Windows 10 v1903 and Reserved Storage

[WAWood]

In January, Microsoft announced a new feature that would come with Windows 10, v1903 -- Reserved Storage.

According to Microsoft, through reserved storage, some disk space will be set aside to be used by updates, apps, temporary files, and system caches.  Microsoft went further to estimate that this reserved space would start at around 7GB and would utilize virtual storage technology to occupy space INSIDE the current C: volume.

Understandably, since then, folks with limited-storage devices, most notably those stuck with 32GB "SSDs", have shown increasing concern that should an Upgrade to Win10 v1903 set aside 7GB of their drive space (assuming they even HAVE that much available) that would leave many of them with little or no space to spare.

All is not that grim however, because Microsft indicated some restriction on this feature:

1) It will come only on PCs that have Win10 v1903 already installed

2) It will only apply to a current PC if you do a Clean-Install.

So, the good news is, that if you're running a limited-storage device in Win10, as long as you do a Feature Upgrade to v1903, and NOT a clean-install, you don't have to worry about MS gobbling up 7GB or so of your very limited disk space to set aside for future use.

If you want to read much more detail about this feature, here is a link to the Tutorial on the Windows 10 forums:  

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/124859-check-reserved-storage-size-windows-update-windows-10-a.h...

[Iowa_Fleurs]

Thank you very much.  I just found this article after struggling with this issue the past week.  Very helpful!  

[littlelady8]

Thank you for sharing this! This stuff can be a little confusing. I was just taking a look at an article stating that computers have to meet a certain requirements to install windows 10 1903. I know that my laptop came with 1 tb hard drive and 8gb of ram. I just took a look at my storage and noticed that I have 7.89 GB of ram that is usable and 862 of storage left. Would I be able to install Windows 10 1903 successfully?

[PiotrTiré]

It should be remembered that after each Windows update, run the disk - system cleanup - with the disk cleanup tool, which allows you to release up to 30 GB of disk space. To recover as much free space, run the disk cleanup tool in administrator mode. greetings

[PiotrTiré]

Littlelady8 - 862MB about which you write is reserved memory for the integrated graphics card, which for the update itself runs on compatible computers and it does not matter the amount of RAM or the size of the disk.

[Jayunt]

I have faced this issue while dealing with many users who come for Microsoft Support.

It is defintely not easy to deal with the smaller gadgets with Windows 10. Most of these manufacturers should plan something to design it better to take a lighter operating system such like an embedded ones on POS machines in the past. A small tablet or hand held devices with Windows 10 may work but people are unable to install Office program on them. I wish to highlight this issue more in detail if some developer gets a chance to look in the explained scenario.

Thanks,

liveassist.info

[Huffer]

I have experimented with this and if you put v. 1903 on a low-storage computer like a Stream with 32 gig eMMC hard drive it still grabs about 7 gigs of space. Reported registry adjustments to remove the reserved storage do not work. 7 gigs or about 25% of disk space is lost on a device that has no disk space to spare. Lesson: don't put v. 1903 on one of these things. 

[wpanjaitan]

Hi All,

little bit different with 1903, i experienced that some of elitebook series notebook from HP such as Elitebook G3 got problem when update the windows from 1709 to 1803 or from 1803 to 1809. several problems that i got like driver display problem that make couldn't duplicate the screen with 2nd monitor, driver wireless problem and cant access connection via wireless. 

did you have any issue that similar with me? temporary the solution is just re-build the windows with fresh installation