Windows 8 Windows takes two much space

[pacoramirez]

I have recently bought a Samsung ativ book 9 lite. Generally I'm happy with it but not at all with the bad usage of the disk space it has. It is supposed to have 128GB but:
1) It has a recover partition which takes up to 18GB (I think I should remove this one, what do you think of this?).
2) Windows folder takes up to 20GB (even before installing any update). Winsxs folder takes almost 10GB.

So finally, after this I have just 70GB left from the 128GB. So well, at this point I have made my research in order to gain space from the windows folder without good results. I have tried to run the commands specified here but it didn't work. One of the commands was running for hours and it wasn't able to finish (or I didn't give it enough time). Anyway, I have been working with different OSs and I don't remember they were as space consuming as this one looks like.

Do you have any hint on how I could proceed to gain some more space?. Thanks in advance!

 

[Jimbo22]

To answer your first question; you can, but if you do, you will have no way to reset it to factory condition. Seeing that it doesn't have a DVD drive, reinstalling from an ISO is out. You could use a bootable USB, but I've not tried it. Although there or those out there that swear by it. As to question #2, this is the problem with a small size SSD. You have to options for this, 1 is to get a larger SSD and transfer old to new. Or see if your laptop has space for a 2nd drive, if so, install a 500 GB HDD and use that for all your data and the SSD for the OS and Office.

 

[pacoramirez]

Thank you very much for your answer. To be honest, I don't care too much of that recovery since I don't mind to install a clean version of w8 (instead of the samsung intoxicated one). So I could use a bootable usb with w8. However I'm not that sure if I could have my warranty voided removing this partition. So far I have read, it shouldn't imply that but I want to be sure.

Maybe I should just remove this partition and reinstall a clean version of W8 which should take less space than the samsung one.

 

[Jimbo22]

As for the warranty issue; I'd contact Samsung directly, but my guess would be yes - it would void the warranty. Simply because you are changing the original content of the install media. It' doesn't take much to void warranties these days.

As long as you have a viable re-install media source to do a clean install - your only option in this case is using a usb thumb drive - and comfortable doing so. Then go for it. Like you say, no need for the Samsung intoxicated one.

 

[sirloyne]

You also have to realize that when they say it's a 128GB drive, they're using base 10 math, but Windows uses binary math. Quick answer, multiply the drive size by .9317 to see how much space you're actually starting with and go from there. In your case, with a 128 GB drive, you're only getting 119.25GB. That might explain some of the used space.