Podcast: Play in new window | Embed
Dave asked: “I have an HP Stream mini computer. It’s only for streaming. It’s only got 2 gig of RAM and a 32 gig SSD drive. I’ve also got a 1TB usb drive that I’m not currently using. Is there a way to attach a USB drive and move programs and install new programs on that drive. I’d also like to find a way to set some programs, like Netflix, to use that drive for buffering purposes.”
Dave, the only HP Stream computers we know of are the very small, inexpensive Windows computers that HP came out with around the time Google introduced Chromebooks.
Those computers are discontinued now, but they used to have two ways to upgrade their storage, 1) replacing the micro SSD drive inside, 2) just plugging in a USB drive on one of the two ports in the back.
Windows should really just take care of the rest and use the drive. If you want to install program there, just tell Windows that’s where you want them during the installation.
In all seriousness, though, it’s hardly worth upgrading an HP Stream notebook.
As for getting Netflix to use that drive for buffering, that may be harder and it may be counter productive too. Netflix will probably just buffer content on whatever folder the browser is using for cache. You could look into changing that but an internal SSD drive will be faster than an external 1TB drive, and you shouldn’t need 10s of gigs for buffering anyway.
If you really want to do it, after plugging in the drive go into your preferred browser’s settings and look for “cache directory” or “cache folder,” just set that to be a folder on the external drive if you can, but you will probably see better performance if you keep using the SSD.
In all seriousness, though, it’s hardly worth upgrading an HP Stream notebook. An HP 250 G5 notebook with a 15.6” screen, equipped with an 5th Generation Intel Core i3 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a much more reasonable 128GB SSD, is only $299 at Newegg.com. That price includes a Windows 10 license. With a usable configuration like that costing less than $300, it’s hard to imagine upgrading a very low end system like the HP Stream.