7 GB of Disk Space to disappear in Windows 10 v1903
byMark Townsend
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13 Jan, 2019
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Microsoft take control of space management for you
I often speak to Customers about Disk Space Management and some understand and some just glaze over. Many think all of your disk space can be used up before you need to worry and others appreciate 10% should be left free as a working area for Windows. If you have two drives or a partitioned drive and you use C: for the Operating System and D: for Data then you are less likely to get into trouble but the current trend is to just have one large C: Drive and as soon as the free space falls below 10% performance issues start to occur. Windows may begin to protest with messages and if you succeed in getting the free space down to 0% you may find the Computer won't even boot let alone allow you to save the document you are working on. The simple check for this is to open File Explorer and click on 'This PC' if the bar under C: is blue you are fine, if it has already turned red you are in trouble.
The problem has become more apparent with major retailers pushing SSD drives because they operate at 10 times the speed of a conventional drive, but missing out the bit where a 128 GB SSD doesn't hold quite as much as the 1TB HDD you are replacing. If you buy a Computer with an SSD you either have to be really disciplined with what you save or have a 2nd HDD or External Drive for the remainder of your storage. The sale of HP Stream laptops with only a 32 GB SSD have been an even bigger problem because once the Recovery Partition and installation of Windows 10 have been taken away you are barely left with enough room for the next Windows 10 update without you saving anything on the machine yourself.
Once every 6 months a major update or new version of Windows 10 is launched and this is a change from previous Operating Systems. You really need 6 - 8 GB of free space to be able to download it and install it. If you haven't got enough space you will experience a succession of failures which in the worst case scenario results in your entire Operating becoming unusable and you need to call for support. In other circumstances Windows keeps running on the old version but after missing 3 version updates (18 months) you will receive a message advising you that your version of Windows 10 will cease to be supported. You may be slightly surprised to see this when Windows 7 which has been around for more than 10 years is still being supported. Microsoft feel that they have tried hard to get customers to understand the importance of free space without success and have therefore taken the interesting step from Windows 10 v1903 (19H1) of reserving 7 GB of free space for themselves by taking it away from the customer. This feature is known as 'Reserved Storage'. This will start at 7 GB but may and almost certainly will increase with future releases. Advanced users will be able to access the settings and change the amount but not remove it altogether. The important thing to note however is that if you change it to a low figure to suit yourself as soon as the reserved storage is used your free space will be grabbed as before and if you don't have any the issues highlighted above will still occur.
For customers thinking of purchasing a new Computer I recommend avoiding 128 GB SSD's and opting for a 256 GB as a minimum unless of course there is a second drive for your data. For those who are completely confused or have already run into problems due to lack of disk space Churchdown Computers are here to help. Just call Mark on 07557 483438, e-mail mark@churchdowncomputers.co.uk or fill out the form at the bottom of theContact page.
