Question Help with Drives in Windows 10

[kurufinwe13]

Im hoping someone can help me with this. I just bought this desktop refurbished, and I am a little confused about it. It is a
Device name DESKTOP-QAAM89P
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4570 CPU @ 3.20GHz 3.20 GHz
Installed RAM 32.0 GB
Device ID D8115B42-AC23-44F0-81FE-073EA940AB42
Product ID 00330-50000-00000-AAOEM
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

I am running widows 10 PRO. For the most part I bought this for music production and I have a LOT of plugins and programs. The add said this:
Lenovo RGB Gaming PC Desktop Computer - Intel Quad I5 up to 3.6GHz, GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6G GDDR6, 32GB Memory, 256G SSD + 3TB
It runs faster than my old PC, and all seems well ecept for this one issue. As a default I suppose is the term, Most all installed programs go to the C: drive wich is only 256G. Drive D: has close to 3TB. Why would someone manufacture something like this? Is it possible to re-rout or configure the D: drive as the default program drive? My C; drive is maxed out and rather quickly I might add. Thanks for any responses.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, applications default to the C drive.
As they should.

Overall, the applications do not take up that much space.

All those other thing are what will consume your drive space.

Your plugins can almost certainly be installed on a different drive. You just have to select that during the install.
Do NOT try to force everything to install elsewhere. Bad things will happen.

Your music files and any other personal thing...of course can be saved elsewhere.

 

[USAFRet]

The other option is to replace that 256GB drive for larger.
Pretty easy to do.

 

[Misgar]

Although not exactly large by today's standards, a 256GB Windows drive C: is perfectly normal for a computer of that vintage. I still have a number of computers with "only" a 120GB Windows drive C: and it's more than enough for Windows 10 Pro and as many programs as I care to install.

Instead of storing all my data in my User Profile on drive C: (in Documents, Photos, Videos, etc) I save these files to much larger hard disks which have far greater capacity. By doing this, if my Windows drive develops serious problems, I don't have to mess around trying to extract personal files from drive C:, before wiping it and reinstalling Windows. Yes I know you can try an in-place Windows re-install and (hopefully) keep all your personal files.

Your computer with its 256GB Windows boot drive and 3TB data drive is exactly the way I set up and all my computers. If you really need a bigger C: drive, buy a 4TB SATA SSD and clone your existing 256GB Windows C: drive on to the new drive. I recommend Macrium Reflect Free to clone disk drives, but other utilities exist.

Nowadays most people recommend using a 1TB or 2TB M.2 NVMe Gen.4 drive for Windows drive C:, but that's mainly because 240GB and 480GB SSDs have fewer memory channels and hence read and write speeds are slower. Your computer is probably too old to take an M.2 NVMe drive, so the best you can do is fit a bigger SATA SSD in place of your existing 256GB drive.

TLDR. Keep Windows and all your programs/apps on boot drive C:. Save personal data (music, photos, videos, etc) on the 3TB hard disk.

 

[kurufinwe13]

Thank you bnoth! I normally save everything to the larger D: drive but some of the pluggins run with larger programs and are not willing or work with a different drive it seems. Im deff. getting a clone drive, but for now I was able to re-route the majority of them to D: via explorer. Thanks again!