If I update to W11 can I put in on another drive?

Darujhistan · 4 Mar 2024 at 12:38

TLDR, running low on space on oldish W10 SSD - 120GB, i've only got about 12GB of prgrams on there, so god knows what's happening, I'd rather stay on W10 but moving it is a massive faff and I have no external drives.

ED209 · 4 Mar 2024 at 12:58

Have you tried running disk clean up? see if this finds the cause of the lack of space or tried tree size free?

Darujhistan · 4 Mar 2024 at 13:25

ED209 said:
Have you tried running disk clean up? see if this finds the cause of the lack of space or tried tree size free?

Yeah i've de-fragged, it doesn't save me any space, what is "tree size free"?

TheVoice · 4 Mar 2024 at 13:29

Not defragging, disk clean-up. Run it, then choose Clean System Files and scroll through the list to see if anything on there is taking up a lot of space. You can usually safely delete any/all of them.

Tree Size Free is a program that shows you which files/folders are taking up the most space on your drives.

Darujhistan · 4 Mar 2024 at 13:31

TheVoice said:
Not defragging, disk clean-up. Run it, then choose Clean System Files and scroll through the list to see if anything on there is taking up a lot of space. You can usually safely delete any/all of them.

Tree Size Free is a program that shows you which files/folders are taking up the most space on your drives.

Yeah done that too.

Darujhistan · 4 Mar 2024 at 13:38

Managed to free up about 6.5 gig on an old Apple folder I didn't see without using tree-free, i'm at 8.8GB free now i'm - W10 is at about 58GB now, which seems high.

ED209 · 4 Mar 2024 at 13:49

Darujhistan said:
Managed to free up about 6.5 gig on an old Apple folder I didn't see without using tree-free, i'm at 8.8GB free now i'm - W10 is at about 58GB now, which seems high.

Nice, you can stay on Windows 10 then if you wish.

If you do decide to go down the Windows 11 route I would use the current drive to update to Windows 11 and make sure its activated.

Once confirmed activated I would then do a clean install on a bigger drive and it should then activate via your Microsoft account or hardware ID once you have internet access.

Darujhistan · 4 Mar 2024 at 13:51

ED209 said:
Nice, you can stay on Windows 10 then if you wish.

If you do decide to go down the Windows 11 route I would use the current drive to update to Windows 11 and make sure its activated.

Once confirmed activated I would then do a clean install on a bigger drive and it should then activate via your Microsoft account or hardware ID once you have internet access.

Thanks, my boot drive SSD must be 10 years old now, so probably safer to move OS to something newer in the near future.

ED209 · 4 Mar 2024 at 14:38

Darujhistan said:
Thanks, my boot drive SSD must be 10 years old now, so probably safer to move OS to something newer in the near future.

Its doing well then if its that old.

I remember when these first came out and they where quite a lot of money but these days a 1TB drive is quite cheap.

Mcnumpty2323 · 4 Mar 2024 at 15:41

If you prefer to stay on 10
Just buy a bigger ssd or get an m2 assuming
Motherboard supports one
Then clone your existing windows 10 drive to it

After time stuff builds up in certain places
Appdata and winsxs folders for example
And it's a bit dodgy
Deleting stuff in those
Which is probably why it's taking up more space

Darujhistan · 4 Mar 2024 at 17:53

Mcnumpty2323 said:
If you prefer to stay on 10
Just buy a bigger ssd or get an m2 assuming
Motherboard supports one
Then clone your existing windows 10 drive to it

After time stuff builds up in certain places
Appdata and winsxs folders for example
And it's a bit dodgy
Deleting stuff in those
Which is probably why it's taking up more space

I've got the drives already, a 1TB NVME and 2TB SSD. So i'll clone it.

darael · 4 Mar 2024 at 19:13

When running Disk Clean-up, did you run it as an administrator? When you run it normally, there will be a Clean up system files button on the bottom left - this is usually an indicator that you didn't run it as an administrator, but clicking the button has the same effect.

Have you upgraded Windows 10 in the past? If so, there might be upgrade files remaining that you could probably safely delete.

If possible, post screnshots from Treesize free. I'm gambling a large WinSxS folder in the Windows folder or forgotten about upgrade files, like Windows.old.

You might be able to get the size down further using some DISM commands.

adidan · 4 Mar 2024 at 20:05

A general note for future reference, never defrag an SSD. It won't do anything other than maybe use up write cycles.

willhub · 5 Mar 2024 at 09:48

This issue of windows consuming more and more disk space over time I don't think there is anyway to avoid it entirely.

As far as I know the only ways realistically are, using a third party uninstaller for any applications to be removed, so REVO Uninstaller.
Run disc cleanup regular
Remove any restore points regular.
Remove hibernation file

That's about it to stop clutter as far as I know.

Another thing about Windows that grinds my gears, is all the foldrs created randomly by things such as XBGP, program files on other drives etc.. I want all my games in a single games folder.

Opening up the HDD folders is like opening the sh** drawer in the gouse.

ANONANON · 14 Mar 2024 at 18:48

If you got enough memory, disable or shrink the page file. Yoir ssd will thank you for it. Right click my computer and its in there somewhere.