What are the disadvantages in installing software to a removable devic

I am considering purchasing a small (11.6" screen) laptop which has Windows 10 pre-installed and has an 32GB SSD device - yes very small but very few small laptops have 64GB SSD or larger and they tend to be a lot more expensive than I want to pay since it won't be used a lot.

I intend to use the laptop ONLY when I am traveling and so will only install 2 or 3 applications taking around 2-3GB. I don't want to store images, songs or videos and if I do I will store them on an SD card (laptops usually have an SD slot).

I was thinking that to preserve as much free space on the C: drive (32GB SSD) that I install any programs I want on the SD card (and basically leave only Windows 10 on the C: drive).

What are the disadvantages installing software to a removable device (in this case an SD card which I will leave plugged in all the time) apart from maybe being a bit slower to load?

How much space does a typical Windows 10 take (NOT using NTFS compression)?

jarnie said:

How much space does a typical Windows 10 take (NOT using NTFS compression)?

That question is where you are wrong.

If you buy a 32GB device it absolutely WILL use compression by default. You can check it by running the command compactOS as described here Compact OS - Compress or Uncompress Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

I'm a bit of a fan of compression (so take my claims with a pinch of salt as I might overstate them).

What I'll say though is uncompressed, Windows 64 bit (on its own) will take about 17GB. When you compress it (which will probably make your device faster) it will go to around 7GB. When you delete stuff you don't want (pointless apps) you'll get down to between 3 and 4.

I run 64 bit Windows with full Office 2010 and it takes just under 6GB.

You'll have a problem with upgrades at 32GB as the whole system is uncompressed before the procedure. I had to increase my space assigned from 20GB to 32GB as I could not upgrade even though Windows + Office is less than 6GB.

As for running programs from SD card, I have spent almost a month running the game Divinity Original Sin off a SD card as I didn't have enough space (20GB) to put it on my laptop. It worked absolutely fine - the heat problems were due to my feeble CPU and graphics on my MacBook Pro - not the SD card speed.

You have nothing to worry about there.

Alternatively, consider using portable versions loaded onto SD card or USB stick.

The process is as follows:

1) Use a small footprint ramdisk installed on the laptop,

2) When on the road, run the ramdisk, thus creating a 1-4GB temporary drive from the available RAM,

3) Install/Unzip the portable software onto the temporary drive,

4) Run the software from the created directory,

5) When work is done and saved onto laptop and/or SD, the temporary drive is 'destroyed'.

The caveat is: if the software has user-interface adjustment requirements before work begins, that could be a hassle.

I employ this process with LibreOffice Portable.

Thanks for those excellent replies.

I will see if I can use Compact OS on a display model in the store to check for compression as I am not sure that the laptop I was looking at (with a 32GB SSD) laptop had compression ON as when I asked a salesman could he tell me how much space was already being taken he checked one of the display laptops and advised (I think) 21GB (or maybe 22GB).
That would indicate to me (IMHO) that as the laptop only had W10 installed that it was uncompressed.
UNLESS of course space was also being occupied by the files used to install W10 (I once owned a small laptop (before SSD was available) with VISTA (yuk) pre-installed and the HDD contained a partition dedicated to the Windows installation files so that a 'factory reset' (reinstall Windows) could be achieved.

It concerns me about Windows updates (and compression) although after reading the link (about Compact OS) I notice that it states that it gives back approximately 1.5GB of storage for 32-bit and 2.6GB of storage for 64-bit Windows - not a huge amount.

Having said that if I ensure that Compact OS is OFF AND I only install software (only about 3 or 4 apps taking around 3GB space) on an SD card will I still be sorry that I didn't wait for a laptop with 64GB SSD - I am assuming that with the huge number of models in 11.6" screen laptops that either the manufacturers consider it to be enough OR that the new models will have larger SSD drives as they are now becoming cheaper.

jarnie;/ said:

Having said that if I ensure that Compact OS is OFF AND I only install software (only about 3 or 4 apps taking around 3GB space) on an SD card will I still be sorry that I didn't wait for a laptop with 64GB SSD - I am assuming that with the huge number of models in 11.6" screen laptops that either the manufacturers consider it to be enough OR that the new models will have larger SSD drives as they are now becoming cheaper.

You can definitely compress windows to around 6GB. What you might need to do it delete useless apps like CandyCrush Soda which download automatically and take quite a lot of space. You can save more than 1GB by deleting these pointless apps if you don't want them.

Things you do want you can put on SD card, no problem.

That is absolutely amazing (that "You can definitely compress windows to around 6GB").
I have never seen any software compressed to that extent.
ALTHOUGH after Googling I found the following -
To: How big is Windows 10 on DVD and HDD?
»» x32 (on the DVD ~ 2.5 GB, after installation on the hard disk drive ~ 9.0 GB)
»» x64 (on the DVD ~ 3.5 GB, after installation on the hard disk drive ~11 GB)
Have a look here http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=faq-Windows-10&faq=31
It also shows a screen shot of a PC's storage devices (with W10 installed only) showing C: drive of 29.7GB with 20.9 free (space)! And that must be uncompressed according to ix07

SO W10 doesn't seem to take so much space (installed) as earlier versions of Windows. Maybe the software engineers are "trimming the fat" at last.

Thanks

Hi there

SD cards - especially the Micro type (that can be read with a standard SDHC adapter too) are designed essentially as READ devices - an OS like windows - especially if your device doesn't have a lot of RAM will make a LOT OF WRITES - especially to a page file.

SD cards are OK for OS'es that essentially load mainly into RAM and then don't need many writes. Things like Esxi or small Linux distros can be booted and run from SD cards (assuming the BIOS can boot from the device in the first place).

If you need a portable system my advice would be to put it on to an SSD -- connecting an SSD to the computer via a USB2 (or better USB3_ -->Sata connector gives more adequate performance - even on a USB2 connection.

I run a Windows VM like this when I'm travelling - I have a bootable Linux system on the SSD and then start a Windows VM with my localised copies of OFFICE etc in several languages.

(In fact some places where I've worked at I get Better (by far) response on my Windows VM on the SSD than the Native Windows on the corporate laptops with slow HDD's !!!!)

Cheers
jimbo

I wasn't intending to use an SD card to continually write to.
What I intended to do was
1) Use the built in SSD drive to contain ALL the Windows 10 files (the laptop comes with W10 pre-installed)
2) Install 2 or 3 applications and make the destination for each the SD card. That way I would expect that the laptop would mainly only READ the SD card whenever I started any of the applications I installed there.
The swap file should remain on the SSD drive.
Does this make sense or is it realistic?

If it is an m.2 drive, an upgrade to 128 or 256gb is not that expensive. Check out Amazon.