Wow, Post! 1000 ...

Ok, I hope I can give you something interesting.

With my new Setup (A Laptop Ryzen 5300 ) I had a Problem
The SSD was very small (256 GB vs my main System with 6 TB of SSD's . It was a heavy change for me)

So I had the idea, why should I not use the SD card . There are Cards with 2 TB
and for €50 you can get 512 GB cards . (For me, I had a 200Gb lying around from a sale some weeks ago for around 15-16 €)

But will this work? (TL:DR . Yes, with nearly no Problem)

First thing was clear. Unbloating the Windows which came with it (Windows 11 at least, it will give support for the next few years . Another Topic.)

So after every stupid Game, every useless App. I had 2-3 GB more space.

Next step was some custom stuff (Menu left, stop off auto Updates everything on manual, some other little tweaks and stuff but nothing groundbreaking )

So, after the setup. Reaper on the main drive. (just for the flow)
Of course, I couldn't use every very heavy sample software I would normally use. Next thing was to decide what to take and what to leave, also, which software had a good copy protection, if I got the laptop stolen (deactivating Software from another PC was one, the other was so many that I would not bother me, if I would lose a license. It would be bad if a €400 laptop was stolen, but a f... pain in the a.. If there were, a few thousands of software on it at the same time.) (I have some exceptions, like Enrage, too good to not be used.)

So physical modeling was one of the keys to keep everything small.
(AAS bundle has only a few 100MB )
And I had to remove a lot of similar software, from my normal day use list. (who needs 10 Reverbs)

After that, I did some, ok still enough Space, decisions (Omnisphere and Trillian , Amplitude 5)
Interesting side fact, Omnisphere loads nearly as fast from the SD card than from my SSD .

ATM:
53GB SD Card
134GB SSD
free Space

Now to the Problems :
Not every Plugin had a proper Install path. Many I had to move manually to the SD card .
(ATM, I have 2 Izotope Plugs not working thanks to the next Problem).
NEVER START WITH A INSERTED USB STICK. (The USB stick will be Path D: and the SD card will become E: ,so every path will be scrubbed. Very annoying)

On the hardware, I use a USB- Hub (3 Ports with 2 USB-A and a USB-C too few for me)

I hope at least somebody finds this interesting.

Thanks for Two and a Half good year here .

 

I did this about 6 months ago for my internet laptop, my music PC is separate and offline only.
My laptop is old and has a Msata drive I used to have my OS's on one partition and my important user files on another.
Now I got a 1TB SD card for all my files and my OS's stay on the internal Msata with no important stuff, dual boot linux OS's on internal Msata and now I have the room I can add more linux OS's.
It makes it so much easier to move files from one computer to another. If my laptop ever dies I just have to unplug my files and move them.
The 1TB was very expensive, sandisk extreme, but I think it was worth it for ease of use and peace of mind if my laptop ever dies and I cant get my files back. Of course I still back up the SD once a month.

 

A SD card or any card is likely to be broken one time. It is safer to get a larger SSD. A 1GB or 2GB is not that expensive these days

 

I have friends who have had SD cards for decades and still going, of course it depends on the quality and brand. All data should be backed up no matter what drive you use.

 

Heavy depends on write cycles
In my case, nearly everything is read only. So this should take some years.

Also, the next step is a Steam Deck to use for this (still waiting )
they only come with 2230 SSD (Expensive and hard to get in compare to classic Sata or normal M2 drives )

So this was just a prof of concept for me