Two Identical Computers / Different Available Disk Space

Bryantom · 03 Jan 2019

My company is test driving Intel Nuc Mini PCs to power digital sign boards. The two I have currently is for testing - if it works out well, we'll buy more. Anyhow, out of the box, I installed the 300+ updates. The SSD is only 32GB so I had to connect a USB drive to download the updates. After installing the updates, I removed applications we'll never use and I ran the Disk Cleanup utility to get rid of other bits we don't need. One computer has 10.4GB free space and the other has 2.61GB free space. The two machines are identical except for one thing -- while searching for folders to purge, I found a Windows.old directory which I made gone with the Disk Cleanup tool. The computer that only has 2.61GB available disk space did not have the Windows.old directory.

What can I do to clear up some disk space on the second computer?

Any help would be appreciated.

Bryan

Caledon Ken · 03 Jan 2019

Hi Bryantom. Welcome to the TenForums @Bryantom

Try something like Treesize to see high level usage.

https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/

Likely something like pagefile or hiberfil (Hidden system files which you can unhid) are possible causes.

You will see in Treesize.

Ken

Bree · 03 Jan 2019

Restore points are another possibility. These are stored in System Volume Information so are not visible in File Explorer, but TreeSize Free run as administrator can show the size occupied.

See: Delete System Restore Points in Windows 10 | Tutorials

Samuria · 03 Jan 2019

Open system storage click on the drive it will show you were files are and an option to remove

bro67 · 03 Jan 2019

Use Treesize or WinDirstat to look at what is taking up space. Just take one machine, make a backup and use that to Restore to the others. You only need one image of what you need, so that all of the other machines will have the same image on them.

Bryantom · 04 Jan 2019

Caledon Ken said:

Hi Bryantom. Welcome to the TenForums @Bryantom

Try something like Treesize to see high level usage.
Ken

This helped a lot. It is much more than what Windows 10 has under the hood. You'll have to forgive me because I'm a Mac tech for thirty years but I dabble in Windows. I found an area within Windows that shows storage usage and within Temporary files it shows 3.5GB being used, but when I click on that option it shows Temp Files, Downloads Folder, etc nothing shows that I can recover that much disk space.

When I used Treesize, I found a directory Windows/SoftwareDistribution/Download taking up 12GB. I deleted the contents and Windows seems like it is stable. Does this folder not empty out after an installation is complete?

Bryan

Caledon Ken · 04 Jan 2019

It doesn't on mine as I found files dating back four months, but not older. No where near that size.

That said something is maintaining as your other system does not have.

Did you have some updates fail or a power down that may have orphaned these files?

I ran disk cleanup and selected Windows Update files, still that folder was not cleaned.

Bree will likely be able to provide a more definitive view on what maintains.

We have a tutorial to reset Windows update which deletes that folder although it clears your history.

12GB is a lot for such a new system. Even a feature update is only around 4GB and as you set machine up I would expect one or two cumulative updates.

bro67 · 04 Jan 2019

You only need that folder if you are going to uninstall or repair files from the device. There are opensource alternatives that do digital signage without the overhead of Windows 10 (Ubuntu IoT Digital signage | Ubuntu for the Internet of Things | Ubuntu). In your case, running Windows 10 IoT would be a better choice.

Bryantom · 07 Jan 2019

Thank you all for the advice. I've recovered a lot of disk space. I will also look into Windows IoT. I will also look into Ubuntu as I'm an expert at installing it but not using it (hee hee). I've used Chrome for digital signage in the past at a K12 school and it worked fine but the digital sign company recommended not using Google Chrome anymore, after they recommended it eight months prior.