is there a way to upgrade my 400 gigabyte pc up?

I have a big problem with my pc. no matter how much files I deleted and clean up, theres always less room!
Do you know any solution around this? While theres a option to expand my pc's storage on the C drive it cannot be clicked!
I got a few usb's but Im afraid its not enough and there are files I need to keep on my pc when I really need it but at the same time storage space is still a issue.

Of course, this laptop was a 256GB machine before I changed it to a 2TB.
You just gotta identify what type of drive you're on first before you upgrade.

If you're PC is from say 2008-2015, chances are you're gonna have a standard sata drive inside that looks like this:

Laptops used 2.5" drives while desktops used 3.5" drives, 3.5" drives require more power but you can plug 2.5" hard drives or SSDs into a 3.5" one just fine.

If it's anything newer (especially considering you're on Windows 11), you've probably got an M.2 SSD instead.
Anything post 2016+ generally uses these

You can literally just buy new SATA / M.2 NVME / M.2 SATA SSDs all over the web, and plug the bigger one into your PC.
(I wouldn't recommend buying the older mechanical spinning harddrives anymore, they're unusable slow to boot Windows 10/11. Just get an SSD for that)
Silicon Power SSDs and Samsungs I've had good luck with on amazon.



Now if you wanna keep the same data across from the old one to the new one, easiest way IMO is to download CloneZilla live, put it onto a USB using Rufus and make a clone from the old drive to the new one when you boot from it.

If you don't have enough ports to use both drives at the same time to do a clone (say it's a laptop), you can get a USB adapter for one prior to the operation.


Once you're in Windows on the newer bigger drive and it's booting correctly, to expand the storage space to the new size, open Disk Management (aka diskmgmt.msc), find your drive and right click the the main partition and click "Expand".


If it's greyed out for whatever reason or in a weird order with something blocking it on the right, you can use Gparted Live to expand it to the rest of the drive instead (THE GOAT of partition editors imo):

The other alternative is people install their Windows from scratch and copy drives from the USB adapter, but I do it this way for my technician job so I don't have to reinstall everything.

Another thing, if you're trying to free space and are out of upgrade options due to financial reasons, check out WinDirStat:

It'll help you find where exactly the bloated files are

thats a lot of info! Im not a technical genius myself so I would be really confused which drives to buy and I am not sure if its worth the risk taking my laptop apart. I do have concerns about the fans inside not cooling my laptop enough and someone said I should replace my soundcard but I don't think thats the case and besides its another issue not a big deal. I am only focusing on cleaning up unwanted files I decided not to use or keep. I used terabox to store the programs and tools I don't think I need but might come in handy in the near future!

k98philgamer said:

thats a lot of info! Im not a technical genius myself so I would be really confused which drives to buy and I am not sure if its worth the risk taking my laptop apart. I do have concerns about the fans inside not cooling my laptop enough and someone said I should replace my soundcard but I don't think thats the case and besides its another issue not a big deal. I am only focusing on cleaning up unwanted files I decided not to use or keep. I used terabox to store the programs and tools I don't think I need but might come in handy in the near future!

Click to expand...

Sound cards are no longer replaceable, that's an early 2000s thing as they're not built in. You can always use a USB one though if it needs replacing!
As for laptops, I find they're are really easy to take apart nowadays, but at the same time this is my primary day job.

99% of the time, you just take off all the visible screws, then use a guitar pick around the edge of the bottom base cover and all the plastic clips will easily let go without breaking or snapping anything.
Do NOT use a flat head screwdriver tho

Use a plastic pick