To retain better experience, you may want to free up the disk space of your SSD and move program files and program files (x86) from SSD to HDD.īackup OS before moving programs to another driveĪll operations involving system drive are risky, e.g. a misused registry can cause your computer to crash. In this case, you usually have one or more spare physical hard drive, and already migrate OS to smaller SSD in Windows 7/8/10/11. Situation 2: Move program files to different physical disk You could consider moving program files and program files (x86) from C drive to D drive or other partition with enough space, then save the newly installed software to new partition instead of C drive. In this case, you may be bothered low disk space warning and performance but only one internal disk. Situation 1: Move program files to another drive on the same disk Take it a step further, you may face the following situations: If you don't want to uninstall them, the remaining method might be moving program files to another location.
As time goes by, the system partition may run out of space owing to increasing programs, and the PC may slow down as well. The situation could be more severe if you install a large amount of software on the computer. Most programs are installed in C: drive by default. When need to move program files to another drive?
One of the key points is to take the right approach, and the other is to make a system image backup first, so that you can get the PC back to normal when something goes wrong. In that case, you may wonder how to move program files to another drive in Windows 11/10/8/7. The two application folders, Program Files for 64-bit programs and Program Files (x86) for 32-bit programs, are hard-wired into Windows. Things can go wrong if they are not where they’re supposed to be. If you drag them to another location directly, most of the programs on Windows 11/10/8/7 may stop working or do not respond correctly. But when it comes to moving program files, you may end up finding it's a totally different matter. Why is that? Transferring files or folders to another drive is not difficult - just copy and paste them. Why can't I move program files to another drive directly?