Running out of SSD space on Dell Latitude

[klaberte]

I have to believe this is a FAQ, and I did search, but am still quite confused. Please be nice

I have a Dell Latitude laptop with a 64 GB SSD. I am badly running out of space. I have tried to reinstall applications such that they are not on the c: drive. I have tried to use symlinks to try to move some of the user data off the c, although that is starting to become a mess.

I note that my C partition is 45.95 GB and another 13.68 GB are used up by a recovery partition.

It seems that I have a few options:

1. Move the recovery partition to another drive, although there seems to be lots of issues reported on this forum when trying to restore from this moved recovery partition.
2. Purchase a larger ssd and figure out how to duplicate the current smaller drive to the larger drive without having to reinstall the OS and programs.
3. Just delete the recovery partition, and, if needed, get an OS install disk from Dell or Microsoft (there seems to be download locations listed in some of the threads), then using the OS sticker on the laptop to validate the OS.

What say you?

Many thanks!

Ken

 

[richc46]

Welcome
I would go with step 2
Download the free Macrium Reflect, make an image of everything on your drive.
Purchase the new hard drive
Reinstall the image on the new drive.
Done
Using step 3, down the line you have to reinstall everything, all your stuff and software.

 

[gregrocker]

You don't want to offload programs since they benefit from the faster SSD speeds. I'd move the User shell folders to another drive, either using User Folders - Change Default Location or just copy them and then rightclick each to add to the related Library - Include a Folder - Windows 7 Forums then setting the data drive folder as the default folder using Library - Set Save Folder - Windows 7 Help Forums.

Rich showed you how to image over to a larger SSD using Macrium - Image your system however one thing to keep in mind is that if you're still using the original factory preinstalled Win7, that is a grossly inferior install to begin with which wouldn't be used by any tech enthusiast, so consider instead doing the best possible install one can have with a Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 - Windows 7 Help Forums