Windows 10 windows 10 64 bit size question

[bizz]

Hi all.I bought a new Asus 403 laptop with Windows 10 64 bit.32 GB ssd. figured windows 10 would be about 5 or 6 GB, programs the same. would leave me between 15 to 20 GB to play around with, hook up extra usb drive for storage/update etc.
Anniversary update problems from the get go. not enough space. browsed around.main problem:can't hook up extra usb drive for the update (option not given). nice..then i looked inside the machine on my C drive.Turned out Windows alone, without the program files was hogging 19.8 GB up on my C drive! another 3.5 GB on program files(x86 and other). 1.45 GB e support.
It doesn't make any sense to me..
Microsoft seems to want to open up the windows but closing the emergency exit (shutting usb ports, not letting you stop automatic updates and other gripes).give with one hand and taking with the other. end of grunt..
But mea culpa if i just trapped myself in buying a laptop with such limited storage.i plead ignorance or better, innocence.but 19.8 GB for windows space? come on!

I'm not able to offload files to bring up enough space for the anniversay update. And i'm not sure if any automatic update will go through now. but maybe that's a good thing?

 

[zirkoni]

You could download the Windows 10 AU iso (to external storage if necessary), create a bootable USB flash drive or DVD and make a clean install.
Of course then you'd have to reinstall all your applications, etc...

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

I ran into a similar problem with a Customer's netbook earlier this year when he tried to upgrade to W10 from W8.1. He had the 32GB SSD drive same size as yours. He had it for 3 or 4 years, so relatively new. When I got it to my workbench from the Customer I noticed while testing it, the capacity of the SSD drive was only like 24GB instead of the 29GB or 30GB that should be there after the overhead of drive formatting via NTFS reduces the total useable capacity of the drive (32GB).

I solved this problem by doing 3 things. #1: I backed up all his data to external media and then used windows Disk Management tool to Extend his Volume to the maximum capacity of the drive around 29GB or so. This picked up about 5GB; but the W10 upgrade needs at least 9.3GB (or it did earlier this year) in order to work. Customer had his SSD drive about 98% full; so he had like 22.5GB out of 24GB used; no space to do anything. #2: I then looked at his data in his Library folders and saw he had several GB of data including Browsing History and Cookies just sitting there taking up space; I cleared all this off to external media backup. Regained some more space. #3: Went into his Programs and Features applet and saw he had like 60 or 70 programs installed including stuff like MS Office 2013 and some photo editing software. He had several toolbars *most of which contain viruses* in there and a bunch of freeware, over two-thirds of which he was no longer using. I then pruned off all of those unused or unneeded programs and picked up a few more GB of space. After doing all this, I got his used space down about 10GB to <19GB and I was then able to run the W10 upgrade and it worked perfectly!

The moral of this story is that your Hindsight is 20/20 about purchasing such a small hard drive; this is not a size that will allow your laptop to really store much of anything such as documents, pictures, videos/movies, music, etc. It's meant to be what we call an "Internet Applicance" we call it in the biz; which was an idea that came out with the "Earth Station" which came out in the 80s. It was similar to the All-in-One computers now prevalent from Dell and HP. It was a keyboard-computer, the computer guts were all inside of the keyboard and you just needed to plug in an external monitor or TV and a mouse to it and off you go. It disappeared shortly due to failing sales, but the idea was sound. Now Intel and Lenovo have TV-Computer Sticks for about $100 that do the same sort of thing in the size of a pack of gum. Sorry to divert there. Just some perspective on what the laptop guys are thinking when they give you a hard drive size that hasn't come on laptops for 15-20 years.

I would go into your Programs and Features and see if you have more than about 5 programs installed that aren't part of windows, and if you have more than that you'll need to remove all of them to get enough space to do anything with a laptop drive that small. Also, you'll need to pare down all your library folders as I mentioned in my little repair anecdote above as well. According to the ASUS site, they give you 500GB or 1/2TB of free Cloud storage with your laptop, you can offload all your non-essential library data to that location. Or use the free Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive (included with W10). Even the laptop makers realize just how small 32GB is nowadays, and that's why they give you free Cloud Storage, because you have pretty much no room to store anything on that laptop drive AS YOU HAVE OBSERVED! And if you are trying to do an OS update such as one of the 7 AU updates released since Aug. 2nd; pretty much no Bueno unless you have just about nothing saved there. Remember that new Cell. phones now come with more memory than you have with that laptop (my new LG-Android came with 64GB and my wife's iPhone6Splus came with 128GB). Of course Cell. phone apps are WAY smaller than PC/Laptop apps because they have to be; but I have like 40 or more apps installed on my phone and still have room to spare. I think you're getting the picture now, and the lightbulb has come on that's floating over your head now.

Another route to consider and you can't wrap your head around having no ability to save anything or add programs to the factory build on your laptop that ASUS gave you, why not consider replacing the SSD drive in your laptop to something reasonable such as a 250GB or larger SSD drive. You can use Macrium, Acronis, or EASETodo image backup software to make an image of the W10 on your current 32GB drive, throw in a larger capacity SSD and then restore the image onto the new SSD drive and you'll have oodles of room to spare. New SSD drives such as the Kingston 240GB SSD are only $79.99 US at newegg: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 2.5" 240GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SV300S37A/240G-Newegg.com.
That's certainly cheaper than junking that new laptop, as it's pretty much unusable for most traditional computing needs. If you've never swapped out a drive before in a laptop, consider taking it to your local Computer Pro or repair shop; they can do it for $140-$180 US or so, and that includes the new drive.

EDIT: We've only tested 3 brands of SSD drives to work with W10 computers; Kingston, Intel, and Crucial. Keep this in mind when purchasing your new SSD drive!

Hope that helps.
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

 

[Neemobeer]

A based Windows 10 install should be around 13-14GBs, this doesn't include updates. If you open an elevated command prompt and run the command DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase you may be able to clean up some of the update data.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Interesting... haven't seen that one before.

 

[Neemobeer]

It basically removes superseded updates and component assemblies.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

My Windows installation takes 19.1 Gigabytes of disk space, but you also have to consider the Users folder, which will grow over time.

My Users Folder takes 56 Gigabytes of disk space, plus a few basic things in the Programs Files and Program Files (x86) folder.

I have all my software installed on other drives except for a few basic programs and Windows components that default to C:\.

My Swap File uses about 5 Gigabytes of space, so that even with my software installed on other drives my C:\ drive uses almost 100 GB of disk space.

I run CCleaner every day so my computer is very clean, as to junk and temp files.

Prior to the recent clean install of Windows 10, Windows alone was using over 32 Gigs of disk space that I couldn't pare down because of Driver Store and other balky folders.

You may find that 32 GB just isn't enough space to have your C:\ drive on.

Times have changed, my first Windows install, Windows 3.1 took 17 Megabytes of disk space, from a 140 Megabyte hard drive.

I have my Windows install on a 250 GB SSD.

Mike

 

[bizz]

Yes, you all make valid points and suggestions. Thank you. As it is my wife and i mainly use it as a daily surfing/email/facebook comp as i also have an old Dell pc that's a tad old now and would like to use less (Vista goes with old software).Tablets don't really do it for me. I don't intend to put a lot of stuff on the new laptop, certainly no vids /pictures. And i do have several external ssds i can hook up. Apart from some programs there's actually very little data on my new laptop. I will consider moving some stuff to the cloud to make space but i think it would still not create enough room for the anni update. starting anew and creating an windows10 iso on a stick/ssd drive is an option but i'm a little hesitant. windows 10 is so new so i might actually wait with iso mirroring/ major updates until some bugs have been dealt with.I just wish i could get some minor updates without having to free up 10 gigs or more.I've downloaded the anni file which is only 15mb but ms still wants me to free the space.i could obviously buy a bigger ssd and mirror the OS. and a tad more memory (i have 2g) wouldn't go amiss either. i knew that i was taking a chance but that anni update really bit me.

 

[bizz]

Hi


Times have changed, my first Windows install, Windows 3.1 took 17 Megabytes of disk space, from a 140 Megabyte hard drive.

Mike

Yes, it seems OS space is of no concern nowadays as hard discs are so cheap. Unless you, like me, go ssd. I made a miscalculation with the OS space on a small one. My ASUS shouldve come with a health warning

 

[bizz]

Now Intel and Lenovo have TV-Computer Sticks for about $100 that do the same sort of thing in the size of a pack of gum. Sorry to divert there. Just some perspective on what the laptop guys are thinking when they give you a hard drive size that hasn't come on laptops for 15-20 years.
I think you're getting the picture now, and the lightbulb has come on that's floating over your head now.

Oh yes, lightbulb certainly. I did consider one of those brick mini pc's before as my video card in my Dell crashed, cause i have a few monitors, keyboards laying around. But a laptop is just more pickupable isn't it? and at least it has a decent screen, keyboard, usb inputs etc compared to a tablet.

EDIT: We've only tested 3 brands of SSD drives to work with W10 computers; Kingston, Intel, and Crucial. Keep this in mind when purchasing your new SSD drive!
THAT'S VERY HELPFUL INFO, BIGBEAR!

Hope that helps.
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

 

[bizz]

another thing: i've been digging into USER file size. According to my C drive my own user partition is 1.6 GB in size, but if i go into the folders/files itself there's only 300 mb used ( including all the folders). Is the rest maybe in the Windows section?

The more i look at it the better a bigger ssd looks..

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Oh yeah! You're right about that, bizz. In my opinion, all Chinese-made laptops need to come with a warning--especially the so-called class of Gaming laptops propaganda out there. The exclusion here seems to be Dell and Samsung; my 2 favorite brands. Lenovo and ASUS used to be good brands when they were being built here in the US a decade ago. Laptops used to be built to last 10 years, as did desktops, but thanks to HP and all the other guys moving their factories and jobs to China, they are building disposable laptops and PCs that are only built to last as long as the extended warranties run out; 2-3 years tops! Guess what, there is a rumor that laptops in China are now being made in the same factories over there as Cell. phones are; talk about planned Obsolescence. Cell. phones are only being built to last the same time period, 2-3 years, so it comes as no surprise that I'm seeing quite a few laptops coming in for repair that aren't even 2 years old yet. Makes you wonder, huh?

In fooling around with W10 for over 2 years now, as Mike indicated in his post, you really need a minimum of a 120GB SSD drive in order to fit W10 OS and a few apps; say 5-15 onto that computer drive and have enough space to store some documents, photos, bookmarks, etc. I tried fitting it on 40-80GB, and there's just not enough room to operate, as once your OS, Office suite such as MS Office 2016 or Open Office, a desktop publishing suite such as Adobe CS Elements3, a security suite such as Avast Internet Security or Norton Security (used to be Norton Internet Security), and some backstop antispyware or firewall programs, and you hit the wall pretty quickly since windows needs a MINIMUM of 25% free space to operate nominally. If you do the Math, on a 100GB drive to make it easy, that only leaves you 25GB for all of those things I just mentioned! That's ridiculously small, Bro'! At that point in my discussion before, since W10 is so bulky compared to other OSes such as Cell. phone OSes which are shrunk down to very minimal size such as Android, and IOS (iPhone), it just doesn't make any sense. You could squeeze more out of that ASUS laptop if you switched to Linux light such as Lubuntu, or Mint, or Puppy-Linux. However, that takes a learning curve which most people aren't willing to do. Imagine the average consumer every 2 years has an aneurism when Microsoft comes out with a new version of Windows, they have to learn that one, then another one in 2 years, another 2 years, etc. Go through the waiting stage since most home users wait 6 mos. -2 years before making the jump from all the negative press a brand new Windows version gets. Imagine yourself switching to Linux; how long would that take you to do? I've been fooling around with for 10 years, and am only now building dual-boot machines with W10 and Linux on them. But, how would your wife do if you switched your Laptop to Linux? Can you train her? Would she be willing? Or would you be constantly bombarded with help requests to do something as simple as read an email or print a document? That's the downside; but the upside is that a lot of the Cell. phone OSes run on Linux and it has extremely small footprint compared to W10 and is much more suitable for mobile devices with very limited storage capacity. Remember just a few years ago, if your Cell. phone had 8GB or 16GB in it, that was HUGE! Such as the iPhone4s. You certainly can't run W10, W8.1 or earlier versions on drives that small as Mike referenced. So, I'm done backing the bus over it; you need to get a bigger drive, or use that laptop you spent hundreds of dollars on as an Internet appliance a la 10 year old Cell. phone mode.

Best,
BBJ

 

[bizz]

Yes, Bigbear. It seems we're falling in the gap of the planned obsolescence once again, this time accelerated by the mobile form factor. I've resisted buying a laptop for years because they used to be too bulky and then with the netbooks too under powered. As you really do need an ssd you have to fork out at least 300 to get decent space/specs for an item that doesn't last more than a few years. I feel w W10 MS has a system that works on both mobile and pc. The latter used to include laptops but i think it's more of a mobile+ device while hogging a full OS now.
As the small mobile os is limited but works ok maybe one is better off buying a convertible tablet and hook it up to keyboard/mouse, saving your files online just in case. But i still wouldnt buy a Surface type one because for that money i still want a PC with a full OS. If those PC makers are now building things to last only a few years, like you said, i'd be better off getting an old one with a new motherboard and install XP or Vista.Or yes, go Linux. My laptop already runs into issues (not enough memory and dropped internet connection notifications).
Or i could jump ship and finally go MAC. But then i'd probably be better off getting an iPhone as well. And i despise iTunes.

I wonder if i could get a mobile W10 OS on my laptop?

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

I agree with all you said. Sounds like were on the same page here. If you rebuild an old PC or laptop, please avoid XP as it's had no security updates from Microsoft since April 14, 2014 (over 2 years), and Vista will be end-of-lifed in 2018 (only 2 years from now), and messages from browsers such as Chrome are popping up on all my Customer PCs with Vista that Chrome won't be supporting Vista or XP any longer. That's been showing up since earlier this summer. Either of those 2 OSes are now plaything-targets for budding Hackers and Script-Kiddies. You can't use XP for any kind of online banking, credit card puchases, government or HMO websites, so it's pretty much worthless unless you are using that PC to play online Poker-Stars or something. Vista is going bye-bye shortly after. I'd consider at least W7 or W8; it's not as dependent on the whole MS update game, and at least on those OSes you can disable all the updates, and they are going to only have monthly instead of weekly push updates going forward. Rebuilding them will be a pain if you don't have factory Recovery Media however as you will how to now go to the Microsoft Update Catalog to get updates and service packs; uggghhh!!

I've been building dual-boot Windows-Linux systems for a few years now, and that's not a bad way to go. As far as the Mac, I've never been able to justify a $1,000+ price tag for their super basic entry level laptop. Í wouldn't mind having one--well actually I do, a MacSE c1991 which I keep in a duffle bag for emergencies. But, I've yet to get the darn thing on the Internet! LOL.

Instead of waiting for MS to put out a Mobile OS that would run on a laptop, you could try to get one of their Mobile Tablet OSes say and run it on your desktop PC in VMware or Hyper-V virtual mode. Or consider using a lightweight Linux version such as Lubuntu or Puppy-Linux. There are tons of version of these, and just about any of those would fit easily onto your 32GB SSD drive. Still, at some point you'll need a real PC to do any serious work. But, again, if you are just occasionally checking your email, and reading entertainment news, facebooking, and maybe some Poker Stars, you can do that with a lightweight Linux on that laptop. Or you could let me perform Mobo extraction surgery on it and I can add it to my trophy wall:


Hope that proves insightful for you.
Have a fantastic weekend!
<<<BBJ>>>

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi again.

I just want to add that the reason you don't have enough space to update it probably because Windows has to create a Windows.old file when it updates.

This file can be pretty large since it has all the stuff on your C:\ drive in it.

This file can be eliminated after the upgrade, but if you don't have the room to create it, Windows won't upgrade.

Mike