How to install Windows apps on an SD card or USB drive

With increasing demand for tablets and laptops, many manufacturers have introduced new, inexpensive Windows tablets and laptops. These inexpensive electronic gadgets usually offer little internal disk space like 16GB OR 32GB space which is not enough to store everything. It is true to say that Windows and basic software take the maximum space and you are not left with any space to store applications, games, photos, and other files. You can add more space in your laptops and tabs by installing Windows apps on an SD card or USB drive. All you need is to get one that supports USB 3.0, the fastest USB version.

Set up the SD Card or Flash Drive for Window apps

For any SD card or flash drive to store Windows 8 apps, require to be set in a certain file system format, known as NTFS. Open the card and click on the File Explorer window, then search for your removable storage, right-click to select Properties. If the SD card is not in the NTFS format, you can convert it easily. Before converting the SD card ensure that you copied all the files and folders to another location before proceeding. If your SD card is already formatted to NTFS then also you need to create a separate folder on the drive that will hold the data for your Windows 8 apps. The process is simple:

Open a File Explorer window-> navigate to the drive-> create a folder (name it “Windows Apps,” “Win8Apps”)

Inside the folder Windows will create a sub-folder for every installed application. It is the easiest way to get more disk space.

It is difficult to find any alternative for the graphical interface to have the modern-style Windows Store apps. These heavy files consume a ton of disk space. You can now store these applications onto removable storage. If you have the registry hack in both Windows 8 and 8.1 then it can help you to conserve your internal disk space.

When you want to get a successful storage then try to get the fastest, highest performance SD card that your system support. SD card size is another important aspect you need to keep in mind because there are tablets that take the small MicroSD cards, then the regular-sized SD cards.

If not SD card, then you can use a USB flash drive for extra storage space, or any system you must get one that supports USB 3.0 because it is the fastest USB version yet. While buying the USB flash drive, try to get a mini low-profile drive that doesn’t extend out of the USB port much. This way you can prevent accidental damage which is common when using or storing your device when the drive is inserted.

when you complete the backing up of any existing files on the card or drive, you are ready to format it just by right-clicking the drive’s icon and if you have touch screen then tap the touch screens for a little longer then select Format. Do check that the NTFS is selected for the File System in the Format dialog window, and also check the box near the bottom to see that NTFS is there in the Quick Format as well.