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Don’t get me wrong, if you need to get a lot of storage space for your PC, the simplest thing you can do is buy one SSD big enough to meet all your needs. But it’s not the cheapest or most efficient option. If you really want to optimize your computer, there are some alternatives you should try.

Add a second SSD dedicated to demanding things like video games

Admittedly, this is mostly relevant to gamers, but it’s valuable advice all the same. Games will run fine being stored on your primary OS, but there are some advantages to getting a second dedicated SSD for them. First up, by dividing the load of gaming and regular PC operations between two separate SSDs, you’ll extend both of their lifespans to some extent, since you won’t be utilizing just one SSD for literally everything on your PC. Mind you, wear mostly happens through write cycles and you won’t be writing much to disk when loading level data, but distributing the load doesn’t hurt.

Second, even though SSDs are fast, they can potentially slow down just a little bit if they start filling up, so the performance on each SSD alone could be a little better than if everything was crammed onto one SSD.

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Separating the files like this also provides a certain level of redundancy, as even SSDs aren’t immune to data corruption. With two SSDs, you at least have one survivor if something befalls the other. You can always back up the data on either storage device, but having layers of redundancy certainly never hurts.

Get a big hard drive for data that doesn’t need ultra-fast read and write speeds

Hard drives are objectively inferior to SSDs, falling far behind in performance, especially when it comes to speed. But the thing is, not every file on your PC needs high speed. OS files and video games would absolutely benefit from an SSD, but most other files can be slapped into a 4TB HDD and experience no loss in performance or quality. Music, movies, old photos and videos, backups, and even OS images are all things you probably only access occasionally, and they don’t need the blazing speeds of an SSD.

Credit: Western Digital

Regular hard drives are not only a reliable way to store all that non-critical data, but they are a lot cheaper than SSDs too. Even a 4TB hard drive will only set you back about $70-$90 these days. With this type of storage setup, you can not only keep your SSD free from cluttering files that don’t need to be there, but you may even be able to save money by freeing up so much space that you only need to buy a smaller SSD to meet your needs in the first place.

Move your user folders to another drive

I think everyone has a ton of files in their user folders, cluttering up the “Documents” and “Downloads” tabs. I’m sure some people actually sort through these occasionally, but I sure don’t, and they ultimately take up a lot of space on my main SSD. Why let that stand? Most people don’t actually need the potentially gigabytes of files in their user folders. But if you don’t want to delete them outright, you can at least move them to another drive.

To do this, click on the folder you want to move, select “Properties”, go to the “Location” tab, and choose a new location on a separate drive. This usually won’t break any dependencies (in some rare cases, certain software might be upset by the relocated files, but you can always move them back if this becomes an issue) but it will free up some space on your SSD. And hey, you may even find some things in those user folders worth deleting while you’re at it. You’d be surprised by how much space you may be able to free up.

Setting up a NAS can be a little complicated, but it is a fantastic addition to a primary SSD, especially when you use it for archival data or streaming media. These things don’t need to waste space on your SSD. If you have an SSD-only PC, it’s better to keep your high-priority data on the SSD while moving all that other stuff elsewhere. You can transfer photos, backups, or your Plex library, among other things, to save space.

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If you don’t want to buy a NAS, you can always build your own. You can re-purpose an old PC as a NAS with the right equipment and know-how. This will allow your SSD to keep its lifespan free of the wear and tear of write-heavy backups from photos, videos, and streaming. Granted, setting up your own NAS is understandably more complicated than just buying a big SSD, but it is more efficient if you know how to make it happen.

Synology 2 Bay NAS DiskStation DS220+

Ultimately, there are many different ways you can set up your PC storage, and it’s really a balancing act between simplicity and cost or a bit of added complexity and efficiency. In the end, it’s not like your PC will massively suffer from just using one big SSD, but there are better ways to do things if you care about it. If you don’t have pressing storage concerns, you may not even need to do anything fancy with your storage. There are other ways you can maximize storage on Windows too.