georgeeo porgeeo

I believe the most efficient thing you can do now is use one of the hard drives you have now and make it into a photoshop/lightroom scratch disc for storing scratch disc information from photoshop and or light room.
You would turn the drive on and make sure your computer recognizes the drive and then go into photoshop and have it store scratch files onto the spare drive. This way you can continue using your image editing programs with a little slow down since photoshop will be storing scratch information on it.
Best,
George Freeman

Gitchigumi Loc: Wake Forest, NC

Thanks, George… good idea!

Laramie Loc: Tempe

As a retired IT guy, I do things differently. I would create a recovery drive on a thumb drive. Wipe your primary drive with one of the several utilities available. Backup D and E, wipe as well, and remove from desktop. Purchase two, large disks, 4T or larger in size, SSD or spinner. Use one for your primary drive, the other for your data drive, boot to the recovery disk to reinstall Windows, use your original installation files to install what you need.

If your images are your business, forget the above.

rlv567 Loc: Baguio City, Philippines

For almost everybody, there's no reason to have a C: drive larger than 500GB, and good reasons not to! It should, however, be the fastest available/affordable.

Loren - in Beautiful Baguio City

chrissybabe Loc: New Zealand

Not quite correct. A lot of people on here use a laptop either as a primary system or to take away with them when traveling. A fixed PC only needs 512GB because you have provision to have other storage for data.
But with almost every laptop you only have the option of a single drive. This should be as large as you can fit. Currently (3 months ago anyway) 1TB was the largest SSD m2 drive you could get although I note that now 2TB seem to be available. This is what you retro fit to your laptop. Depending on your time away from home you can store a lot of photos on this drive plus use a 2TB USB-C for backup (or even better two of them to give you 2 redundant copies).

awesome14 Loc: UK

Here's a video on moving the 'Users' directory to a different drive: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=88isPOPkscE
If you install your programs to C:\, and put all you user-generated files on D:\ or E:\ (the 'Users' directory), you'll have plenty of room without physically altering the computer. But there are quite a few steps. You can take a look at it.

rlv567 Loc: Baguio City, Philippines

Sorry about that. I use only a desktop - for a number of reasons - so my thoughts run in that direction, and a small, fast Drive C; is the way to go. Laptops, as you point out, present different requirements.

Loren - in Beautiful Baguio City

rlv567 Loc: Baguio City, Philippines

If you start out with a new computer (or with a newly formatted Drive C:) it's the only way to go, and very easily accomplished. If you need/want to retroactively set things up right, there can be a lot of files which will need to be moved. That's a very simple process - just time consuming, and you have to be certain that "everything" knows where "everything" is located! And you can do as much - or as little - as you wish.

Loren - in Beautiful Baguio City

vg Loc: Kansas City area

Replace the :c drive. If you are unable to do it yourself go to a micro center or Best Buy store or anywhere that sells hard drives and have them install the new drive.
They should move all your programs to the new drive.

NCMtnMan Loc: N. Fork New River, Ashe Co., NC

Do you actually have three physical drives or do you have a single drive with three partitions on it? My guess is that it is one physical drive. If that is so and you are using Windows as your operating system, it is possible to both shrink and increase the size of the partitions. What is on your Drive D: and how much space is used and how much open on it? Same thing for Drive E:. If you're okay to do so, turn off your system and open the case to see how many drives are actually in it. Or you can use Administrator Tools in Control Panel and then select Computer Management. Once there open Disk Management and it will show you the physical drives as well as the partitions. This is also where you can shrink and expand partitions. If you only have one physical drive, cloning to a new drive will not change your issue as the cloning software will create a mirror image of what you currently have with the same size drives. HOWEVER, before you attempt any changes, make sure you have everything backed up. If you don't have a local backup, then you should purchase an external drive of at least 2TB to use as a backup to perform an image backup of your system. The software to do this is in Control Panel as well. It is Backup (Windows 7) and is pretty straight forward. Connect your external drive and ignore any software it may already have on it and want to install on your system because the Windows Backup will wipe the drive as part of the backup and it will only be usable for Windows Backup. Open Backup and select Image backup on the left hand selection area. If you do not have an actual DVD copy of the operating system, then you should have a DVD-RW disk available to create a boot disk at the end of the image backup process. If you don't have an internal DVD-RW drive, you can get one off Amazon for just a few bucks. If all this is too technical for you, then ask around to find a reputable local computer repair shop and talk to them about your problem. Take your system with you so they can look and see exactly what you have, and they should be able to tell you your options including what I have posted here. I'm retired after 30+ years in the computer and networking business, and I can't count the number of times I have performed exactly this process without problems. But, I always backup as I have described first because there is always a first time. If you need further discussion, then PM me and I'll be glad to help.

Gitchigumi Loc: Wake Forest, NC

Thank you for your comments, NCMtnMan. At present, I put the project aside, as I needed to use the computer and didn’t want to cause any issues or delays while I finished my work.

And, I will likely seek some help. I asked and studied, but need to do more before I try again.

My system has 3 different, separate, drives, not partitions. The C: drive is 128GB that is a PCle solid state drive. This drive has the OS and my Adobe installations on it. And, I know it is obviously too small, but that is what came with the computer. So I have purchased a 1TB PCle to replace it.

The D: drive is a 1 TB SATA Drive. The E: drive is a 500GB SSD.

I will be back on this project soon, as I completed my photo work for now. However, I do have some engineering CAD work in process, though.

Finally… I see you are in Ashe County. That is a wonderful area! I am near Raleigh, but visit the mountains of NC and VA as often as I can. Thanks, again!

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

If you get into trouble with it, shoot me a PM, and I’ll give you my phone and can assist - I’m in Raleigh.

Gitchigumi Loc: Wake Forest, NC

Thanks!

NCMtnMan Loc: N. Fork New River, Ashe Co., NC

I own a couple of systems with PCIe drives. I bought an external PCIe case to use to replace the original drives with larger ones. It worked quite well. I use only Samsung drives and they have free cloning software that works with their drives. Have used it many times on different systems without any issues. So, good luck with your upgrades!

Gitchigumi Loc: Wake Forest, NC

Thanks! I have a Samsung PCIe drive ready to install, and, I’ve got an external PCIe case to help do the work. Now, to find a good time to do it. I’ve never done this before, so am trying to be confident in doing it. Guess I’m concerned about screwing-up.😳