Technical help with replacing Windows desktop hard drive

[ok_cpu]

Hello. Thank you in advance for any help. I know just enough to be really dangerous and probably sound silly:

I have a Dell desktop that's a few years old. The boot drive (C) is only 113MB and Windows 11 has devoured it and is suffocating. I boot up and almost immediately get messages about not having any drive space. Or, I boot with 2-300 MB available and then watch it slowly whittle away. Then other programs freak out and start eating RAM. I have a 1TB D drive with plenty of room and have moved every program and file that I can there (OneDrive, all of my files, and all of the programs that would install there.) I've also run all of the cleanups, including older restore points and all the temp files. It feels like Windows has just swallowed the whole drive. Edited to add I've also paused updates in case that's what was gumming up the works.

Yesterday I got ahold of some bad specs that had me buy a 2.5" SATA drive to replace the C. I cloned it and opened the case only to find that the C drive is actually the stick type. (M.2 2280 SATA, I think.)

So, I'm not sure what to do next:

1. Drop the money to replace that drive plus whatever I'll need to clone it? Is the $150 or so I've already spent sunk?
2. Is it possible for someone competent to replace the M.2 with a 2.5" and make that work? It's already cloned and I know it'll boot (spoiler alert: before I knew it was wrong, I'd actually unplugged the D:/ to plug in the new drive. ugh.)
3. Just buy a new computer because why put more money into an old budget Dell?
4. A fourth way?

[canetoad]

1. Options

The current C drive, if its a stick is probably in gigabytes, not Mbs. Now that should be more than enough to install and run Win 11 with room left over.

It sounds to me that your problem may be with RAM if your'e running into problems with things that auto load and run in the background. So first, get rid of everything not necessary in your start-up folder or via task manager.

Then the 2.5 can be mangled into some drive space and used for installing programs, games and storing your own stuff. You are only limited by the number of SATA connections in your computer - I have six or seven physical and logical drives. My C drive is relatively small - 250gb but I have several terabytes hanging off the SATA ports.

There used to be a site called Black Viper windows configurations. He's closed down but his scripts are still online. This can pare back a lot of the junk services that windows runs automatically. https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/blackviperscript.html

Personally, I despise giving space and processor cycles to stuff I neither use nor want, so I reckon you should start there. There's also an interesting thread here about Win 11 services: https://www.elevenforum.com/t/windows-11-equivalent-to-the-old-black-viper-services-list.12127/

Good luck and I'd be keen to hear what you decide.


Edit: Almost forgot - turn off the indexing service, it chews up RAM and space. If you need to search, there's a freebie called 'Everything' that is super quick and lightweight. https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/

[ok_cpu]

2. Thank you! I will take a look.

And you are right. It is GB not MB. It literally goes to zero space available while I'm using the computer.

[canetoad]

3. It's no biggie

To install and run programs from something other than the C drive.

Couple of things of which to be aware:
Uninstall them properly from C to make sure the registry doesn't keep looking for them. Revo uninstaller is pretty good and has an efficient drive cleaner.

Then install to whatever your new drive is and all going well, the registry will have no problems finding them.

[ok_cpu]

4. I really appreciate your replies! To close the loop:

I checked the service manual for my computer and found I had an open SATA port. A Y-power splitter and data cable later, popped open the case, hooked up the brand new freshly-cloned 2.5", took out the stick, booted, and I now have a computer with a 1TB OS drive and a 1TB D: drive that appears to be running like new.

[canetoad]

5. Cool bananas!

Sounds like you're set now.