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Windows 10 Will Reserve 7GB of Your Computer's Storage in its Next Major Release So That Big Updates Don't Fail (zdnet.com)

In the next major release of Windows 10, Microsoft will reserve 7GB of your device's storage to resolve a Windows 10 bug thrown up by Windows Update not checking whether a PC has enough storage space before launching after big updates. From a report: As Microsoft warned ahead of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, systems that don't have enough space to install Microsoft's 'quality updates' or new versions of the OS will see an error message explaining there is insufficient storage space. That happens because Windows doesn't check if a device has enough space before initializing. Microsoft's current solution is for users to manually delete unnecessary temporary files and temporarily move important files like photos and videos to external storage devices to make enough space for the update. This problem is more acute for devices with little storage capacity, such as many of the cheap 32GB flash-drive PCs on the market today.

24 of 368 comments (clear)

  1. No they won't by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Because none of my computers run Windows 10. If you aren't running Linux in 2019, you aren't paying attention.

    1. Re:No they won't by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      True you are not paying attention, because things actually work so smoothly in Windows 10, that you don't need to focus on keeping your OS running.

      Ok, I am being a bit sarcastic here. But Windows 10, doesn't suck that much, and Linux isn't that much better of an OS. I have a system with rather new hardware (With hardware designed for Linux, from System 76), and it duel boots Windows and Linux. And oddly enough windows runs faster and smoother for most application then Linux does.

      No Linux runs well on the system, and Windows 10 has its issues too. But it isn't like a Windows 10 user is so far behind in 2019 a Linux user.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:No they won't by ArchieBunker · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Can you point me towards the Linux builds for SolidWorks and Altium Designer as I need to get some work done. Also video editing is a hobby so how about Adobe Premiere?

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    3. Re:No they won't by demon+driver · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are valid reasons against Linux, but more maintenance time or hassle isn't one of them. On the contrary, with any popular distribution all of which employ mature, well-engineered package management tools, Linux system and application maintenance is at least by one order of magnitude easier and significantly less time-consuming to boot (pun not intended)...

    4. Re: No they won't by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      We get it. You've never used Linux and you like to parrot talking points from last century. Kindly do it somewhere else where you have a chance of not being recognized case a complete idiot though. Here most of us know how truly ridiculous your claims are.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    5. Re:No they won't by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I spend 30% of my time maintaining Windows machines.

      So do I. And by "maintaining" I mean continually uninstalling stupid crap (especially troubling is how much of it is 3rd party software like Candy Crush) that windows keeps installing on my user's machines, despite being told not to in Group Policy. Or re-assigning the default browser away from Edge, and back to IE. (I know IE sucks, but the primary software that is used by nearly every employee for 80+% of their job requires IE to be the default browser), or continually turning off all of the data collection because it all gets turned on after every software update...

      Windows 10 is the biggest piece of malware I deal with on a day to day basis.

    6. Re: No they won't by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 3, Informative

      It is far easier to keep a Linux system working smoothly than a Windows system. I installed and configured a Linux system for my mother a decade ago. I haven't touched it since and it continues to work perfectly. That's literally 0% maintenance effort. Since you seem to be bad at math I'll put it on more "touchy / feely" terms you can understand ... You are a fucking clueless moron with no idea what you are talking about.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    7. Re:No they won't by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

      I find Windows 10 needs to restart a hell of a lot. And it forces the restarts too. It will wake the machine up in the middle of the night just to restart without asking.

      While it's generally pretty good the lack of control over updates is immensely frustrating.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    8. Re: No they won't by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Really? Have you missed the numerous stories of Windows 10 updates doing truly horrendous things to people's systems, including but not limited to losing data and causing them to fail to boot at all? How about having your system's settings reset so that you are never truly sure that it is set up the way you thought it was? It is absurd to suggest that Windows 10 is easier to maintain then Windows, since you literally have no control over it, having relinquished all control to Microsoft.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    9. Re:No they won't by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In the "near future", huh? Only been hearing that for almost 20 years.

    10. Re: No they won't by kenh · · Score: 3, Interesting

      So your mother is running a 10 year-old browser on a 10 year-old Linux kernel, on a 10 year-old PC?

      --
      Ken
    11. Re: No they won't by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Worst yo-mamma joke. Ever.

    12. Re:No they won't by Immerman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And so it has been. The Linux desktop has been thriving, it just hasn't gained dramatic market share, persistently hovering around the same tiny fraction as MacOS, for reasons that have very little to do with the Linux desktop itself.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    13. Re:No they won't by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You don't know what they are sending! The system, the source code, is CLOSED. It could be sending a log of every website you ever visited, every keystroke, every document you have. You have no idea. And the data they collect can change at any time.

    14. Re:No they won't by harperska · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Linux model:
      download the OS
      install/setup/configure the OS
      Configure the OS
      Configure the OS again
      Break something
      Google which config file might control the weird behavior you are seeing.
      Search message boards for a possible solution
      Wade through countless 'me too' posts to see if anybody actually has a fix
      Try a solution someone gave for a problem that looks like it might be similar to yours
      Try a different proposed solution because the first one only made things worse
      Break something else
      Give up
      Reinstall the OS
      Repeat

  2. is that a way to disable updates? by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    by manually ensuring that you don't have that 'required space' ?

    I bet there will be nag dialogs endlessly until you 'let them' do an update to your system.

    man, I hate win10. we are forced to use it at work but thankfully I can do 99% of my daily stuff with linux. those who must use win10 - I feel sorry for you. its not a fun experience having to be the 'operator' of a computer you don't really own anymore..

    --

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  3. Yippee! by petes_PoV · · Score: 4, Funny
    So by the simple act of ensuring there is less than 7GB free for Microsoft to reserve, I can put a stop to all these annoying and inconvenient updates that keep getting in the way?

    Great news to start the year.

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
  4. Trying to create a more stupid user by brxndxn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As a computer enthusiast since the DOS days, I so much hate Microsoft's Windows 10 philosophy. Every move they make is one where Microsoft attempts to chip away at a user's ownership of his or her computer. Microsoft creates a new problem by taking away a user setting - like deciding exactly when he or she has the time to update the computer or their work is sufficiently at a stopping point to risk an update. In doing so, Microsoft introduces a whole host of new issues such as temporarily bricking users' devices, rebooting in the middle of their work, running the hard disk full, or causing updates to run when a user really needs to get out of the office. Then, in order to fix the problem they created, they take more control away from the user and allocate unusable user space just for Microsoft to have extra space for more bloated updates.

    The paranoid part of me doesn't believe Microsoft is doing this to fix the update problem at all. Instead, they're allocating 'hidden space' on the drive to capture user sensitive data and store it for later uploads to Microsoft when the laptop/desktop is connected to the Internet.

    --
    --- We need more Ron Paul!
  5. ms incompetence by NikeHerc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is a perfect example of why I have been ms-free since July 4th, 2018, and a big shout-out to Ubuntu for helping me be ms-free.

    If a company as big as ms can't check for free space prior to an o.s. update, they don't deserve to be in the business of providing operating systems.

    --
    Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
  6. 32gb flash drives? by citylivin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With SSD's being around $100 for a samsung 256gb drive, i doubt anyone is deploying less than 128 these days.

    Who the hell would ship a computer with a 32gb ssd? windows itself needs that much to even install! much less run. 128gb has been too small for a few years now!

    There are also some tricks you can use to free up space. One i learned recently will clean up the stupid windows installer directory pretty well. i personally freed up 40gb on my work machine.

    Download the windows installer cleanup utility, then run MSIZAP.exe G! to clean the directory

    If you get an error, delete all the registry keys under:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData

    reference: http://wyang0.blogspot.com/201...

    --
    As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
  7. Wow, got a problem fix something else? by kamakazi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So Window Update doesn't check the size of the update and make sure there is enough space before downloading and installing it, so instead of fixing Windows Update we will just reserve 7G (SEVEN Gig!?!?! I had a full OS, and all of Microsoft Office, and my other software on a 105MB hard drive back in the day - but I digress) which will only be used when there is a major update instead of JUST FIXING WINDOWS UPDATE.

    It is simple math. I realize with dynamic updates you probaby can't make an exact prediction of the space needed for the rollback repository etc., but you can know the actual update file sizes, and you can make a conservative guess on the in-process size, just check, if there isn't enough space don't even do the download. Nag the user about it all you want, just don't actualy start the process until you have room.

    And if they actually need 7G now, what happens next year when the updates are bigger?

    It's funny, I am sick of MacOS as they continue to de-Unix and get in my way with every update, so I am switching, but for some reason I never even considered switching to Windows.

    --
    "Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI
  8. Re:Not such a terrible concept .... by willaien · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That ignores that cheap, budget devices are sold with 32GB or 64GB of storage. They aren't expandable. Remember that Windows 10 is _supposed_ to run on more than just high end desktops.

  9. Incremental updates are a lost art at Microsoft by hackertourist · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Like the last time I needed to make a change to MS Office: I wanted to install a Czech language pack for MS Word. This should be a few MB worth of dictionary and hyphenation info. The Office installer proceeds to remove my entire MS Office installation, redownload 500 MB and reinstall the entire fucking Office suite. IIRC it nuked all my preferences too.
    The icing on the cake was that it replaced the Start menu shortcuts for all Office programs with new versions in Czech, even though my system language is set to English.

  10. Made up "facts" by sjbe · · Score: 5, Informative

    For example, Windows 7 ran OK on a regular hard drive. Windows 10 -needs- a SSD to be able to function.

    Don't know where you got this made up fact. I'm typing this on a PC that has Windows 10 and does not have an SSD and it runs just fine. (well... as fine as Windows ever runs)

    The minimum size has grown as well, where W10 pretty much needs 120+ gigs of space with all the Market and user installed shoverware, and that's before adding relevant apps.

    More bullshit. I'll agree it's pretty bloated but it demonstrably does not require that much space. If you have that much shovel-ware installed, switch PC vendors. On the machine I'm running right now Windows takes about 45GB of space. You can argue that's still too much and I'd probably agree with you but it's 1/3 of what you are claiming.

    If you want to bash Windows there are plenty of opportunities that do not require making up nonsense.