Windows 10: Hard drive too small to handle Windows 10 updates. Need advice for upgrading C

Long story short- I bought a Dell 7577 a few years back. This is marketed as a gaming laptop, it has a 100 GB SSD C drive and a 1TB hard drive. I'm using the system for development and have several tools that require large hard drive storage requirements that take up a lot of space, most of them have a requirement to utilize the primary hard drive. I've cleared everything I can without impacting my work and I stay around 18-GB of free space on my C drive accounting for OS and development tools, drivers, etc... that must live on C drive. However, that's not enough for the latest Windows 10 updates. I end up with about 8.5 GB of folders-files in my C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder used by Windows Update, then update stops and I get a toast notification popup saying I need to free up more space to install latest updates (so I assume it needs more than the 9.5 GB remaining on my drive after it's 8.5 download). I've followed steps to shut down Windows Update and have wiped ..\SoftwareDistribution to recover the 8.5 GB updater users. However, Windows Update continues with the cycle, so after a few hours it redownloads the 8.5 GB and the cycle continues.

I'd like some advise on stopping this madness. Again, there is no way to further optimize the C drive. I've already gone through steps to clear out the Windows backup that update creates and freed up that space (even with that I hover around 18-GB of free space). I've used WinDirStat cleared all cache/download folders/temporary files. I don't know why Dell put such a tiny little C drive in this system, but what I'd like to do is replace the current C drive with a larger SSD C drive then restore all of my current C drive files to new drive. If I understand correctly the Windows 10 Home edition license dies with the drive that it's on, I'd like to know if this approach would work.

1.) Backup current Windows (drivers, registery, program files, everything) to my 1-TB D drive. I have over 500-GB of free space on this drive and only need 100-GB for a full uncompressed backup. I could also backup to an external SSD, I have a 2-TB external SSD. I need to know best approach for doing the backup-restore if I take this approach.

1. ) Replace current 100-GB C drive with 500-GB C drive.

3.) Install fresh copy of Windows 10 Home edition on new C drive (I assume I must purchase a new Windows 10 Home edition license for this step)

4.) Somehow perform a restore of the backup made in step 1 to the new C drive prevent having to reinstall all drivers, software etc...

Looking for advice on the least path of resistance here. Least expensive way to go about it and also any backup-restore apps that might help.

Thanks!

submitted by /u/rmz76
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:)

 

Windows 10 upgrade rant..

The free space shouldn't prevent you from upgrading to built 1607. I manually upgraded my own laptop which had only 9gigs free space left on the system drive.

I unzipped the Windows 10 Pro anniversary edition ISO on my D drive, and started the upgrade process from there. At one point the installer complained about not having enough free space on the main drive, i just had to point it to the D drive to proceed to the next step. Now the rollback installation is stored there and doesn't clog up the C drive anymore.

In your case you could insert a large sdcard to act as the required rollback drive, i'm pretty sure it would do the trick.

Oh and by the way, if you want to further compress your System files:

• do a search Command Prompt, right-click it, and select Run as administrator.
• Type COMPACT.EXE /CompactOS:always and hit Enter.

You'll will gain anything from 2 to 4 gigs free space after it's done.

 

Windows 10

no, you can't go back..
I suggest creating a backup image of your os drive

 

Windows 7 upgrade to 10 error 0x8007001F - 0x3000D

Before I give a final update on this case, I want to thank everybody who gave suggestions. It's kind of hard to believe that a forum that gives free, tailored, well-informed advice to strangers exists on the internet. Thank you all very, very much.

Here are the steps that I took on my successful upgrade attempt. I don't know which of these steps is necessary or sufficient to complete the upgrade, but in case they prove useful to anyone else:

1. I edited the registry entry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\ProfilesDirectory. It was set to a directory on my E: drive (Windows 7 was installed on my C: drive). I set it to "C:\Users".
2. I created a new user with administrator permissions. That user's User directory appeared on my C: drive.
3. I logged out of all accounts other than the new one, and attempted the upgrade. All hard drives, including the E: drive, remained connected.
4. I unplugged my network cable after the Windows 10 download to skip the 'looking for upgrades' phase.
5. (I did not delete windows.old or windows~BT before attempting this.)

If it would be useful for anyone to see any files from my successful upgrade, I'll be happy to share them--just let me know.