Organising apps, data across SSDs and HDDs

[socrates]

I am setting up a system with a 1TB WD blue NVME M.2 SSD, a much older 258 GB SSD and a 2TB HDD.

Would like to organise all my progammes/apps (chrome, MS office, zoom, acrobat reader, steam, dropbox, games) and data(word doc, photos, videos etc) properly.

All my data (word doc, photos, videos etc)

Windows, games, steam will be installed in the M.2 SSD .

But how about smaller apps like acrobat reader dropbox, zoom steam should I just put it in my older 258 GB SSD and save space in the M.2 SSD.

Where should bigger apps like office be installed in the older 258 SSd or new M.2 SSD ?

Please suggest and share how you utilise best your storage devices.

Thanks !

 

[Koenig168]

I would suggest all programs and the OS in the 1TB SSD if there is sufficient space.

The small SSD for working files and backup to the HDD.

HDD for everything else.

 

[socrates]

Thanks just want to get views so as to maximise what should go where and avoid clutter in the various storage devices.

 

[LiLAsN]

Agree with Koenig's statement.

I recommend you put all data on a separate drive or multiple drives. You can do this by

clicking on properties of maybe the Document or Video folder on This PC. And then navigate to location tab and change it to your other SSD drive and click move.

Over time, as you add more drives, you can change the drive path again via the steps above and Windows will automatically transfer the entire folder from the previous drive path to the new one for you as well when you click Move.

In case of a system failure, you will always have your personal files saved separately. So if the need arises where you have to format your OS drive, no data is loss as they are all kept separate from the C: OS drive.

As for OS drive, one day, when you have an old SSD lying around, you can use it to copy the entire image of your OS drive with all the apps and softwares and chrome logged in to your account. So in case your OS fails, all you have to do is do a image restore from the old SSD drive that you have used to backup the entire OS image. So you can skip all the software installs and maybe just update certain softwares. That's all. But your entire OS will look like you never left. And not to mention, free of whatever bugs and issues that you had with your OS drive before.


As you can see, as I add more drives, I've moved all my folders to separate drives from each other. Letting the new drives do the heavy work in most frequently used folders while letting my older and slow SSDs be used for less frequently used folders