVMe drive to a larger one, but you'd need to open up the machine to install it, and if your computer doesn't have two working M.2 slots, transferring data to the new drive is not trivial.)
posted by Aleyn at 3:41 PM on February 18, 2022 [5 favorites]
Also, in case it wasn't clear by my response, I'm fairly certain that the premise of your question (that they are two partitions on the same drive) is incorrect, based on my reading of your computer's spec sheet. You can check the Disk Management utility to confirm this at a glance as it will show the partitions belonging to a physical disk with a different number if they're on different drives. If both partitions are on the same drive, feel free to ignore my advice.
posted by Aleyn at 3:58 PM on February 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Aleyn at 3:58 PM on February 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
Better than WinDirStat is WizTree. It runs faster for the same outputs. How much stuff do you have on that D drive? Since it's one physical drive, if D is empty (or can be emptied by moving the contents to an external drive for a bit, as long as its just files and not installed programs) you can delete the D partition and expand C to take the whole drive (and then, move the contents of old D back to somewhere on C).
posted by deezil at 5:24 PM on February 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by deezil at 5:24 PM on February 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
My Windows installation is running out of room. I want to move it from what is now the C drive (capacity 117 GB) to what is now the D drive (capacity 915 GB). Both drives are partitions of a 1T SATA internal drive.
To echo what's been said in this thread so far, it looks like this is not a correct assessment of your hardware and you definitely do not want to do this. Moving your operating system from the NVMe drive to the spinning-platter disk will make this machine intolerably slow. The right move is to figure out why this drive is full (It's not the OS, it's user data, guaranteed) and move that information to the larger drive. You can almost certainly get away with doing this manually without needing to resort to anything as complex and risky as re-homing the operating system.
posted by mhoye at 6:58 PM on February 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
To echo what's been said in this thread so far, it looks like this is not a correct assessment of your hardware and you definitely do not want to do this. Moving your operating system from the NVMe drive to the spinning-platter disk will make this machine intolerably slow. The right move is to figure out why this drive is full (It's not the OS, it's user data, guaranteed) and move that information to the larger drive. You can almost certainly get away with doing this manually without needing to resort to anything as complex and risky as re-homing the operating system.
posted by mhoye at 6:58 PM on February 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks for all the information and suggestions.
First of all a big correction: for MB in the original post, read GB.
Disk Management tells me that the Windows drive is on Disk 0, and that my data is on Disk 1. Also on Disk 0 is a tiny EFI partition and a recovery partition. Disk 1 is partitioned into a large data partition and a much smaller recovery partition.
I get what you're saying about relative drive speeds.
And I did a little cleaning.
I used FolderSize to look at what is going on. The C drive has 15 GB of free space. Folder sizes (rounded) are:
Windows - 34 GB;
ProgramData - 23 GB;
System Volume Information - 19 GB;
User files total 11 GB and 8 GB of that is AppData.
All photos, music, videos are all on a separate storage drive. Even my Desktop I have moved to that third drive. I have even moved modern Windows programs to another drive whenever I could.
I have found a YouTube video that shows how to remove the SSD system drive (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBT6OL90TD0). There is a bigger SSD drive available on Amazon. I think, from what you all say, that that is my best solution.
And -- breaking news! The Windows PC Health Check app says my "processor isn't currently supported for Windows 11." I have an Intel i7 processor. And here I thought it was not enough drive space all along! (A little ticked off. $2000 CAD in July 2018.)
posted by feelinggood at 9:48 PM on February 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
First of all a big correction: for MB in the original post, read GB.
Disk Management tells me that the Windows drive is on Disk 0, and that my data is on Disk 1. Also on Disk 0 is a tiny EFI partition and a recovery partition. Disk 1 is partitioned into a large data partition and a much smaller recovery partition.
I get what you're saying about relative drive speeds.
And I did a little cleaning.
I used FolderSize to look at what is going on. The C drive has 15 GB of free space. Folder sizes (rounded) are:
Windows - 34 GB;
ProgramData - 23 GB;
System Volume Information - 19 GB;
User files total 11 GB and 8 GB of that is AppData.
All photos, music, videos are all on a separate storage drive. Even my Desktop I have moved to that third drive. I have even moved modern Windows programs to another drive whenever I could.
I have found a YouTube video that shows how to remove the SSD system drive (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBT6OL90TD0). There is a bigger SSD drive available on Amazon. I think, from what you all say, that that is my best solution.
And -- breaking news! The Windows PC Health Check app says my "processor isn't currently supported for Windows 11." I have an Intel i7 processor. And here I thought it was not enough drive space all along! (A little ticked off. $2000 CAD in July 2018.)
posted by feelinggood at 9:48 PM on February 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
In general, windows wants 25600 MB for an OS upgrade (at least that was the number in windows 10) so you're short there too.
You can still upgrade to windows 11 with your 'unsupported' processor, you just can't do it from windows update.
posted by noloveforned at 4:46 AM on February 19, 2022
You can still upgrade to windows 11 with your 'unsupported' processor, you just can't do it from windows update.
posted by noloveforned at 4:46 AM on February 19, 2022
A point of caution about upgrading to Windows 11 with an unsupported processor: MS doesn't guarantee that you'll be able to receive software updates, including security updates, if you run Win 11 on unsupported hardware. I'd keep this machine on Win 10. You'll have until Oct 14, 2025 before Win 10 exits mainstream support, so you can expect at least another 3.5 supported years out of this machine if you remain on Win 10.
posted by Aleyn at 12:23 PM on February 19, 2022
posted by Aleyn at 12:23 PM on February 19, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
I used MiniTool Partition Wizard. The free version did everything I needed it to and worked well. After using it, I would paid for it if I thought I'd need any of the pro features in the future.
I don't recommend switching the contents. Instead I would merge the two partitions. On the system I did, we had a third partition between the two we wanted to move and MiniTools let me move the partition. I looked at several other free programs and didn't see another one that would move the errant partition.
Also, I'd merge the two partitions so I don't need to mess with drive names anymore. That might be more complicated if you have duplicate file trees on each drive (say "Users/Documents"). But if you want two drives, instead of "switching" the drives, just repartition the System drive to be as big as you want and let the D: drive shrink accordingly.
posted by rsclark at 2:04 PM on February 18, 2022