Reclaim disk space after Windows 10 and Windows 11 system updates - Here's how

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Speicherplatz nach Systemupdates von Windows 10 und Windows 11 zurückgewinnen - So geht's - Engelmann Software

Have you noticed that after a Windows 10 or Windows 11 update, your free storage space is significantly reduced? This is because Windows keeps old installations for an extended period – even if the update works perfectly. So after an update, you have both the old and the new installation on your PC. The idea behind this is that Windows wants to make it as easy as possible for you to revert to the previous state, because you never know...

You don't want this? Then, in today's tip, we'll show you how to reclaim this storage space yourself and delete old installations. If the update worked smoothly and you don't plan to revert, you can safely free up this space.

Windows 10 and Windows 11 Storage Usage

Since the Spring 2018 update, Windows has offered a very clear storage usage overview. Here you can see how many GB are taken up by:

  • Your system
  • Apps and games
  • Temporary files
  • Email
  • OneDrive
  • Desktop
  • Maps
  • Documents
  • Pictures
  • Music
  • Videos

To open Storage Usage, proceed as follows:

  1. Press the Windows + I key combination
  2. Click on System and then on Storage
  3. Now click on the "This PC" button and Windows will show you what is taking up storage on this PC. This scan may take a moment.

Reclaim Storage Space

In Storage Usage, click on "Temporary files". Here, Windows lists all files that you can safely delete – including previous Windows installations.

If present, these "previous Windows installation(s)" usually occupy a very high double-digit number of GB. You can now reclaim this storage space with just a few clicks.

Of course, from the Windows Storage Usage, you can also view the storage requirements of your other files and programs and thus specifically find and delete storage hogs (e.g., very large videos) (or offload them to an external hard drive). In this way, in addition to removing previous Windows installations, you can manually reclaim a lot of additional storage space.

Delete even more superfluous data and reclaim storage space on Windows

If you want to remove even more junk data from your system in addition to "previous Windows installations", we recommend the tuning tool TuneUp Utilities. Here you can delete junk data from over 200 programs with just a few clicks. Anyone interested in this software can purchase a 2-year version of the tuner for €29.99 (instead of €69.98) via this link.

Here are the steps again, listed precisely:

1. Use Disk Cleanup

The classic method to free up storage space:

  1. Open the Start menu and type "Disk Cleanup".
  2. Select the drive where Windows is installed (usually C:).
  3. Click on "Clean up system files".
  4. Check the box for "Previous Windows installation(s)" and other unnecessary files.
  5. Confirm with "OK" and start the cleanup.

This method can free up several gigabytes of storage space.

2. Activate Storage Sense

Windows 10 and 11 offer the "Storage Sense" feature, which automatically removes unnecessary files:

  1. Go to "Settings" > "System" > "Storage".
  2. Activate Storage Sense.
  3. Click on "Configure Storage Sense or run it now".
  4. Specify which files should be deleted (e.g., temporary files, Recycle Bin contents).

With this feature, your system remains automatically lean and performant.

3. Manually delete temporary files

In addition to the methods mentioned above, you can also manually remove temporary files:

  1. Open "Settings" and navigate to "System" > "Storage".
  2. Click on "Temporary files".
  3. Select the file types you want to delete (e.g., temporary internet files, thumbnails).
  4. Click on "Remove files".

These steps help free up additional storage space and improve system performance.

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