Disk Cleanup feedback

hi friends,

I just upgraded to W11 on last sunday ie 12th October 2025. My C drive has 133GB allocated space, out of which around 11-15gb are available since the upgrade, don't recall the availability prior to that. D drive has over 300gb+ free space.

Anyways, coming to the point.. I saw Disk Cleanup was suggested after upgrading to W11, since I haven't encountered any issues after upgrade, was wondering if I could clean up the following files in the Disk Cleanup. Old windows alone stores 20+gb

As long as you've made a system image first, go ahead.


Denis

Try3 said:

As long as you've made a system image first, go ahead.


Denis

Click to expand...

what's a system image? Is it a system backup?

Yes, it's a particular kind of backup.
It's a complete backup of almost-every file on your computer, made using special running permissions, that can be restored if your computer gets corrupted or you accidentally destroy something critical to Windows or your applications.
Mere mortals cannot get the kind of access needed to make system images by manual copying.

My guide to this remains useful
my ditty - File backup vs imaging, imaging utilities, backing up drivers [post #3] - TenForums
apart from its references to particular imaging utilities. I have not kept up-to-date with changes to them.

@Ghot Mike, am I right in thinking that you have a thread that compares current imaging utilities?


Denis