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We bought my daughter a cheap laptop when she started secondary school 18 months ago. Windows 10 but only 32GB HD
She now wants SIMS4 on it, which we're OK with (birthday money) but it needs best part of 10GB of space which the laptop doesn't have - in fact we have <2GB left. Which is fine for homework files and a few photos but clearly not a lot.
Options are to upgrade it with a new internal HD. I don't have the skills but pretty sure I know someone who does or I could pay someone - and I assume they could overcome trans-installation of programs already on the existing HD.
I could buy an external USB HD - looks like I could get 500GB for about £40. But can you successfully run programs from an external HD - not system programs like Windows or Office, just standalone stuff like SIMS, and also use it for backup and storage of files to minimise the usage of the internal HD.
Or of course we could upgrade the laptop but don't really want to do that if we don't have to.
The option is "upgrade the internal HD", if it has a standard hard drive - the size of 32Gb original drive has me wondering. Can you post up the model ?
Not at all hard to do in the grand scheme of things, if you can read instructions and know not to hold a screwdriver by the pointy end. Befriend a geek, buy him his tipple of choice if you sometimes hold it by the pointy end.
the size of 32Gb original drive has me wondering. Can you post up the model ?
Yeah, something's not right here. That's like late 90s tech, not the sort of thing to be running W10. In fact, I wouldn't install W10 on a partition that small, Windows 98 maybe. Are you sure you're not missing a zero here, 320Gb would be plausible?
Where are you geographically? I'd be happy to sort it out.
Does the 32GB mean that it's one of these new cloud based laptops, like the piece of crap HP Pavilion x2 detachable?
[img] https://psg.i.lithium.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/129915iAA0230415DFD22D5/image-size/original?v=1.0&px=-1 [/img]
Which means upgrading the hard drive is impossible.
Ah, good thinking.
It's a HP Stream - I think 14 but that's only screen size IIRC
Looked up specs to make sure I hadn't missed a zero and haven't but in doing so found it has an SD card slot - could I run programs off that?
http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=X9W65EA&opt=ABU&sel=NTB
Looked up specs to make sure I hadn't missed a zero and haven't but in doing so found it has an SD card slot - could I run programs off that?
You can, and a decently quick 64Gb one can be had for about £15. Decently quick is in SD terms though, it'll still feel pretty slow loading/starting up games. How demanding is Sims 4, do you know? hat Celeron was specced on a budget for low power use, not speed.
For £15, worth a try I guess
My Mrs bought a similarly specced small laptop, without asking me what to get, an HP, with a drive so small you can't do anything with it, it's on win8, and there's not enough free space on it to download and extract the Windows 10 upgrade. So annoying.
Yes HP are that shameless, I think hers is 40gb.
I could just install a pirate copy of win 10 via USB, but she'd freak out at that idea.
They shouldn't be able to sell them with such small drives as they are basically not fit for purpose.
She wanted Ms office suite on it, and there wasn't enough space for that until I removed ITunes, the operating system takes up almost the whole drive, currently there's enough space to save documents, but that's pretty much it.
I could just install a pirate copy of win 10 via USB
You can create a legit install USB with the MS Media Creation Tool.
the operating system takes up almost the whole drive
[url= https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-specifications ]It really shouldn't.[/url]
You could run the game of an external drive, it might take a long time to load but it it should work reasonably well once its loaded if it's just something like the sims.
You can create a legit install USB with the MS Media Creation Tool.
I suppose but the laptop is a POS anyway, once she gets too pissed off, I'll smugly point her in the direction of a grown ups computer hehehe.
johnners - MemberIt really shouldn't.
It does, it's a 40gb drive, there is physically not enough space left over to download and extract win 10 with an existing OS already on the drive.
It does, it's a 40gb drive, there is physically not enough space left over to download and extract win 10 with an existing OS already on the drive.
I get that, but the OS doesn't take more than 15-20Gb. I can see how fitting the old OS, the install files for the new OS and the newly installed OS might be problematic though!
Eho's to say it is even going to be playable on that laptop ignoring the space issue?
That's a good point, these kind of 'laptops' are only really good for surfing the net, watching YouTube and editing documents.