Windows 10: When will windows 10 delete windows old folder

Hi,
I've had windows installed since 31st July. Runs like a dream now and so well pleased with it. I thought that the old windows 7 - in the windows_old folder would be deleted by now. There was a restart of my computer and I thought that would have done it, but it was only the installation of a driver for the laptop touch pad. Shall I just delete this folder or let Microsoft do it some time in the future?

:)

 

is it safe to delete windows.old

Yes, safe to delete.
Windows.old Folder - Delete in Windows 10

 

Windows 10 Creators update overwrote Windows Old

I can't believe how Windows Update has just deleted, without any prompting, thousands of valuable photo and document files.

I reinstalled Windows 10 from a BSOD and, helpfully, Windows retained my user files in the Windows Old directory where they remained happily and accessible until last week.

Without any prompting or option to decline, Windows 10 installed the Creators update overnight. I woke in the morning to find that desktop shortcuts to my Windows Old folder had been removed and that the folder itself had also been deleted and overwritten
by a new Windows Old folder made by the Creators update - the Windows 10 installation Old folder containing my valuable documents had been deleted and replaced by a new Old folder.

It's just unbelievable that this can happen and be seen as legitimate behaviour.

I've checked the documentation available for the Old folder and a number of official sources do tend to describe it as a user accessible backup folder especially when a Windows 10 repair install is not possible and when a fresh install is needed.

So the question is what the hell is going on when, out of the blue and without any warning, a download masquerading as a Windows update, nukes backup files stored in a user accessible directory?

blue and without any warning, a Windows Update

***Post moved by the moderator to the appropriate forum category.***

 

Hello steve1711 the tutorial by Brink below may be of some help.

Windows.old Folder - Delete in Windows 10

 

Wow - thanks for the info. I have loads of space on my hard drive so I might just leave it be. What I thought would happen is after 30 days windows would automatically delete the folder. I guess I'll wait and see.

 

Just checked computer after I booted up today. The Windows_old folder is now empty. Will mark this as sorted.

 

Of course this is not the end.

Using Acronis Disk Director, for example to look into unlabelled partitions on the boot drive.
The is now an additional partition.
where there was a 350MB NTFS with
Recovery
Recovery/Logs
Recovery/WindowsRE files: boot.sdi, Reagent.xml, Winre.wim
System Volume Information files tracking.log
all the above files with dates of 2013 or 2014

then there is the same kind of partition of 450MB this time
Recovery
Recovery/WindowsRE
System Volume Information
(no Recovery/Logs) this time.
Same file names in the directories indicated before but now with 2015 August 13 dates except for boot.sdi which is july 10.

That is a remnant of Windows 8 remains.

The question is: is it deletable or do uuid's or guid's lurk within.

John

 

Hi johng,

These partitions are recovery partitions as you may have guessed, accessible when you can't boot into windows.
1 is from Microsoft and 1 is from the manufacturer (motherboard manufacturer when using a desktop).

I wouldn't delete any of them. I have 4 of them, in case 1 of them fails I have 3 left.

 

I have boot.sdi with last maintained date of 2015/7/10 also. This is on a clean install though so it is not a remnant of anything (I have it in C:\Windows\Recovery\WindowsRE as I only have one partition).

Don't delete it - it is an empty RAM disk template used for running recovery.

 

Yes I am well aware of them I have had to semi-manually had to create them in doing a messy recovery and conversion to GPT.

But the point is that what is left over is a mixture of Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.

John

 

Indeed that you should have but in my case after an upgrade I have Windows 8.1 remnants as well as Windows 10.

 

I don't know if you did a clean install and since when you have your pc, but I doubt that it is a lefover from windows 8.1, see halasz reply #7 for a part of the reason.

 

I specifically did not do a clean install, and reading halasz reply #7 he specifically did. Not sure what you are saying.

 

I am not sure if it is true what I'm going to say, but my guess would be that that recovery partition is not from windows 8.1 but from the manufacturer from the time you first started your pc.

Again this is just a wild guess since I don't know when you get your pc.

 

Attachment 35430

The point is in your new 450MB partition you have boot.sdi with a last modification date of July 10. I have one in my recovery directory with the same date. This must be when MS last modified it in preparation for packaging 10240 RTM. The creation date here - 8th August is when I clean installed.





If this is the same for you then this specific file you mention isn't something left from your upgrade (although there may well be something else of course).

I've just checked my 10532 Hyper-V VM (which is also a clean install). This creates a 500MB system reserved partition and the last modification date of boot.sdi is 23 August (10532 was released on 27th).