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I have a Dell Inspirion desktop with a 128 GB SSD as the C: drive that is the new postage stamp size BGA form factor. It also has 1 TB HDD as the D: drive. I now believe the 128 GB BGA SSD is too small as a C: drive. I would like to have a C: drive with at least 500 GB. I cannot find a BGA form factor SSD to replace the existing C: drive.
Is it possible to add a SATA SSD to act as the C: drive and abandon the 128 GB BGA form factor SSD?
Thanks for any advice you can offer.
It would pay to check the specifications of your particular model, to see what storage configurations your machine has (i.e. this for Inspiron 3671).
Firstly, with the introduction of SSDs, it has become fairly standard to run with a smaller capacity C: drive. I’m surprised how well my desktop runs with a 120GB C: SSD, which also has a bigger SATA secondary HDD, after initially panicking. You may well find the 128GB drive functions fairly well.
In doing some checking on BGA drives, they are physically smaller than other drive types, so unless you have spare drive bays in your machine, you could struggle. It may also be soldered in to your machine.
PS Topic tags are separated by commas in WordPress (not semi-colons) 🙂
I cannot find a BGA form factor SSD to replace the existing C: drive.
BGA stands for ball-grid array, and it refers to the means that an integrated circuit (chip) is surface-mounted on a PCB. Thus, I believe a BGA SSD would in fact be soldered to the motherboard, and would not be something one could simply replace, as you could with a M.2 SSD. It would be possible to mount a BGA SSD on a M.2 PCB and have it swappable, but at that point it would just be a M.2 SSD anyway.
You could install a SATA (or NVMe, if the board supports it) SSD and install Windows to that, and by default that new drive would be assigned C: by Windows, but you don’t need to do that, even if you have vast amounts of space-hogging programs and data.
If the new drive is faster than the old one, certainly I would not want to put the OS on the slower drive, but if the BGA drive is at least as quick as the new one, you can still make it work. You can install (or symlink, if that’s not an option offered by the installer) programs to locations other than C:/Program Files, and you can relocate all of your data directories too. The 128GB drive is plenty of size for Windows itself, and that’s all it would really have to be for. I have just such a setup for Windows on my desktop, and when I added Linux to it, I added a second 128GB SSD for that. My Windows desktop and all personal data (videos, images, documents) are on the D: drive (a 3TB HDD in this case), and I have a folder called “Large programs” on D: that holds all the big stuff (games, etc.), while I leave the smaller programs on the SSD.
Of course, if you want C: to be bigger because that’s just the way you want it, I definitely get that– it’s your PC, and if you want it set up that way, you can do that. I detest being told how to set things up on my own hardware too.
You could possibly disable the onboard SSD in the UEFI setup, but you could also keep it enabled and put something on it… what you put on it is up to you, but it’s storage space you already paid for, so why not use it?
I have a similar situation in my Acer Swift laptop, which came with 64GB of eMMC storage, soldered-on and non-removable (and there is no option to disable it in the UEFI). It also came with a M.2 SSD slot, which I populated with a 1TB SSD that is considerably quicker than the eMMC drive, so I don’t want to use the eMMC drive as a boot/OS device.
In my case, I am not interested in using Windows 10 that came preinstalled to the eMMC drive, but it would be the same if I had decided to keep using Windows 10. I’d have to move or reinstall Windows to the M.2 drive instead of installing Neon, and then I would have the soldered-on drive that I don’t have a definite use for.
In my case, I left Windows 10 on it (since it’s already paid for as part of the cost of my Swift, and I may use it occasionally for testing or reference purposes… the slower performance doesn’t matter for that), but I shrunk the NTFS partition to 32 GB and used the remainder of the drive for onboard Timeshift (like System Restore for Windows) backups, in case I bork something while I am out and about, when I won’t have access to my usual backups. Most of the time, the eMMC drive is in a low-power state, volumes not mounted, just sitting there, but if I need it, it’s available.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, KDE Neon (and Win 11 for maintenance)
I have Windows on a 100GB partition, of which 48GB are free. I have apps/programs installed on a separate SSD, with the exception of Office and Windows Defender. 128GB may not be suitable for your taste, but it’s more than enough for Windows to run with plenty of breathing room.
Are all programs ok with being installed on a separate drive ? It just seems windows has so much info jammed into so many different places that it may get confused – as if it isnt already! Are there any particular programs that dont care for this approach?
Windows itself won’t be confused. There’s nothing particularly special about the Program Files subdirectory on the C: drive… it’s just the default installation target for nearly all programs. Whether this is the case or not, the various registry entries and shortcuts within the start menu still have to point to the program, wherever it is installed.
That does not mean that the installer for any given program will necessarily give you the option of where to install anything. It’s hit or miss, but all of the really big programs I’ve used in Windows present the option. There’s no excuse for application developers to not offer this, really, but some don’t. With small programs, it really doesn’t make much difference, as they use little space and can easily be installed on C:.
Even if the program installer does not have the option to install to somewhere other than C:, there are ways to make it happen. Windows is able to use symbolic links… they’re very common in the Linux world, but they exist in Windows too. They’re similar to shortcuts, but they are features of the file system, whereas Windows shortcuts are actually small text files with the extension .lnk.
The directory where a program resides can be moved from C: to wherever you want, and you could create a symbolic link, or symlink, in the old location to point to where the directory now actually is. Any attempts to access the program in its old location will be redirected to the new location, unknown to the program itself.
There are also applications that are supposed to be able to move other applications, and to update all of the registry entries and keep everything working. I have never used one of those, as it was never necessary in my Windows-using days. I just used the “custom” option for all the programs I installed, and picked the D: drive for any that were not trivially small.
The small, fast C: drive + large D: drive setup has been common, if not the de facto norm, for a long time, and most application developers are aware of this. My Dell G3 gaming laptop (which I bought about a year ago, so it’s pretty current) had that configuration by default, with Windows 10 preinstaled on the 128GB SSD and a 1TB HDD as D: for data (and presumably most of the games, though that’s up to the owner of the hardware to decide).
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, KDE Neon (and Win 11 for maintenance)
For years I have seen reference to installing applications and saving files to a separate drive for ….why?
[…snipped…]
Can you point me to a posting or tutorial on installation this way?
I think bbearren probably has his own webpage he can point you to, but here’s my position:
Why use a Separate Data Partition?
Why not segregate programs and applications?
I also discuss this topic at the end (18:15 mark) of my video, “Principles of Cloning and Imaging“.
I separate my user data, but I see no point in separating programs.
Disclaimer: I am not a gamer. Certain games may be extraordinarily large and require large amounts of storage space. In that case, it might be wise to move that to a separate partition, but I would leave other programs on the C: partition.
I also discuss this topic at the end (18:15 mark) of my video, “Principles of Cloning and Imaging“.
Dan,
This is an excellent video and explanation of Cloning/Imaging. I’m placing a link to this video in my reference file and I’m sure I’ll be posting that link many times in answering questions on the topic. This should be required reading for anyone new to the process.
Job well done! 😎
Can you point me to a posting or tutorial on installation this way? I’m somewhat comfortable w/ partitions etc…
Indeed. on my web site.
There are two different methods, the Microsoft supported method, and my own method, a bit more extreme, but equally functional.
Thanks to all for the great discussion in response to my original question. I have decided to leave the original configuration alone with the Windows 10 on the 128 GB BGA SSD and merely install the programs on the 1 TB HDD. Thus far everything is working well.
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