Windows 10: System and reserved files use 70GB. How delete them?

Hi guys,

I know this is a very old thread, but I'm hoping someone can help, as the original problem is very similar to my own.

I have a near new MSI Stealth laptop, which was pretty pricey and should have a 2TB drive, which it technically does, but it turns out this is the D: drive only. My C: drive SSD is about 120GB, and this is what I keep most off my programs on, as I've heard D: drive should be kept free. Though I haven't downloaded extreme amounts of programs, only a few that are fairly low in memory size, and have only one small album of photos in there (hardly any documents, no videos, instead I keep everything in my unlimited Google Drive), and have tried repeatedly to delete any unused programs, apps, files etc, it consistently says over 100GB is used up out of 120GB!

If you see the attached screenshot (below), I checked my storage usage, and over 77GB of this is down to 'System & Reserved'.





I downloaded Wiztree, as suggested earlier in this thread, and have included a screenshot of this too (below). However, it appears a large percentage of the files belong in folders called 'Systems Volume Information' and 'Windows'.





I've opened these two folders up in the third screenshot (below). Can anyone tell me, as their names seem to imply they're fairly important (as opposed to being associated with a dispensable or non-essential program), can I delete files from these folders, and which would be safest to delete?





Thanks if you can help! Happy to provide more screenshots if necessary, but as there are so many folders/subfolders, I got a bit lost!

 

Welcome to TenForums @lemonteajunkie

Well, Windows is your operating system, there's some reclaimable space there, but 'System Volume Information' is almost all reclaimable.

Windows keeps backups of all the windows updates you have received. These can be safely deleted. All your restore points are kept in the 'System Volume Information' folder and it's this that's taking up a lot of space. The safe way to clean up both is to run Disk Clean up and click its 'Clean up system files' button.

On the 'More options' tab you can delete all but the most recent restore point. On the 'Disk Cleanup' tab you should see 'Update backup files', tick the box next to this (and anything else you think you won't want to keep) then click OK.

Open and Use Disk Cleanup in Windows 10

The amount of space allowed for restore points can be managed, you may want to reduce the maximum size.

Change System Protection Max Storage Size for Drive in Windows 10

 

Hi,

Why would that be ? While it's easier to have programs installed on the system drive, anything else can easily be saved to that 1Tb drive.
I run several W10 installs on partitions no larger than 35 Gb with no problems at all. A 120Gb drive is ample, it's just a matter of avoiding all the clutter that piles up after a while as @Bree pointed out.

If you'd use an imaging program such as Macrium Reflect on a regular basis you really do not need 'System Restore".

I also would turn off hibernation on an SSD if you do not strictly need it. Another 3.5 Gb saved.

Cheers, *Wink

 

@Bree and @fdegrove thank you both for your quick replies! Definitely didn't expect that, especially on such an old thread.
@Bree thanks for the suggestion. I've tried what you mentioned before (disk cleanup, and cleaning system files), based on what I've read elsewhere, and now tried again, this time ticking all the options (though the Update backup files option wasn't present), and it still says 105GB out of 119GB being used up unfortunately! I don't think the restore points are the main problem in this case. As my laptop is only a few months old (I think maybe 2 months?), perhaps it hasn't had to make that many restore points as yet?
@fdegrove well, I read somewhere that, while it's of course possible to store files in the D: drive, and I've done it myself for a couple of things that I know I could easily regain if lost (e.g. downloadable video games), that it apparently 'isn't good to use it' because it's meant to be used as a 'recovery drive' or something? As you can probably tell, I'm no expert, so I have no idea if this is true or really that much of an issue, but I just read that it isn't advisable to store things on there, so I've limited how many things I do keep there. Do let me know if there's any reason this isn't the case, and I can always transfer all my downloaded programs etc onto D: drive.

However, as you can see from my screenshots, the amount of memory taken up by apps (i.e. programs I guess) is only about 12%, and those are the only things I've added there myself. As I said, I hardly any documents or photos in C: drive, only some game files which add up to less than 4 - 5GB, no videos etc. Game The problem is the 'Systems & Reserved'.

As for the 'Systems Volume Information' and 'Windows' folders, not sure if I should transfer these to D: drive, as they seem quite vital to me? i.e. I'm not sure I should mess with them too much! Again, let me know if I'm being overcautious, or if there's anything of a large size that I could safely delete in those folders. 75GB is still ridiculously large to me! Makes more sense to combat that, than the 14.3GB used up for the relatively few apps I have.

Thanks for both of your comments so far though!

 

You'd be surprised. Apart from automatic restore points, each windows update creates its own restore point. It's worth checking with Option One in the link I gave earlier, the screenshot at step 8 will tell you the current usage.

You have also have had an upgrade, as evidenced by the windows.old and $WINDOWS.~BT folders in your second screenshot. It could have been the Creators update, but it's not unknown for OEMs to supply PCs with a 1511 image pre-installed which promptly upgrades to 1607 on first use. Either way, it's one more thing that can be deleted. This should be listed in Disk Clean up as something like 'previous windows installations' when you use 'Clean up system files'.

 

@Bree I see, it says my system protection is disabled, but that I have 41.45 current disk space usage for system protection. Is there a particular maximum you would suggest?

I cannot seem to delete the windows.old folder, as it keeps saying it is open or being used by another program, even after I close down WizTree, other folders etc. This happens via either normal file explorer and with WizTree.

The $WINDOWS.~BT folder is also greyed out and can't be deleted or opened from WizTree (unless it's already been deleted?). I cannot right-click it to open the folder either.

When I did the disk cleanup and 'clean up system files', I had already ticked everything that came up, and cleaned up everything I could. When I tried it again just now, the total that could have been deleted totalled only 250MB, which would put hardly a dent in the 77GB excess I have.

 

Download WC.bat and run it as admin. Removing Windows Backup will prevent restoring old files.

​Restore Files or Folders from File History in Windows 10 Windows 10 Backup Restore Tutorials

 

@TairikuOkami i tried your suggestion, but when I right-click and select 'Run as administrator', literally nothing happens? Is there a particular program that I need in order to open and run it? I tried to select Edit as well, as I read it can be opened in Notepad, but again nothing

 

Interesting. Copy this to CMD as admin:

vssadmin delete shadows /for=c: /all /quiet

 

@TairikuOkami

OK, when I do that, I get the following message:

vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool(C) Copyright 2001-2013 Microsoft Corp.

 

That looks correct. The '/quiet' option meant that you'd not see any other messages while it ran (except perhaps any error message, which apparently you didn't have). How's the free space look now?

 

Come to think of it, there was someone else on tenforums with a similar problem (I can not find the link), removing backups did nothing, but lowering the size helped to get rid of it, you can try that.

vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /Maxsize=320MB

 

Wow, now it's down to 55.9GB from 105GB or whatever it was before! Fantastic! Can I ask if that is a command I should carry out regularly??

Thanks so much @TairikuOkami @Bree and @fdegrove for all your help! If there's anything more you feel I can do to get rid of more space, happy to hear more suggestions.

 

ok @TairikuOkami, will do that too, thanks!

 

You might want to increase it to the desired size afterwards, for system restore and backups to work.

vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /Maxsize=10GB

Those 2 commands should help a little as well.

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase
cleanmgr /sageset:65535 & cleanmgr /sagerun:65535

Then there are typical cleaning apps like CCleaner and Wise Disk Cleaner (system slimming).