Windows 10: System image takes up a lot of space (500GB)

I really do not know what is normal size for a system image of windows 10, but mine takes up 500 GB of 1 TB harddisk. That seems to me a little bit excessive.
Is there a tool I can use to make it smaller without disrupting it.

:)

 

Windows.old takes a lot of space.

Hi, David Haz

After resetting win10, a file called ( windows.old ) was created. It takes a lot of space.

So can I delete it? and if so, Are there side effects on my pc?

Thinks for help.

 

Windows.old takes a lot of space.

Hi,

Windows.old gives you the chance to go back to the previous version of Windows. If you delete the folder, you won't be able to roll back anymore. You can delete it in the File Explorer by right-clicking the folder and select
Delete.

After 30 days from the upgrade, an automatic Disk Cleanup will run and remove Windows.old. If you want to delete it manually via Disk Cleanup, follow the steps below:

• Type Disk Cleanup in Cortana search, right-click the icon and select
  Run as Administrator.
  
• Click Clean up System Files to run, then check the box for Previous versions of Windows.
  
• Click Clean up System Files again.
  
• Check the folder if it's still there in reduced size. It means that further security changes are required to have it completely removed.

Feel free to post back if you need further assistance.

 

What tool did you use? WIndows built-in?

An image made with Macrium Reflect will be about 1/2 the size of the occupied space on the drive that you imaged.

For instance:

If your system drive is 1 TB with 400 GB occupied; the image file will be somewhere near 200 GB.

That's with Macrium standard compression. There is a high compression setting, but as I recall it does NOT save a lot of space.

Your other option is to reduce the space used on C before you make the image. You can use something like Disk Cleanup to help with that, or consider general maintenance such as uninstalling applications you don't use, etc.

If you keep your personal data on C, you can usually make C much smaller by moving your data to some other partition on the same drive or even to another drive entirely.

Then you'd make an image file of that much smaller C, saving a lot of space.

 

oeivinr,

If you have two internal drives then you can reduce your OS drive usage significantly by "relocating" all your own files to the second drive.

• System images capture the whole of the OS drive not just the Windows installation itself so if you have your own files on that drive they will be part of the image. That's why it is currently so large.
• If you relocate your own files, your OS system image will be less than 40GB whichever imaging tool you use because you will only use less than 40GB of your OS drive.
• This arrangement will also make the creation of system images much, much quicker [even on a computer from 2005, my system images only take 25 mins to make & to restore].

If this is relevant to your situation then see Relocating user folders in Windows 7 and Windows 10 - Forum article

If you only have a single disk then you can "partition" it to get the benefits of relocation.

• I cannot find a TenForums tutorial on this subject even though I thought there was one. Perhaps one of the others will chip in with a suitable link for guidance on doing it.
• My own post on the subject is a decent-enough explanation - see my 19th May 2015 post under the username Tryx3.
• If I had to do the job now I would not use the built-in Disk management tool [C:\Windows\System32\diskmgmt.msc] but MiniTool partition wizard [free].

Denis

 

I have a 256Gb SSD and an image with MR takes up 15GB no where near 1/2 of 256Gb... It also takes less that 6 minutes and a restore less than 2 m,inutes.

 

You might want to reread what I wrote:


"If your system drive is 1 TB with 400 GB occupied; the image file will be somewhere near 200 GB."


Similar to you, my image file takes up about 18 GB; occupied space about 32 GB. Drive size 120 GB.

 

Missed Occupied..Old eyes

 

Hi again,

Thanx for all your suggestions, but unfortunately they don't apply to my system because I made a mess of describing it to you.

Let me try again. First of all my, system drive (C*Smile is not 1 TB. It is the data drive (D*Smile which is 1 TB. My system drive is 103 GB. Further more, system image file is not that big, only 90 GB which I think is reasonable and it resides on the D: drive.

What takes up so much space are are the backup periods (backup files), so my question is how many of them can i delete?
I used the windows built-in tool. Backup and restore

 

MS have deprecated their image backup feature and recommend using a 3rd party tool.

Macrium Reflect Free is this forum's overwhelmingly favourite tool, with several excellent tutorials in tutorial section.

Personally, I would delete all backups and start afresh using MRF.

Re. those backups, it sounds like you have schedule set or something like that and it is backing up say daily or weekly.