Low disk space after adding external SSD

[Erinn]

Hi all,

Lately my C drive is to the point of being completely filled and I have been receiving the low disk space message. It was a 120GB SSD where OS is installed and everything was saved. I bought a 500GB external SSD to store things on yet I continue to get the low disk space message. I created a backup on the external drive but it doesn't appear that anything gets saved to it unless I manually move it there.

Is there something I can do to get the C drive back in the green and have new files get saved to the external drive?

Are there repercussions to having the C drive completely filled over time?

Thanks

 

[Supahos]

It's saying your C drive has low disk space, adding another drive and not deleteing anything off the c drive doesn't help at all. It can slow performance and bit and it will keep writing on the same cells over and over for cache and things of nearly full since it can't move around. Move some stuff you don't use as often to the other drive and delete it off the c drive to get rid of warning

 

[geofelt]

Many things want to go on the "C" drive. 120gb is too small as you have discovered.
When a ssd approaches full, it will slow down and lose endurance.

An external drive is no place to store active data.
If you can, remove the ssd from the external drive and use it as your windows "C" drive.
Buy a less expensive hard drive for storing large files such as videos and backups.

If that can't be done, buy a 240-500gb Samsung evo.
Use their free ssd migration app to copy your 120gb ssd to the larger one.

 

[Erinn]

Thank you for the quick responses:

If I have recently created a backup on the external drive then I should be able to delete a bunch of stuff from the C drive correct?

The funny thing is I created a backup on the external drive as soon as I plugged it in but if I go to My Computer > External drive, it doesn't show any of the files. It just says "Erinn-PC". If I click on that it just gives me options to restore files.

How would I go about making the external drive the C drive?

Thanks again

 

[geofelt]

An external enclosure will normally have a conventional ssd inside.
You can run a clone utility to copy your 120gb ssd to the external ssd.
When done, remove the 500gb ssd from the enclosure and install it in place of the original 120gb ssd.

Clonix makes one that should work.
Samsung has a proprietary version available for free to use with their ssd devices.
If the cost of a larger ssd is not a big issue, buy a Samsung evo. mount it in your pc and clone the current 'c' drive to the larger one.
When done, replace the 120gb ssd with the larger one and you are done.

You can then repurpose the small ssd for whatever. Do you have a laptop with a hard drive that can use a ssd?

 

[Erinn]

Well I was hoping there was a way I could just make the external drive that is connected via USB the C drive without having to move the case out and rip everything apart. The tower/case is in a tight area and it is a real pain to get in and out and do all of that.

 

[geofelt]

Even if you could use the usb connected drive as the "C" drive, the performance with a usb connection would be unacceptable.

 

[Erinn]

hmm. I may be in trouble then. What can I do make space on the C drive then? I know at one point it had a decent amount of space on it. If I can get it to the point where it has 15 or 20 GB free then I can just start saving new work on the external drive.

 

[Erinn]

What I ended up doing was making a backup on the external and just cleared some junk off the C drive. Looks like I will just need to get a bigger internal SSD.

Thank you all for the help.