As I can't seem to leave well enough alone....

[Jen Stone]

I picked up an HP Stream11 about a month ago and got the 32 gb option thinking it would be fine as I am using the netbook for school work. Less than a month in to owning it...I have 3 gb of hard disk space left.
I've played with ubuntu before and I like the idea of having an operating system on a removable drive and booting from that drive.
I'd like to do the same thing for windows 8.1, especially as I have a 64 gb sd card.
Specifically I'd like to:

1. Move the os from the hard disk to the sd card and make it bootable
2. make the sd card the primary disk
3. use the hard disk and remainder of the sd card for memory, system resources, etc.

Though I am not certain it is actually a possibility. But I'm hoping.

 

System:

Screen Size 11.6 inches Max Screen Resolution 1366x768 pixels Processor 2.16 GHz Intel Celeron RAM 2 GB DDR3L SDRAM Hard Drive 32 GB Wireless Type 802.11bgn Number of USB 2.0 Ports 1 Number of USB 3.0 Ports 1 Average Battery Life (in hours) 8.25 hours

Expand

Other Technical Details

Brand Name HP Series HP Stream Item model number K2L95UA#ABA Hardware Platform PC Operating System Windows 8.1 Item Weight 2.8 pounds Item Dimensions L x W x H 8.10 x 11.81 x 0.78 inches Color Horizon Blue Processor Brand Intel Processor Count 1 Flash Memory Size 32.0 Hard Drive Rotational Speed 5400 RPM Audio-out Ports (#) 1 Batteries: 1 Lithium ion batteries required. (included)    

 

[Dot Matrix]

You can create removable Windows 8.1 media. Hopefully, the last post in this MS Help page can assist you: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-windows_install/how-to-create-windows-8-media-for-re-install/a0b7b322-f6bd-495d-b77f-2f0675d2b1a0

[Dashel]

Why wouldn't you just move your data to the card?  Where is your space going?  

 

If you have Enterprise, you could try Windows to Go.  Or

http://www.avoiderrors.net/create-windows-8-to-go-usb-drive/

[Jen Stone]

My space is going to the programs I've had to download to fulfill class projects. XML notepad, Blue Griffon, Notepad++, the entirety of the MS office suite, Adobe XI, Itunes, Windows Movie Maker, GIMP, etc... In addition to innumerable documents.
Because of all this "stuff" the notebook hangs or freezes. I would love to just allocate the sd card for system resources but to do that I'd have to shift the os to the card and I am not finding an option to do that. I can shift it to a usb drive, not an sd card. 

[floopydoodle]

You will have terrible performance running the OS from an SD-card. Trust me. It will run like molasses.

There are ways to change the path of some of your user account data, programs, temporary files to an external drive.

 

There should be plenty of guides out there if you google it.

[Intersect]

it would be a very bad idea to put your windows installation on a SD card. the performance of those cards will slow down your laptop and as you are using all those applications then you wil need a a very large SD card and iirc there is not one that can accommodate your needs

[Jen Stone]

Well poop. As the sd card has 64 gb, I was hoping to install the os, partition the drive to allocate as much as I could to system resources. :( Thanks all!

[Astra.Xtreme]

Well since the PC has a SSD, you could disable the paging file.  That should get you back 2GB or so.

I've done that for many years on all my PCs with SSDs and there are absolutely no side-effects that I've seen.

 

Also run Disk Cleanup.  You're bound to gain back some space from the Windows Update Cleanup.

[Jen Stone]

I've run disk cleanup, and removed programs I don't want (hunted down as much bloatware as I could find). 
Thanks!

[GotBored]

The HP Steam11 is a budget laptop, it has 2GB of 1333Mhz DDR3 RAM and a dual core Celeron processor.

 

You have 3gb of hard disk space left, its not the hard drive filling up thats causing it to slow down, the laptop was already slow and you just bogged it down with software that eats up a lot of system resources.

 

If you want more space install a larger hard drive but it's not going to affect the speed of the laptop.

[+Warwagon MVC]

Your bottleneck is the CPU and 2GB of ram. While 2GB of ram isn't that bad as soon as you start opening up a few apps Or have a bunch of apps on startup it starts to dwindle quick.

[+BudMan MVC]

Doesn't it come with like 1TB cloud space? Put your docs there or on SD.. As stated running the OS off the SD would be slow as _____. I don't think you can upgrade its storage via like new SSD or anything.. Aren't those suppose to be a chromebook killer sort of laptop.. Not best choice for performance, etc. They are meant for light work loads, surfing, email sort of thing.

[Dashel]

Put your files on OneDrive and selective sync them.  Remove iTunes (really?).  Migrate your other libraries to the external.

 

If you have 3GB free, its not the storage, but the RAM that is causing your hiccups as war notes.  Limit your multi-tasking.

[Tidosho]

The HP Steam11 is a budget laptop, it has 2GB of 1333Mhz DDR3 RAM and a dual core Celeron processor.

Yeah, and looking at the service & maintenance guide for it I see they've underclocked the RAM from 1600 to 1333MHz, so that's a bottleneck too. This machine is horrible. Nothing is upgradeable on it, it's throwaway junk, I hate machines like this.

 

The hard drive can't be upgraded, it isn't even a hard drive, it's soldered eMMC with either 32GB or 64GB, if you want an upgrade it's either a solder rework job or new mainboard. As you say you've had it a month, take it back, and get one you can actually use, and upgrade/tinker with :) HP are Apple copycats, minimalist disposability at its worst and I hate the industry following suit. As you guessed I'm a guy who loves upgradeability and longevity. Your machine comes apart in a total of 13 major parts, not including taking the screen assembly apart.

 

The only user upgradeable part is.... wait for it.... the AC adapter :woot:

[whs37]

These Steam machines are an attempt to compete with the Chromebooks and alike. They are OK for mail, internet browsing and maybe Skype. A good machine for grandma to stay in touch - but not more.

 

The day before black Friday I got this Asus. It is a bit better and was really inexpensive.