Advice needed please on expanding memory and adding portable HDD to my laptop.

CoastingHatbox

This might be down to personal preference, but I think it is much better to not install third party software to clean up windows.

Every additional piece of third party software is potentially another avenue for introducing exploits and malware. And this actually happened with ccleaner: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3225407/ccleaner-downloads-infected-malware.html

Increasingly miscreants find that compromising a popular piece of software in order to distribute backdoors/bots/malware is easier than actually trying to exploit systems directly.

SurferDan

We had this problem with an Acer Spin 1 laptop which is very similar to the GEOBook
The answer is to add more memory with a MicroSD card.
The GEOBook has 64GB of internal storage but will accept MicroSD cards up to 64GB so all you need to do is get a 64GB MicroSD card set it up as additional memory and at will allow you to do the update to Windows.
I've done this on 2 Acer Spin laptops and both are running Windows 10 version 20H2.
64GB Micro SD cards are cheap and you'll have additional memory installed after the update completes.

grumpycrab

Surferdan - I know what you mean but the MicroSD card is used to provide more disk space, rather than to provide more memory.  Again, depending on exact model (still waiting for OP to tell us his) if you turn your laptop upside down and you see a rectangular flap with 2 screws, you can add a disk in there too (an "M.2 Solid State Drive" this time**), but again, depends on model.
**And if you have the M.2 slot, you can boot from it too, but that's me getting a bit carried away.

odollybird

Hi, it is a Geobook 1M - 32gb, it hasn't got a rectangular flap on the underside.
i have run it through the disk clean up and still only got 1.81gb free 

 

grumpycrab

odollybird said:

Hi, it is a Geobook 1M - 32gb

Shame. In that case... backup any docs, settings, licenses... and clean install Windows10's latest from USB media
(create USB at  https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10 )
Boot the Geobook from the created USB and clean install to the 32GB drive  (license applied automatically).  As recommended by SurferDan and others?) use an SD card to give Windows10 space to put pics, docs, apps etc.

debitcardmayhem

And if using an sd card, I would also use a usb disk for saving backups and also copy them to cloud storage

CoastingHatbox

odollybird said:

Hi, it is a Geobook 1M - 32gb, it hasn't got a rectangular flap on the underside.
i have run it through the disk clean up and still only got 1.81gb free 

 

Okay, if you have done both cleanups (temporary files and system files) the next step, which usually really helps is to do a ComponentCleanup with something called DISM. This will make it impossible to roll back certain updates, but it will free up a fair degree of space. It will not affect the ability to apply future updates.

1. Open the start menu
2. Type 'powershell' into the search box
3. Right click the PowerShell icon and click 'Run as Administrator' from the context menu
4. In the PowerShell console window (blue background) that pops up, type: Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase
5. Press <return> and wait for the command to run, it can take a quite while
6. Once it has completed, type exit and press <return> to close the PowerShell window

Let us know how you get on.

SurferDan

Grumpycrab, ok perhaps my use of the word memory was inaccurate and you assumed I meant RAM (short term memory).

The GeoBook needs more " storage" for the temporary files it needs for the update. Installing a MicroSD card does just that.

As stated in my previous post I've done the update on two Acer Spin 1 laptops. It works.  

odollybird

Hi, me again, so I have mounted a 128gb sd card into C drive but is doesn't actually show right see enclosed pics, also previously to doing this I did try to do a clean install of windows but would not let me due to not enough space. 

debitcardmayhem

The SD card is showing, read this on how to use it for doing updates https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/free-up-space-for-windows-10-updates-429b12ba-f514-be0b-4924-ca6d16fa1d65