How can I free up drive space

Adriaan Jansens · 03 Apr 2017

How can I free up drive space from the Windows installer folder without killing Windows?

NavyLCDR · 03 Apr 2017

Option Two here:
Open and Use Disk Cleanup in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials

EdTittel · 03 Apr 2017

Dear Adrian:
NavyLCDR is absolutely right, but there's more you can do above and beyond Disk Cleanup. I've blogged or written about this topic many times, so here are some links:
1. SearchEnterpriseDesktop "How to create more Windows 10 disk space"
2. CIO.com: "How to reduce Windows 10's on-disk footprint"
3. Windows Enterprise Desktop blog "Another Nice System Drive Cleanup Maneuver"
4. Pearson QUE: "Reducing the Amount of Storage Space Required for Windows Driver Store"
You will also find tutorials here at TenForums that describe how to move folder locations from the boot/system drive to other drives (a great way to free up space on tight boot/system drives) by running this search.
For really constrained disk situations, this tutorial is also quite helpful: Compress or Uncompress Windows 10 with Compact OS - Windows 10 General Tips Tutorials .
HTH,
--Ed--

Bree · 03 Apr 2017

To find out just how much can be recovered, in an elevated command prompt type:
dism /online /cleanup-image /analyzeComponentStore

For your options, type:
dism /online /cleanup-image /?

The most powerful (Note the WARNING!) being the ResetBase option:

Code:

/Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup [/ResetBase [/Defer]]
  Use /StartComponentCleanup to clean up the superseded components and reduce
  the size of the component store. Use /ResetBase to reset the base of
  superseded components, which can further reduce the component store size.
  Use /Defer with /ResetBase to defer long-running cleanup operations to the
  next automatic maintenance.
 
 WARNING!  The installed Windows Updates cannot be uninstalled after the
  /StartComponentCleanup with /ResetBase operation is completed.

My system has been progressively updated since the initial upgrade to 10240 in July 2015. ResetBase recovered some 3-4GB, and that's on top of regularly using Disk Clean-up to clean up system files and windows updates.