You might use your personal computer to do any number of activities, including working, watching movies and videos, connecting with friends and family, or gaming. All the files you save onto your PC can accumulate over time until you finally run out memory space. The good thing is, there are ways to expand computer storage beyond the initial amount you have. We list a few such techniques here.
Add Another Internal Drive
Some computer motherboards have open bays for additional storage drives. When you run out of memory, you can open your computer case and check to see whether you have this option. If you do, installing another hard disk drive or solid-state drive is often simply a matter of connecting them to the board or plugging them into the corresponding slot. Just make sure you purchase drives that have the correct connectors. When selecting a storage drive, you must first figure out the kind of hardware interface it uses. Examples include SATA or PCIe. Modern M.2 drives frequently use PCIe, whereas hard disk drives use SATA in most cases.
Connect To an External Drive
If you don’t have a way to internally add storage drives, you can instead hook up an external drive using a USB connection. Certain hard disk drives are built specifically for this purpose, complete with their own protective casing. The downside to this type of drive is that they can be a bit bulky and crowd your computer setup. If you would like an alternative option, you can use an adaptor to turn a regular storage drive into one that plugs into the computer through an outside USB cable. You won’t get as much physical fortification, but you will be able to quickly switch between multiple drives. For example, if you want to use several M.2 NVMe SSDs (solid-state drives), you can connect and easily swap between them with an SSD docking base.
Use a Network-Attached Storage Drive
A less well-known way to expand computer storage is to use a network-attached storage (NAS) drive. Instead of linking directly to your computer, a NAS drive attaches to your router via an ethernet port. The NAS drive acts as a personal cloud system, as all the devices on your network can communicate with it and save data on it via wi-fi. Aside from making your extra storage system accessible on more than one device, an additional advantage of a NAS drive is that it keeps your computer’s USB ports open for other peripherals.
