How to Regain Up To 20GB Disk Space After Windows 10 Upgrade?

If you have got the latest Windows 10 upgrade, you will notice about 15-20GB space missing from your disk drive. These files are used by your PC to revert back to older OS. If you are loving Windows 10, use Disk Utility to free up this 20GB space in few minutes. Read the complete tutorial for detailed instructions.

Microsoft has released Windows 1o and I hope that you’ve got it running on your PC. Still, if you haven’t got your Windows 10 upgrade icon, forget about it. You can now use Microsoft Media Creation Tool to get Windows 10 installation instantly. 

The Windows 10 upgrade on your PC saves the previous installation files to help you go back to your previous operating system. If you’ve upgraded to Windows 10, you would be seeing a considerable chunk of disk space missing. Windows has given this option keeping in mind the fact that would like to restore the previous version. These older installation files could eat up your disk space as much as 20GB. This isn’t a concern if you’ve got TBs of HDD. For those with lower storage and SSDs, 15-20GB means a lot.

Also read: Windows 10 Tutorial And How To Guide – Become A Pro User

If you’ve upgraded to Windows 10, you’d be seeing a considerable chunk of disk space missing. You can find these files in your Windows 10 PC if you’ve upgraded from Windows 10 Insider Preview or other operating systems like Windows 7 or 8.

Regain Disk Space After Windows 10 Upgrade

Note: If you free the previous installation files, you won’t be able to restore the older Windows version on your PC. If you plan to ditch Windows 10 upgrade soon, don’t proceed.

Open “Disk Cleanup”

To regain up the 20GB disk space, you need to go to Windows built-in Disk Cleanup utility. Just type “Disk Cleanup” in your Windows 10 search bar located on the taskbar, and you’ll notice a desktop app appearing at the top.

Select drive and move ahead

Click on it to start the utility. It will ask you to select your system drive with Windows 10 installation. By default, it’s C drive. Press “OK” and move ahead.

After few minutes, you will see the Disk Cleanup option for the current Windows 10 installation. As you can see, I can free about 50MB space right now.

Go to “Clean up system files”

Now, spot the “Clean up system files” to regain up to 20GB free space on your PC with Windows 10 upgrade. Click on the button.

Now, depending upon your drive size and system performance, the utility will take few minutes to scan the previous installation files on your PC with Windows 10 upgrade. Be Patient.

Look at different file options

As you can see in the picture below, there are different options. The option with “Temporary Windows installation files” is already ticked and it shows that currently I can free up to 3.35GB space. This temporary file is the one my PC downloaded to install Windows 10 on the system.

Look at the first option i.e. “Previous Windows installation(s)”. This matters the most. This contains your previous Windows installation files. If you don’t plan to get back to the older operating system, you can tick this option and move ahead. So, ticking this option, the total space I can regain on my Windows 10 installation is about 19.5GB.

Delete “Previous installation” files to get free space

Tick this option and press “OK” to regain 20GB space on your PC with Windows 10 upgrade.

Note: If you free the previous installation files, you won’t be able to restore the older Windows version on your PC after Windows 10 upgrade. If you plan to ditch Windows 10 upgrade, don’t use these instructions.

Did you find these steps useful? Tell in comments how much space did you regain?

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