Solved Tidying up Win 11 Primary Drive

I want to tidy up my Samsung 1T SSD drive. Getting too close to being full for my liking; I have an almost empty 1T WD internal that I want to move some programs to. Items like Microsoft Flight Sim will stay on the SSD as it is much faster.
For example; I have Software called AVS4YOU ( folder ) which contains 9 separated programs. I want to move this to the WD drive to gain disc space on SSD. And a bunch of others I hope. Any hints would be appreciated. I hope that I won't have to re-install everything on the WD drive manually.

Windows 11 home 21H2 22000.613

Thanks

I'm suspecting that most of that drive space is used for data, and not programs.

Install something like Treesize free and check what is used for what

You can safely move your personal folders to another drive. Relocating default user folders on Windows 10

Only Windows store apps can be moved to another drive without using a third party program. You would not gain much space by doing this. As far as desktop programs I would not recommend attempting to move their file location, nor does Microsoft because it can cause issues, like the program not running or data loss. A safer, though less efficient, method is to uninstall the program and reinstall it to your desired drive.

OK; see your points; better to install future software onto the WD 1T drive unless speed is an issue. I could have installed software like PLEX onto the WD but even that is only 7.5 gig and office is only 2.66 gig. so thanks for the input which is what I was looking for.

needlenoses said:

I want to tidy up my Samsung 1T SSD drive. Getting too close to being full for my liking; I have an almost empty 1T WD internal that I want to move some programs to. Items like Microsoft Flight Sim will stay on the SSD as it is much faster.
For example; I have Software called AVS4YOU ( folder ) which contains 9 separated programs. I want to move this to the WD drive to gain disc space on SSD. And a bunch of others I hope. Any hints would be appreciated. I hope that I won't have to re-install everything on the WD drive manually.

Windows 11 home 21H2 22000.613

Thanks

Click to expand...

For the most part, good advice here. One thing to note is that you should probably check to see what kind of space is being used - for example, use the disk cleanup tools and System --> Storage tools to clean up junk files, and see if you have an inordinate amount of System Restore files that you can delete and reclaim space with.

As for programs, most manually installed programs will give you the option to install wherever you want to, though many nowadays require you to run the installer using 'Advanced options' or some such setting(s). Basically, automatic installs will install to the default location, but if you get to the option where it actually asks which folder you want to install to, then you can usually change it there., There are some programs that do not allow you to do it - but otherwise you are fine.

Your system specs show that your second drive is a WD 1 TB - I'm assuming it is not an SSD as you specifically mention that for the first one. If so, then you really want to consider *hard* whether this is something you want to do or not. Programs loading off mechanical drives will load much slower, on average, than SSDs, but data (like pictures, music, videos, and documents) can be opened / loaded from mechanical drives with a (mostly) unnoticeable difference in load time.

So, first things first clean up the SSD with native tools and then assess what you can move and what you probably *ought* to move.

I didn't want to install MS Flight Sim on the 1T Disc drive even though it would have saved a lot of space on the SSD. Speed is important for sure.