Many Windows computer users with small SSD system disks (128 – 256 GB) are falling into the same trap: Although the initial hardware requirements for the operating system installation seemed sufficient with these disks (about 20 GB for Windows 7/8 and 40 GB for Windows 10), the continued usage of Windows OS gradually uses up any free space left on the disk.
At first, Windows users feel safe installing software on their default drive, even when it only has 128GB of storage space. In addition, Windows updates, drivers, settings, application and system caches, logs and user files are all saved on the system disk as well. After 1-2 years of running Window OS with a small SSD, most Windows users run out of free space on the system disk.
While it is possible to free space by moving personal files onto an additional larger disk, about 80% of space on the system disk would be still occupied by installed software and system files.
Uninstalling and reinstalling software on a new disk seems like a tedious and error prone solution in this situation. The better solution would be to relocate installed software to a new disk as-is. Eventually, Windows provided a built-in technology that makes such relocation possible. The technology, called junction points, allows a Windows user to anchor the paths of some source folders on one disk to the target folder on another disk. Users can free up space on their system disk by moving application folders’ content to another drive and anchoring their original locations to the new folders. This allows them to keep the rest of their application components like shortcuts, registries, and configurations.
PickMeApp provides an intuitive and user-friendly solution to move installed programs to another disk. Once a user chooses to relocate one or several installed applications, PickMeApp takes on all necessary operations necessary to perform the relocation of an installed software.
PickMeApp calculates required disk space, identifies application folders that are safe to relocate, moves applications folders to a new destination, cleans up leftover data and confirms application integrity after relocation. PickMeApp may undo any unsuccessful relocation and keeps the computer save state throughout the relocation process. In some cases, restarting the computer and running PickMeApp again is required to complete a relocation.
Relocated software works seamlessly with management operations such as running, terminating, capturing, uninstalling, and upgrading installed software. After uninstalling an application, PickMeApp will cleanup any leftover application data and will preserve relocated applications after the upgrade in most cases. Users can always revert the relocation by installing software back to its original installation location.
PickMeApp supports relocating applications on all Windows operating systems with NTFS drivers, starting from Windows XP SP3 and up. By using PickMeApp to move applications on another disk, users will effectively free up 95-99% of system disk space that was previously occupied by installed applications. In future releases, PickMeApp will provide a solution for freeing even more space, which will further prolong the life span of Windows computers with small SSD disks.