Windows.old question

So, I'm a little worried about doing the upcoming upgrade from win 8.1 to win 10. Because during upgrades it creates a windows.old folder which is almost has a complete backup of your C: drive. My only problem is, I have a 120gb SSD and 100gb is already being used. I'm worried that during the upgrade there won't be enough room for my windows.old folder to be created and some folders might just be discarded into the nether.

Does anybody have any info on what will happen in this case?

BunnyJ said:

You can delete it and there will be no issues if you decide that you don't need to roll back. Shawn has instructions but one way to get it done is to use Disk Cleanup.

I know I can delete it. My issue was I was not sure windows would have enough space on my HD to create it in the first place. Since I only have 20gb and windows.old is sometimes larger than that.

BunnyJ said:

It should help out to remove it and see what happens. But, you many want to get a separate HDD and move some of the things you can to that drive. That would free up space. I use an SSD for programs/OS and a separate HDD for data.

Three of my machines have an external drive for files. I keep everything over there except for Windows and my programs.

win 10 build 10135 is roughly 14,4Gb installed

bobsagetfullhou said:

So, I'm a little worried about doing the upcoming upgrade from win 8.1 to win 10. Because during upgrades it creates a windows.old folder which is almost has a complete backup of your C: drive. My only problem is, I have a 120gb SSD and 100gb is already being used. I'm worried that during the upgrade there won't be enough room for my windows.old folder to be created and some folders might just be discarded into the nether.

Does anybody have any info on what will happen in this case?

I'm not sure anyone but MS can give you a definitive answer - you might want to check the Insider community forums to see if that question has been asked & answered. If you don't find the question, ask for more information from MS.
Windows Insider Program - Threads

There might be information in the wiki pages too
Windows Insider Program - Wiki

I suspect that the installer does a pre-check for disk space and bails if there is not enough

The easiest thing to do is move data off the SSD by creating folders on a different drive for Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos. Then add those folders to the respective Libraries. You might also want to make the folder on the 2nd drive the default save location for each type.

I think you can move the Downloads folder in Win7 by right clicking the folder
select the location tab
press move and pick or create a new folder on drive 2
then press ok
answer Yes to do you want to move the files

You might also want to move your temp folder %TEMP%
See if there is a lot of space consumed in temp - clean up what is not needed (probably most of it can be removed)
Then decide if you want to store temporary files on the 2nd drive
This location is defined in Environment variables
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\System > Advanced system settings > Advanced tab > Environment Variables
Change the upper pane (user vars)
Select each var , edit and provide a new folder location
Note: this only defines the location, it does not move any files
This change takes affect after a logout or restart

Moving folders to a 2nd drive implies that the 2nd drive will always be available.

You cannot, unfortunately, move your entire profile - the upgrade will complain (at least it sued to complain) and tell you to move it back to C: