Removing WinSXS .. Doable, yes, but, what?

How did you determine the size? As I said before, a significant portion of the "files" in winsxs are hard links, which do not take up any disk space. Finding the real size of winsxs is not straightforward.

 

unless they are hardlinks to the same file within WinSxS, the sum still tells you the size. Whether one can 'reclaim' the same size by deleting them is another matter.

 

I thought the size itself, 1.1 GB, would give you the answer... It's obvious that I didn't count the hard links. Otherwise it would be something like 5.5 GB.

I copied the whole folder to another HDD.

 

No, it doesn't. Any hardlinks will be counted multiple times.

And, how did you figure that?

If you did that, you will have created copies of the hardlinks, which gives you the wrong result, unless you explicitly excluded the hardlinks from being copied. That can be done, but not without special tools. You certainly can't do that with Windows Explorer. Which is why I asked how you came to your result.

 

Out of curiosity, I copied the folder to my 2nd HDD. Same size as the original: 6.6GB

 

We are talking about the same thing. If there is WinSxS\package_1\file.dll and WinSxS\package_2\file.dll which happens to pointing to the same file, sure they would count double when doing the sum @ WinSxS level.

 

You did it the wrong way, you should check the amount of free space before and after.

Pirx read my post again, I said it was 1.1 GB, not 5.4 GB.

 

Did it again:

Before - 371.47GB free
After - 364.90 free
=
6.57GB

 

See next post.

 

anseio: It doesn't work like I remembered. I just tried the same thing as you now but the size is closer to 6 GB.

I did it in a different way, but it's been a while since I tried this.

1 - Install Windows 7.
2 - Shut down, connect the HDD with W7 installed to a computer with Windows installed.
3 - Check free space.
4 - Delete winsxs, use takeown and icacls.
5 - Check free space again.

A VM would probably work as well.

 

That's not what I am talking about. What I am referring to is the fact that if you have a hardlink inside winsxs pointing to a file that is also referenced outside of winsxs, then the file will be counted as taking up space inside of winsxs even though, if you remove that file within winsxs, the amount of free disk space will not change, since the file will still be present.

 

That's because this copy operation will also copy the hard-linked files themselves.

 

and that was what I talked about 'whether you can reclaim the space is a different matter'.

 

Ah well, we may have talked past each other here. Sorry to get my lines crossed; it's a busy time of the year...