How to free storage space after Windows 10 Upgrade or Feature Update

When you upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, or Windows 10 Feature Update, the upgrade assistant will always backup your existing installation either in the same drive (C Drive) or to an external drive/partition if you choose to. It is essential, so when you want to rollback; you have all your files and data. Other things occupy a lot of space post any update. In this post, we will share how you can free storage space after Windows 10 upgrade or feature update.

Windows Need Space for Backing up Existing Installation

How to free storage space after Windows 10 Upgrade or Feature Update

Before we go ahead and start cleaning the Windows 10 after upgrade or update, make sure you have all the files as before the upgrade. If no, then you need to look into WINDOWS.OLD folder in the C drive. It carries all the data before installation.

If all files are in place, then the easy way is to delete the Windows.OLD folder and you can claim back most of the storage space. However, there is a better way to do it. Windows has an in-built feature which helps you claim back storage space.

Disk Cleanup Utility for Drives

Open File Explorer from Task Bar, and select This PC. It will list all your drives.
Right-click on the drive you have the backup stored. If you were never asked to select a different drive, then you need to choose the C drive.
Right-click on the drive > Properties > Disk Cleanup. You should see the wizard looking for files thats taking up space.
It will list files that can be cleaned, look for a button which says “Clean Up System Files.” Click on it.

Uninstall Previous Windows Installation

It will rerun the wizard, and this time it will search for the Previous Installation.
When the Wizard comes back, scroll down the list to find it. Check and clean it up.

Clean Up old Windows Installtion

That said, make sure you are perfectly ok with the new OS and don’t want to return to the previous installation, before cleaning up the backup files.

2] Storage Sense in Windows 10

Go to Settings > System > Storage
Select the Primary Drive, and then click on Temporary Files
It will scan the drive for Downloads, Diagnostic data, Thumbnails, Windows Update Cleanup, Delivery optimization files, DirectX Shader Cache, and others.

Windows Update Cleanup usually takes a lot of space post update or upgrade. It keeps copies of all installed updates from Windows update, even after installing the newer version of updates. Windows Update cleanup deletes older version of updates that are no longer needed.

Once the scan is complete, select the one you want to delete, and click on the Remove files button.

Both the process makes sure old Windows update files don’t occupy space. The later is useful to remove the regular update files as well. We hope the tutorial was easy to follow.