Why does Window 7 take so much disk space?
See title.
July 7th, 2009 9:09am

MR - It doesn't really take up that much space.. My Windows 7 folder takes up about 8.4 GB. The Windows folder on my Vista drive, on the other hand, sucks up a whopping 14 GB even.It would seem to me that Vista's almost twice as big as Win 7...
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July 7th, 2009 9:31am

My vista ultimate sp2 wimexpands to 8.7 gb. It seems to be the win sxs folder replaced the dllcache and takes up space.
July 7th, 2009 9:36am

Hi, I share the following information written by MVP Ronnie Vernon. Hope it helps. ================================================= 1. The WinSxS\Backup folder: In previous versions of Windows, such as XP there was a component called 'Windows File Protection' which was used to make sure that all of the many system files were protected and backed up. These files were backed up in the %systemroot%\System32\dllcache folder. If you had a problem and lost a system file or one of these files had been corrupted, you could run the 'sfc /scannow' command and the files would be replaced with the backed up copy in the dllcache folder. The dllcache folder was typically 500MB or larger. In Vista, 'Windows File Protection' has been replaced with 'Windows Resource Protection' which, essentially performs the same function. The 'dllcache' folder no longer exists in Vista, it has been replaced with the %systemroot%\Winsxs\Backup folder. This folder is NOT 'a backup of a backup', it exists only to make sure that files required for Vista to boot and operate are protected. 2. Manifests and Assemblies: Vista comes with a default selection of 'Shared' Manifests and Assemblies. This huge selection does not slow the system down or effect performance in any way, since the only time these components are actually loaded is when an installed program calls one of these components to be loaded. Developers may include a manifest in their program that calls one or more of these assemblies or they may install their own, private assembly in the WinSxS folder or in their own applications folders. When a program is started, if this program specifies an assembly dependency, side-by-side first searches for the assembly among the shared assemblies in the WinSxS folder. If the required assembly is not found, side-by-side then searches for a private assembly installed in a folder of the application's directory structure. Comments: 1. Duplicate files. Searching for and deleting duplicate files has always been something that Windows users have performed in an effort to reduce used hard drive space. However, this was done because hard drive space was very expensive and hard drives were very small. If this was 8 or10 years ago, this would still be a viable option, but it no longer applies since hard drives have become so large and very inexpensive. When Windows XP was first released, a typical hard drive cost around 2.99 USD per GB. Today, you can find a 500GB SATA 7200RPM hard drive for much less than 100 USD. The typical cost of hard drives is less than .15 Cents per Gigabyte. This means that a WinSxS folder that is 6GB costs around .90 Cents, and uses slightly more than 1 Percent of the drive. That's about the same cost as a large bag of potato chips. 2. Deleting components from the WinSxS folder. As I explained, the shared and private assemblies, manifests, backed up system files, etc, are critical to the operation of Vista and all of the installed programs. If any of these shared assemblies are removed and you install a program that requires that assembly, the program will simply refuse to run, period. 3. Every system is different, when deleting components from the WinSxS folder, what works for one system, will not work for another system. Different systems, even if they have the same version of Vista installed, will typically have many different programs installed. A removed Side by Side component may not effect one system, but will effect another. 4. Changing permissions on or compressing the WinSxS folder can cause problems when installing an OS hotfix and installation/un-installation of any Win32 assemblies. References: Isolated Applications and Side-by-side Assemblies (Windows): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa375193(VS.85).aspx Assembly Searching Sequence (Windows): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa374224.aspx Side-by-side Assemblies Reference (Windows): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa376414(VS.85).aspx About Isolated Applications and Side-by-side Assemblies (Windows): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa374029(VS.85).aspx Protected Resource List (Windows): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa382530(VS.85).aspx Cost of Hard Drive Space History: http://www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625/winchest.html
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July 7th, 2009 9:53am

MR - Actually the SxS folder isn't really that big - the files in there are Hard Links. The SxS folder is a cache of backed up components. Er.. Rather links to the files that make up those components..
July 7th, 2009 9:55am

Thank you that was very informative, but was it the regular or barbecue flaver potato chips?"This means that a WinSxS folder that is 6GB costs around .90 Cents, and uses slightly more than 1 Percent of the drive. That's about the same cost as a large bag of potato chips. "
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July 7th, 2009 10:03am

MR - Got a 7-11 near you? They've got their own line these days - and you've got a choice of about 7 flavors. 79 cents a bag... Good stuff.. At any rate, we digress.. Ronnie's point is still valid - drive space is dirt cheap. Personally, I kinda think having that space being used is a better deal than NOT having it and being forced to reinstall everything because something took some files out. I can only hope it works better than it did under XP. Had a client who got infested with some virus or other abouta year ago that infected 5 key component files. Had to do some major surgery to bring the system back to life. Very ugly...
July 7th, 2009 10:25am

As far as i can tell, it still has the scannow but it might not be as secure as with XP becouse the the only way to disable system file protection was to patch sfc_os.dll file and modify the registry but with the new systema file can easily be deleted just by taking ownership in unsafe mode.
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July 7th, 2009 10:35am

MR Ronnie's point is still valid - drive space is dirt cheap. Personally, I kinda think having that space being used is a better deal than NOT having it and being forced to reinstall everything because something took some files out. I can only hope it works better than it did under XP. Had a client who got infested with some virus or other abouta year ago that infected 5 key component files. Had to do some major surgery to bring the system back to life. Very ugly... Yeah. Hdd are getting cheap & for desktop no problem. Laptop do have problems. Most laptop manufacturers don't seem to know about this Winsxs issue in Vista. They follow the same partition rules as in WinXP - min space for C drive & bigger space for D & whatever. 20Gb in C drive is definitely enough for XP but for Vista after loading all the basic programs including Office 2007 occupy about 15Gb - Windows including Winsxs & System files used up 12Gb. In no time at all there's no space left to work on & for a lot of people there's nothing they can do about it. To increase the partition is no easy task as the Recovery disk is located in the other partition. Let's hope before Win7 comes out, the laptop people will take note of this & increase the C drive to at least 40Gb or more.Gigabyte EP35 DS4 P4C2 6750/4Gb OCZ DDR2 1066/ NV 8800GT 256mb/ 2x1TB SATA running on WinXP/ 1x750Gb SATA running on Win7RC/ 1x500Gb SATA running on Vista Ult/ DVDRW x4 sets/ Pinnacle AVDV capture card/ OCZ ModXstream 700W PSU
August 13th, 2009 1:17pm

MR Ronnie's point is still valid - drive space is dirt cheap. Personally, I kinda think having that space being used is a better deal than NOT having it and being forced to reinstall everything because something took some files out. I can only hope it works better than it did under XP. Had a client who got infested with some virus or other abouta year ago that infected 5 key component files. Had to do some major surgery to bring the system back to life. Very ugly... Yeah. Hdd are getting cheap & for desktop no problem. Laptop do have problems. Most laptop manufacturers don't seem to know about this Winsxs issue in Vista. They follow the same partition rules as in WinXP - min space for C drive & bigger space for D & whatever. 20Gb in C drive is definitely enough for XP but for Vista after loading all the basic programs including Office 2007 occupy about 15Gb - Windows including Winsxs & System files used up 12Gb. In no time at all there's no space left to work on & for a lot of people there's nothing they can do about it. To increase the partition is no easy task as the Recovery disk is located in the other partition.Let's hope before Win7 comes out, the laptop people will take note of this & increase the C drive to at least 40Gb or more. Gigabyte EP35 DS4 P4C2 6750/4Gb OCZ DDR2 1066/ NV 8800GT 256mb/ 2x1TB SATA running on WinXP/ 1x750Gb SATA running on Win7RC/ 1x500Gb SATA running on Vista Ult/ DVDRW x4 sets/ Pinnacle AVDV capture card/ OCZ ModXstream 700W PSU tonistein - Ah.. You must be referring to a Sony... Their drive partitioning drives me NUTS... 1.) They install a 40 GB HDD for the laptop, 2.) They create 2 partitions - C: and D: where C: is like 15 GB and the rest is drive D:3.) They don't do anything to redirect user files to be saved on drive D: - it's all on drive C:Next thing you know, you're running out of disk space even though you've got 25 GB of virgin, unusued space because mostusers just use the defaults - whereever the program saves it's stuff by default - most often some variation of the My Documents tree.
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August 13th, 2009 2:45pm

If it is taking up alot of space, you can set the limit of windows shadow storage space.
August 13th, 2009 5:25pm

Frankly, has Microsoft ever thinks about those ordinary folks who knows nothing much about this Winsxs thingy especially when they had used WinXP before. I am a DIY guy who do setup of computers for my customers & also am a pro photographer & videographer & I consider myself as quite an expert in computers but I came across this Winsxs only 3 weeks ago & I have been using Vista Ult for 6 over months.Gigabyte EP35 DS4 P4C2 6750/4Gb OCZ DDR2 1066/ NV 8800GT 256mb/ 2x1TB SATA running on WinXP/ 1x750Gb SATA running on Win7RC/ 1x500Gb SATA running on Vista Ult/ DVDRW x4 sets/ Pinnacle AVDV capture card/ OCZ ModXstream 700W PSU
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August 24th, 2009 7:17pm

The Winsxs folder replaced the dll cache. I examined mine and found that it has three or four backups of files when there need only be one which would cut it's size in two. Even though disk space is inexpensive I believe it should be usedto maximumefficiency.The less information stored on a disk the faster it can be accessed.
August 24th, 2009 9:57pm

Try storing your data in arabic numerals rather than roman numerals. That should help.
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August 25th, 2009 1:38am

Too bad you have no sense of humor. Be careful or the thread will be locked by the lock-wielding moderator.
August 25th, 2009 2:07am

This is what I think about win 7 - 64 bit. I am a professional graphic designer. I have run and operated many different systems in my 27 years of working as a graphic designer and in my opinion; win 7 - 64 bit is a pig. It uses tons of space that no one in Microsoft can seem to give a straight answer too, why they made it that way your guess is as good as mine.. the best answer they have is hard drives are cheap just buiy another HDD.. let me tell you a 60 gig SSD drive is not cheap in my book. At $180 a pop, unless your Bill Gates. I currently have a desk top Intel i7- 980 extreme, with 12 gigs of ram and a 2 gig GTX Nvida graphic card. Running windows 7 professional 64 bit I set it up to have a 55 gig corsair SSD 20x gig speed drive especially dedicated just for the OS. I have a 1TB HDD drive for my program’s such as Adobe creative suite CS4 & CS5 and my 3D animation programs. Like Daz and 3D max and poser I use for rendering movie animation, along with a few other programs.. I also have a 2 TB HDD drive for storage for my business & graphic design files etc. which I also had to use also now for my system back up. Because I had to disable the system restore in the OS because it was taking up to much space... which I feel is not a good thing to do but I had to have the space. I got this computer January 27 2011 to replace my XP pro 64 bit and as of today Feb 26 2011 My SSD drive is completely full.. Mind you I have nothing on it but OS system on it.. Now before I installed anything on my new system when I got it. I shut off the system restore and the hibernating features page-fiiling and indexing all the other features I would not use. I over clocked the system by 10% to give me a extra boost during long renders Now today feb 26 2011 windows went to update today and couldn’t because my SSD drive is completely full. GUESS WHAT? I don’t care. I refuse to let windows use any other of my other drives and I’m not buying anymore for the OS. Hard drives to me are not cheap, and plus I have 3 hard drive now so why do I need more just for a pig of an operating system which should only use a ¼ of the 55 gig drive its on now. I am very very disappointed with Windows 7 64 bit. And I will not recommend it to any of my clients. Because Microsoft doesn’t seem to really care about addressing issues with this fat pig of a system eating up a lot of space. In Double files and double file naming. Not to mention the x986) program file for win 32 programs. And a lot of software companies are not supporting win7 64 bit. . So I refuse to let windows use any of my other drive for their OS . I think 55 gig is way more than enough. So if any of you want a screaming machine at this point that you will need to buy hard drives about every month for to satisfy the operating system. I will gladly sell you my computer for $2800 that is $300 less than I paid for it to be built. so I can get a different machine and operating system
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February 26th, 2011 8:01pm

This is what I think about win 7 - 64 bit. I am a professional graphic designer. I have run and operated many different systems in my 27 years of working as a graphic designer and in my opinion; win 7 - 64 bit is a pig. It uses tons of space that no one in Microsoft can seem to give a straight answer too, why they made it that way your guess is as good as mine.. the best answer they have is hard drives are cheap just buiy another HDD.. let me tell you a 60 gig SSD drive is not cheap in my book. At $180 a pop, unless your Bill Gates. I currently have a desk top Intel i7- 980 extreme, with 12 gigs of ram and a 2 gig GTX Nvida graphic card. Running windows 7 professional 64 bit I set it up to have a 55 gig corsair SSD 20x gig speed drive especially dedicated just for the OS. I have a 1TB HDD drive for my program’s such as Adobe creative suite CS4 & CS5 and my 3D animation programs. Like Daz and 3D max and poser I use for rendering movie animation, along with a few other programs.. I also have a 2 TB HDD drive for storage for my business & graphic design files etc. which I also had to use also now for my system back up. Because I had to disable the system restore in the OS because it was taking up to much space... which I feel is not a good thing to do but I had to have the space. I got this computer January 27 2011 to replace my XP pro 64 bit and as of today Feb 26 2011 My SSD drive is completely full.. Mind you I have nothing on it but OS system on it.. Now before I installed anything on my new system when I got it. I shut off the system restore and the hibernating features page-fiiling and indexing all the other features I would not use. I over clocked the system by 10% to give me a extra boost during long renders Now today feb 26 2011 windows went to update today and couldn’t because my SSD drive is completely full. GUESS WHAT? I don’t care. I refuse to let windows use any other of my other drives and I’m not buying anymore for the OS. Hard drives to me are not cheap, and plus I have 3 hard drive now so why do I need more just for a pig of an operating system which should only use a ¼ of the 55 gig drive its on now. I am very very disappointed with Windows 7 64 bit. And I will not recommend it to any of my clients. Because Microsoft doesn’t seem to really care about addressing issues with this fat pig of a system eating up a lot of space. In Double files and double file naming. Not to mention the x986) program file for win 32 programs. And a lot of software companies are not supporting win7 64 bit. . So I refuse to let windows use any of my other drive for their OS . I think 55 gig is way more than enough. So if any of you want a screaming machine at this point that you will need to buy hard drives about every month for to satisfy the operating system. I will gladly sell you my computer for $2800 that is $300 less than I paid for it to be built. so I can get a different machine and operating system
February 26th, 2011 8:19pm

to help you get a better feel for what is using what space on your hard drive, you might find the data provided by http://windirstat.info/ to be useful. The space you list is very, very, very unusual. One thing you can check, although I don't really think this causing your amazing space requirement, is to see how much space has been allocated for storing System Restore Points. WIN + Pause/Break key combo | System Protection (located in left-hand pane) | Configure button | adjust Max Usage slider to your preference | OK button I keep this number small, probably smaller than most. Mine is set at 1.5 GB. Most will set this at 5 or 10 GB. You can also right-click on the Recycle Bin icon, choose properties, and perhaps reduce the amount of space reserved for the recycle bin.
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February 26th, 2011 8:58pm

This is the listed things i did before I ever installed any programs on my new system. First I have been researching win7 before i bought it. So i knew going in i needed a dedicated hard drive for the os.. that wasn’t a problem. Then when i got the machine. I turned windows system store completely off. I am using mosey back up anyways.. But the point is it’s a feature that came with the OS that shouldn't have to be shut off to save room on the disk we as customers paid for this security for our systems and now we are told we have to shut it off to save space. That’s just BS .. All the other windows os systems never used this much space as win 7 does. Next I was not able to physically remove things i wouldn’t need from the OS like windows defender and speech recognition, dvd maker. etc.. When you shut them off, it does not give you space back, it just stops that part of the program from placing anymore data on the disk for the particular feature.( why did I pay for it then if I have to shut it off to save disk space) There should be an option to remove/ uninstall unwanted/used windows features programs not just shut them off, this would give some disk space back. But anyway the next thing i did was shut the hibernating off and the SuperFetch, and pagefiling. All useless with a SSD drive. Again no options from windows to uninstall these features, and again a service we paid for as a customer buying a MS product, But yet again we are told to shut it off. to save disk space .. Again I say that’s just BS. Needless to say the OS has completely use a 55 gig corsair SSD drive and all that is on it is the windows OS. To me that is not satisfactory. I am going to buy a new SSD drive and I am removing the ssd with win 7 on it because that all that on it and I am selling it to the highest bidder,. I have a win XP 64 I am going to load on a new ssd drive. And put into my new system. For now until I sell this machine and get a new G10 To me Windows 7 is a big fat hard drive hog. Which is poorly engineered because there is no way to clean it out without indirectly effecting something else in the OS.. I looked at a Mac 10 and yes they also have a bloated drive system but you have options to remove things you are not using.. they don't use a bloated file system like winsxs that over bloats the data system anf filles the hard drive up with double data files. and not give options, that is where there is no way to clean it, or uninstall windows features not needed. This is not my first computer I have been a Graphic Deisgner for over 25 years and used many operating systems. If this is the best Microsft can do then I can see them loosing a lot of business because of the failed OS Hard drive hog they have put out. this win 7 desktop does. This was not a cheap system. And I’m refuse to go out and buy a new hard drive every month so the OS can update.. screw that mess. The thing that gets me most is there are a lot of people out there looking to by computer that don't know how to manage them let alone how to run one., like some of us lucky ones can. those are the ones i feel bad for. If they buy a windows 7 product. because. in my opinion its using way more space than it should need. I mean really they can me OS systems for Mobil devices but they can’t build a Operating system that’s uses up a complete drive in less than 30 days.. Give me a break. The the ISP company I work for, is changing OS systems and they are not going with win 7 after what I have showed them. With this File bloating systems Good job Microsoft thanks for your support. PS: if you own any Microsoft sidewinder Gaming controllers.. They are not supported my Microsoft for windows 7 .. So you mise well throw that gear away if you own them and a windows 7 64 bit machine. Because they become usless for gamming in windows 7- 64 bit. And on there gaming web site they announced they have no plans on making drivers for theses game controllers and recommend buying new one.. again Good Microsoft at least your not using a gun to rob us consumers.
February 27th, 2011 11:58am

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