Can I make my PC faster if I store Files on D drive? The answer is yes. This post aims to tell you how to speed up your computer by storing files on D drive or moving files to D drive.
I have a Dell PC that has started to slow down considerably over the past couple of months. I was looking around for things to speed it up (e.g disc-clean-up, defrag etc) and noticed, rather naively, that the C drive (which is a HDD) is over half full, whereas there's a whole 1TB SSD D drive that is almost completely empty. I imagine there are a lot of quick wins to be hand by switching a lot of things over to the D drive, but I don't know what would be best to move there and how best to do this safely. Many thanks."
- From Microsoft community
People usually ask "Can I make my PC faster if I store files on D drive?" when they find their computer performs slower and slower because of C drive full and D dive empty. To figure out the answer, you need to understand the basic usage of C drive and D drive.
The C drive is the main partition when Windows operating system is installed for the first time. Followed by other crucial system-related files stored on it, C drive is also called a system partition. When you download applications or programs from the website and don't do anything at set-up stage, they will be stored on C drive by default, together with the Windows system. That's why your computer gets slow if a large number of files are taking up the free space of C drive.
Compared with C drive, D drive is usually a secondary hard drive installed on a computer, often served as the restore partition. For example, you can store your essential files here as a recovery option, if something wrong happens to your computer, you can recover your data from it.
So, is it OK to store files on D drive? We can see from the above content that the D drive can be seen as a partition used to store data files, thus, it's highly recommended to leave vital data files and programs on the C drive and store others on the D drive or other drives. As long as there is enough space on the C drive, your computer can certainly run faster.
After knowing the necessity of keeping files or folders on D drive, what we are going to talk about is how you can store them on D drive so as to make your personal computer run faster. For those to be installed in the future and those already installed, different methods should be applied in the target situation. Thus, we'll recommend methods from these two aspects.
Firstly, as mentioned above, since the C drive is the default partition, if you don't change the store path when starting downloading, all the files you download from the Internet will be stored on the C drive. Therefore, this part will tell you how to change the default save path to avoid C drive full issue in the beginning.
Windows settings is a simple way to change the default download path so that the future files will be stored in the D drive or other new locations.
Step 1. Right click "Windows" button and choose "Settings".
Step 2. Click "System" > "Storage" > "Change where new content is saved".
Step 3. Choose D drive as the new save location. After setting, the new contend will be saved on D drive by default.
To change default download location Windows 10, you can use web browser like Chrome or Firefox to make the file be automatically saved to D drive instead of C in the future.
Step 1. Open your web browser.
Step 2. Click on the "Settings and more" 3-dot option. Then, select "Settings".
Step 3. Click "View advanced settings" under "Advanced settings".
Step 4. Under "Downloads", click on "Change" to change the default save path to D drive.
How about those files that have been downloaded in C drive? How can you move them without breaking things? Don't worry, in addition to the Windows built-in features like "Move" and "Registry", the following content will introduce a safer and easier way to help you figure out "Can I make my PC faster if I store files on D drive".
It's a versatile and powerful app mover named AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional that makes a great difference. It's compatible with Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, XP, and Vista and featured with "App Mover" function that can transfer files, folders, programs applications, etc, from C drive to D drive, or from one partition to another as you like.
Tip: If you don't want to move your programs and files one by one, AOMEI software offers you a feature to clone a partition from one to another. With it, all the data on the C drive will be transferred to D drive quickly.
Here is a demo version, you can download it and follow the guide below to have a try.
Step 1. Install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant, click "Free up" on the top panel and then choose "App Mover".
Step 2. In the new window, click "Move Folders".
Step 3. Select the files or folders you want to transfer, choose D drive as a new location (Here is G drive), and click "Move". Please make sure the target drive has sufficient free space to store selected files, if not, you can extend partition in advance.
Step 4. You will see a pop-up message to confirm forcibly closing running applications when moving starts. Click "OK" to begin the process.
Step 5. Wait for a while, click "Finish"and the movement is completed.
After the movement of files from C drive to D drive, you can test the speed of your hard drive to check whether your computer run faster than before, which can also be realized by AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. It provids Simple mode and Pro mode for you to choose. Since Simple mode only gives a general result of disk speed, we highly recommend you to use Pro Mode directly which will make a comprehensive check of your hard drive. The steps are as follows.
Step 1. Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Click the "Test" menu and select "Disk Speed Test".
Step 2. The Simple Mode is selected by default, please click "Pro Mode" to test your hard drive in a more accurate way.
Step 3. In the new window, you can change the default settings as your like: Random or Sequential, Average or Maximum speed, Test Size, Number and Duration (click the drop down box to see the range you can set). After everything is set, click "Start" to begin testing.
Step 4. When the test gets done, you are able to see the result directly on the interface, and you can choose to export the result as you like: text or screenshot.
Note: It's good to form a habit of testing your disk speed regularly so that you can know whether your computer needs to be optimized. As we can see, storing files on D drive is one of the workable ways to improve your computer performance. What is worth mentioning is that AOMEI software can not only work as a disk speed test tool, but also a disk optimizer providing various useful functions in speeding up your computer like cleaning up junk files or deleting large files.
Can I make my PC faster if I store Files on D drive? The answer is definitely yes. From this passage, you have learned not only how to move files to D drive in a secure way, but also how to test your disk speed to make sure you can take instant measures in the future. AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional plays a vital role in both of two aspects. Additionally, its Disk clone, OS migration, and MBR2GPT conversion are also enthusiastically welcomed by the majority of users across the world.