Did you know your Windows computer is wasting gigabytes of disk
space. Here is the hidden trick to recover that disk space instantly.
After an upgrade, Windows 10 creates a Windows.old folder to store the previous version of Windows.
It takes up several gigabytes of disk space. If your upgrade is working there is no reason to keep
the old version of Windows on your hard drive. You can delete the Windows.old files without
any negative impact to your system and recover all that wasted disk space for other programs.
Rest assured you won't lose any important data. Even Microsoft support says you can safely delete
it yourself. They also state that 10 days after an upgrade these files are automatically deleted but
that's often not true. I've seen computers with these wasted files stored months or years after
an upgrade and it can take up a ton of disk space. Take a look at how much disk space is
being used in my Windows.old folder even after an upgrade and clearing out disk space a month ago.
If you don't have a Windows.old folder you probably have not done a windows upgrade
and won't have these unnecessary files but if it's there you should have plenty of disk space
to recover. You can also see that I have 327GB of disk space free on my C drive. I'll show you what
that looks like after my disk space recovery. To delete the Windows.old folder you can't just
delete the folder from File Explorer. It contains protected system files and you'll get errors if
you try to delete them. The right way is to go to the search bar and type disk cleanup
and select it from the menu. Hit OK on the drive selection then select Clean Up System Files.
Hit OK again on the drive selection and at this point it may take several minutes even
up to hours to scan through the disk if you've never run the disk cleanup.
Scroll down to the Previous Windows Installation. You can see the disk space that will be recovered
to the right. Check that box and Hit OK. It prompts to permanently delete the files
so select that option. It begins the cleanup of the files. It then prompts with a warning
telling you that if you clean up the previous Windows installation you will no longer be able
to restore it. Hit Yes. This runs through the disk cleanup. Now when I refresh the C drive and look
at the available disk space you'll see that my 327GB of free disk space increased to 351. The
Windows.old folder is still there but as you can see there's very little left inside of it.
Even though the Windows.old is wasted disk storage for your previous version of Windows
you may want to keep a backup of your current Windows system image in case something happens.
It is better to create this backup on external storage so you can stash it
somewhere else for safe keeping. The good news is you don't need to buy any backup software.
This can be done easily in Windows 10. Go to Start-Settings-Update & Security,
and select Backup or you can just type backup in the search to find it. The first option here is
to Backup Using File History and that works great to keep a version history of all your data files.
Check out my other Windows 10 File History video to see how this useful tool works. However, this
does not back up your Windows system image and if your computer crashes you won't be able to restore
your working copy of Windows even if you have a backup of your data files. Instead, come down
here and go to Backup and Restore. It says Windows 7 but this feature was brought back to Windows 10
and is still the right option for a Windows system backup. Now, you can choose Setup a Backup to
include all your data files if you prefer but if you're already using the file history backup then
you won't need them. Let's Create a System Image instead. You will need an external hard drive or
a DVD burner for this to work and I have links to my recommended external hard drive choices in the
description of this video. Hit Next and you see that it has pre-selected the Windows system files
needed to make an image. Hit Next again. It shows the total storage space needed. In my case 113GB.
Now you can confirm the settings and Start the Backup. We'll skip through this quickly. When
the backup is complete it gives you another option to create a system repair disk on DVD. We'll say
No but this can be a helpful item to have as well. If your system is damaged and will not
boot you can use this DVD to boot your computer into repair mode where you can restore Windows.
Hopefully this solution to clear your Windows.old folder has resulted in saving you a bunch of
wasted disk space. If it did please take a moment and post how much in the comments of this video.
I'd love to see who has saved the most. Also, make sure to check out my other helpful Windows 10 tips
and tricks videos. I cover several other topics that can help you keep your system running smooth.
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