Which version of Win10? 32bit or 64bit on 32GB SSD

I'm fixing an HP Stream notebook used for school homework

Which will create the smallest image? 32bit or 64 bit?
and how MUCH smaller? Can anyone say?

The hardware cannot be upgraded (see below)
Original OS was Win 10 ("about 2 or 3 years ago")

I have successfully re-installed W10 x64 v1909.
File Explorer now reports, (immediately after first Windows update)

19.8 GB used
8.6 GB free
28.4 GB capacity

The user story: "It wasn't working so I tried to reset to factory state,
and that won't complete either, even if left overnight".

On delivery to me the OS didn't run, but the BIOS diagnostics all passed

My guess:
Win10 became bloated with use over time;
User hadn't cleaned up space; so the latest Cum Update killed the system.

Depending on your advice, I'll install the 32 bit version in order to stave off the next recurrence of this space problem.
I've seen several users with similar woes on running out of space on this type of hardware.
Many thanks in advance


spilly

HP Stream 11 Notebook
2GB RAM, 32GB eMMC SSD disk, both hard wired to main board
now at Win 10 1909 1863.836

nightmare machine are you sure they are hard soldered to the board? have you popped the unit open sometime they will say not user serviceable, i bought a laptop recently told me the ram and hard drive was not user serviceable, i popped it open only to find out it had a spare ram slot , and a user serviceable ssd and a secondary user serviceable hard drive. i updated the ram and latter will be doing storage.

spilly said:

Which will create the smallest image? 32bit or 64 bit? and how MUCH smaller? Can anyone say?

I have an Acer Aspire One AOD270 netbook with 2GB RAM and an Intel Atom CPU. I have tried a clean install of both 32 and 64 bit W10 on it, so can give you some real world figures.

32-bit will always have a smaller Windows folder. On my test it was 3.5 GB smaller, 10.6 GB vs 14.1 GB. It will also make less demands on a low spec CPU and will run better in 2GB RAM than 64 bit will.

Last year, I clean installed 64-bit version 1903. Minutes ago, I ran CCleaner, resulting in the following:

spilly said:

used for school homework

If it is used only for homework, consider using Linux.

There is no reason for 64 bit windows on that computer.

spilly said:

I'm fixing an HP Stream notebook

On delivery to me the OS didn't run, but the BIOS diagnostics all passed

Find a camera or smartphone camera to take pictures and upload images into the thread.

Launch the HP UEFI hardware diagnostics > view version > post into the thread > view logs > post images of the tests performed and results into the thread

If able to launch Windows > open disk management > by default some columns are compressed > widen each Status and Volume > make sure the contents within the parenthesis are in full view and that none of the characters are cutoff > view disk 0 > widen this row as needed so that all of the characters are in full view > post an image into the thread
Disk Management - How to Post a Screenshot of

For drive compression, you can check if Windows is installed in the compact state by opening a Command Prompt (Admin) and run:
compact /compactos:query

Code:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>compact /compactos:query
The system is in the Compact state.  It will remain in this state unless an
administrator changes it.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>

To compact the OS the command is:
compact /compactos:always

Code:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>compact /compactos:always
Compressing OS binaries |