Downloaded Windows 8 Pro, now im down to 50GB on my 128GB SSD ???

Purchased & downloaded Win's 8 Pro onto my VIZIO CT14 AO with a 128GB SSD.. Downloaded directly from the Microsoft site & once all was said & done I'm left with 50GB free on a stock machine.. Before that I was running Microsoft Win 7 Signature Edition with 70GB to spare. Any way I can free up some space on my SSD? Thought about removing the win 7 recovery partition but was advised against that....... any ideas Thanks

 

Did you do a clean install or an upgrade install? In any case, once you're sure you have all your files and settings straight, delete the Windows.OLD folder on your C drive and that should free up a significant portion of your drive.

 

An upgrade install Sir, everything seems to be running fine. Should I try & keep the win old file on a thumb drive for any reason? Thanks for any & all info

 

Just go trough it and make sure there aren't any personal files you want to save. After that you can safely delete the windows old folder.

The new Windows will never need anything from there.

 

I don't see why you wouldn't be able to use a backup program like Macrium Reflect to backup your recovery partition onto an external drive. I've heard it can be a bit of a pain getting those set back up, but you'd never really need it anyway. Even if you couldn't reinstall directly from a Windows 8 installation media, you could always get a free and legal installer for Windows 7 and use your laptop's OEM key (might require some contact with MS if you don't back up your key - there are programs for that), then upgrade back to Windows 8 with the key you already purchased. In other words, there are other options for restoring your system if it goes bad and needs a complete reinstall; I'd free up the space.

 

@ Kiol Will do on the Windows's old fine, I'll start on it now. @ Fat Dragon I'm thinking the same Sir. I could use that extra space & your thinking sounds solid to me. Thanks for the advice & help guy's

 

How big did you find your windows.old file to be?

 

My Win.old file is huge from the info Disk cleanup is showing (Previous Win Installation Files 25.4GB). Found these also but not sure if they are safe to delete after Im sure I have no need to keep Previous install files around. They are as follows Temp Win Install Files 4.73GB, Win ESD Install Files 2.69GB. C drive currently shows 55.2gb free of 104gb on my pretty much factory clean 128GB SSD.

 

Well 25.4 gb is quite a bit mine is only 11 gb on a clean install. That should give you some more room. I would think that anything in a temp file was deletable

 

Yes Sir, I stand to gain back a good bit of SSD space then (Im very happy with that Thanks to all for the help & advice).

 

If you don't use hibernation, you can turn that off to gain some space as well. If you haven't done that already.

Open a command prompt with admin privileges and type this: powercfg -h off

 

Big Thanks, you guy's have really helped out a lot of early Vizio users Im sure of that.

 

the best way to remove that window.old folder is throught

"disk clean up"....search up on youtube, alot of videos show step by step

nice and fast and once your done with that process...your windows.old folder disappear completely. cleanly cuts the ties of any trace of old windows


i found out the hard way....but if you go and "manually" deleting that folder....there's some files in there that WILL NOT delete no matter many time you "right click and delete" those buggers.

 

lol wrote my above reply for nothing....you already know this method...after reading all the replies.



but i and anyone in here would recommend you to do a fresh install. probably the best method and space saving method

 

An upgrade install is supposed to be installed over another copy of Windows. Granted, it doesn't always work out that way, but if you let the upgrade trash all your old files and then delete the Windows.old folder, you're running a fresh installation.

And it's true what you say in your above post - it's weird that you'd have to jump through those hoops to delete Windows.old - I couldn't even find a way to give user/administrator permissions to delete the folder. Nevertheless, when it's gone, it's gone and you've got that space back.

 

Thank you anyway it may just help others all the advice here helped me. I ended up recovering about 30 GB of space, one day I'll bite the bullet & get the needed clean install over with. I have to have a disk drive, the install cd, & some time ......Edit.... just saw the post above, so I do have a pretty clean install then.. Good. still wonder, its a 128 Gb SSd I click on the c drive it shows 85.4 of 104 free..

 

Part of the discrepancy is that manufacturers list capacity at 1000 B per KB instead of 1024 as OS's recognize. The rest of it sounds like you've either still got the recovery partition there or you haven't reapportioned the recovery partition space into your primary OS partition. You can do that in Disk Manager - right click Computer, hit Manage, navigate to Disk Management, and it's pretty simple from there.

 

This is what popped up per your instructions Sir.

 

that's what they want you to think "an upgrade is suppose to install over a copy", you have been misled my friend.

I have bought many windows 7 upgrade cd keys.....and it works with or without having a previous windows installed.

try it if you don't believe...

 

Then everything's normal with your main partition being listed as 104 GB. If you deleted the recovery and hibernation partitions and folded them into the primary, you'd be at about 117 or 118, which is approximately the real-world capacity of a 128 GB SSD. In reality, you should probably try to limit your SSD usage to about 60% of capacity for maximum performance. I hear that going into significantly higher percentages can really slow the drive down, though I'm no expert.

I'm fully aware of that, but the only downloadable upgrade installation medium I've seen for the Windows 8 upgrade is an installer that works from within your current Windows installation. There are certainly ways to get a different installation medium and try your upgrade key when installing on an unadulterated drive, but that's going a bit beyond for most people.

Either way, installing an upgrade without rolling over any files and then deleting Windows.old essentially puts your computer into the state of a fresh installation, so it's pretty much moot.

 

@ Fat Dragon Thank you Sir, I'll keep her clean as possible .. if I wanted to delete the hibernation's 2 GB's how would you go about that? I know it would be insane too, but how do you go about deleting your recovery (not that I plan too - just curios).

 

Not that insane - as long as you back up your original and upgrade Windows licenses (there's a program for that with OEM installations - ask around or do a search), you can always recover from a normal Windows 7/8 installtion medium, which has many advantages over using the manufacturer-supplied recovery partition anyway. If you don't have a disc or installer, it's easy enough to download an installer if you look around, at least for Windows 7 at which point you could follow the same Windows 8 upgrade path as before and use the key you already purchased. You can also, as stated several days ago, back up the partition onto an external storage device like a USB drive (16 GB+) or an external hard drive. You should be able to delete the partition directly in disk manager and then reallocate it to the C: partition - before Vista, it was a bit more complicated, but partition management has been possible directly within Windows for three iterations of their consumer OS's now, and it's extremely easy to do.

As for the hibernation partition, I believe that Windows 8 uses a somewhat tweaked version of hibernation for most system shutdowns. I don't know if that requires the hibernation partition or not, but I'd say that 2 GB is insignificant enough that you shouldn't worry about reclaiming it unless you can confirm it won't have any negative effects.