Installing apps to SD card windows 10 featured image

Installing Applications to SD Card in Windows 10

A few months ago I bought cheap a tablet running Android and Windows 10 (no regrets so far). With this came the desire to run full versions of Windows specific applications portably, using either a tethered connection or readily accessible WiFi.

screamingfrog
Running a minimal Screaming Frog crawl over a tethered mobile data connection.

This is impractical, given that tablets have limited on-board storage. We may only have 8GB to work with. But SD cards are cheap ( I’ve seen branded 128GB micro SD cards for £35 at the moment).

The release of Windows 10 included a disabled ‘install to SD card‘ feature pegged for a future release, so I was unable write this post until then. The ‘Threshold 2‘ or ‘November‘ update re-enabled this feature.

Installing Apps to SD in Windows 10

  1. Update Windows 10 to Threshold 2 (or just the latest update).
  2. Settings > System > Storage > Save Locations > New apps will save to SD Card
  3. When installing new programs, be sure to select a location on the SD card, as it still may default to the C: drive.
  4. Enjoy running Photoshop etc on a under-powered device.
  5. Disable Windows 10 services until stuff works.

This means your tablet won’t be filling up unnecessarily.

Although trite, the fact that you can run full versions of Windows software on a cheap, low power consumption device with WiFi and bluetooth etc is worth thinking about. Once you set up remote desktop (or similar) you potentially have always-on access to a Windows box from anywhere with an internet connection. One that can have a lot of different tools installed.

gsasertablet
For my spamming friends.

This is nice for anything you need to leave running, or only need to use occasionally. If you need this to be fast, get a VPS (and throw some money at it) or use a decent laptop with an ethernet connection instead.

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