Lose 2-3 gigabytes with every Windows update?

Hi everyone,

I am asking for a friend. She has an older MS Surface laptop with 128GB SSD.

After every update, she loses around 2-3 gigabytes of storage.

I tried running the cleanup tool as an admin, but that only restored about 800 MB.

Any ideas why her machine is doing this?

I don't have much info about her machine, except that it's around 6 years old.

Thanks

What is the size of the C:\Windows\servicing\LCU folder? Did you run dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup

I like Space Sniffer to see what is taking up space


A Guy

It is possible that some app is creating files like logs or storing pictures, videos.


You can do a deeper cleanup. I perform upgrades each week and I keep it tight.

Also Wiztree. Run a scan and it shows a really useful cushion map so you can spot large items immediately. Remember to use rt click.

Also gives access to everything irrespective of permissions.

check c:\windows\softwaredistribution folder - sonetimes it can grow quite large. Windows is supposed to tidy this up but does not always do so. You can safeky delete files in this folder.

Also, check restore points - they sometimes accumulate -vafe to delete old ones if no longer needed.

Thanks for all the help. Next time I see her, I will open this thread on my phone and follow through with what has been recommended.

Cheers

Check the number of System Restore points that have been made.

They are typically a GB or larger in size, but you can control how much space you are willing to allocate to them.

I recently discovered that my allocation amount was about 25 GB...much more than I thought I had set it at. Within a few weeks, my C partition grew from the upper 50s to the upper 70s....without ever manually making any restore points.

Restore points shouldn't normally need any 'management' precisely because you allocate a sensible amount of space on your drive. I have one created daily on schedule, and never have to worry.

Now it might be that usage of that space is seen as a change in free space if the allocated space isn't already full. But if there is plenty of free space on the disk besides the maximum you've allocated- well, that's normal behaviour and nothing to worry about.

TairikuOkami said:

It is possible that some app is creating files like logs or storing pictures, videos.

WizTree - The Fastest Disk Space Analyzer

Official WizTree web site. WizTree is the fastest disk space analyzer available for Windows. It reads the Master File Table (MFT) directly from the disk, bypassing Windows and gaining a huge performance boost.

www.diskanalyzer.com

You can do a deeper cleanup. I perform upgrades each week and I keep it tight.

View attachment 170415

Windows/Windows Cleanup.bat at main · TairikuOokami/Windows

Windows. Contribute to TairikuOokami/Windows development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Wise Disk Cleaner - Free Disk Cleanup and Defrag Too

Download Wise Disk Cleaner to safely clean up junk files, wipe browser traces, and free up valuable disk space. Boost your Windows PC performance for free!

www.wisecleaner.com

Click to expand...

dism++ is also good for cleaning, have you used it?

I use two methods to find wasted space. The Everthing file search from Voidtools allows you to sort by size and you can filter for audio, compressed, images, documents, executables and videos. https://www.voidtools.com/Everything-1.5.0.1404a.x64-Setup.exe



The other way is to use forum member SirShane's excellent SirCleaner. SirCleaner 2025 Free/Pro Download - SirSoft.io

Just my opinion... as Windows 11 has gotten larger, if a user has even a nominal amount of personal files and installed applications, using a 128gb system drive these days is cutting it too close.

maur0 said:

dism++ is also good for cleaning, have you used it?

Click to expand...

DISM++ is just GUI, I use it's commands though.

glasskuter said:

using a 128gb system drive these days is cutting it too close.

Click to expand...

Unless the user installs huge apps or games, multiple cloud storages used as drives can take care of that.

glasskuter said:

Just my opinion... as Windows 11 has gotten larger, if a user has even a nominal amount of personal files and installed applications, using a 128gb system drive these days is cutting it too close.

Click to expand...

I have a 120GB system partition, of which 37,5GB is used, 82,5GB is free. Windows 11 Pro installed, taking about 26 GB space.
Amongst installed apps are an Office package, Firefox, em-Client, a Photoediting app, PDF editing apps, VirtualBox (but its data on another partition) and really many, many more useful apps.
In the two program folders I have about 25,000 files in 2000 Folders, that take about 9 Gbyte.
The remaining used space is for personal folders and ProgramData folder (and some other folders).

My user data are on a separate 120GB partition, of which 27,5 is used and 92,5 is free. I have about 40,000 datafiles in about 4000 folders.

I don't see any need for a bigger system or data drive. Would not know why it would be necessary.

To all those of you who disagree with my opinion about the drive being too small... I was speaking generally. I never said it applied in this specific case or in the case of any of you who use a drive that size. Of course it depends on how this user uses her storage. @swerd did not tell us anything about that. She may take a whole lot of high resolution photos and have 10 years of them stored. She may not use cloud storage or have a secondary drive. She may not maintain any sort of cleanup routine and have a lot of stuff cached in her browser. She may use hibernation and the size of her hiberfil.sys is over provisioned. She may have installed tons of software. Or all of the above may apply, plus so many more things that affect storage. Every user's case is unique.

Now that updates are cumulative (the most recent is over 5 gb)from one version release to another WinSxs folder increases expotentiously each month. I rather doubt that most people use dism to clean up the component store when they have never heard of dism.

So yeah, I stand by my belief that as a general rule, a 128gb system drive is usually just not big enough now. If a user has enough storage he doesn't have to worry about it or monitor it or get down to having an upgrade fail because he doesn't have enough of it.

glasskuter said:

So yeah, I stand by my belief that as a general rule, a 128gb system drive is usually just not big enough now. If a user has enough storage he doesn't have to worry about it or monitor it or get down to having an upgrade fail because he doesn't have enough of it.

Click to expand...

FWIW, I totally agree with you. I run an average suite of applications, and of course they also default to loading on the Windows drive. My total space used on my Windows drive is well over 128GB, and I work to keep things reasonably cleaned up. Truthfully, without doing handstands, I don't see any way I could even run with a Windows drive of 128GB, that's pretty lean!