Windows 10 will give you more storage space

[Arthur]

Potentially an extra 14-15GB of disk space compared to Windows 8.1.

 

Source: Microsoft

 

Windows 10 employs two separate and independent approaches for achieving a compact footprint. First, Windows 10 leverages an efficient compression algorithm to compress system files. Second, recovery enhancements have removed the requirement for a separate recovery image.

 

With current builds, Windows can efficiently compress system files. That gives back approximately 1.5GB of storage for 32-bit and 2.6GB of storage for 64-bit Windows. Phones will also be able to use this same efficient compression algorithm and likewise have capacity savings with Windows 10.

 

We are also redesigning Windows’ Refresh and Reset functionalities to no longer use a separate recovery image (often preinstalled by manufacturers today) in order to bring Windows devices back to a pristine state. This reduces Windows’ storage footprint further as the recovery image on typical devices can range in size from 4GB to 12GB, depending on the make and model. Phones already have a storage-optimized recovery solution, so, unlike compression, this enhancement is only for tablets, laptops, and desktops.

 

With these new and enhanced functionalities, devices running Windows 10 will have more free space for photos, videos, and music, as the figure below illustrates.

 

http://a.pomf.se/kxrsru.png

 

Recovery is lightweight and efficient

Without a separate recovery image, the Refresh and Reset functionalities will instead rebuild the operating system in place using runtime system files. Not only does this take up less disk space, it also means you will not have a lengthy list of operating system updates to reinstall after recovering your device.

 

Even though Windows no longer requires a separate recovery image, Windows can still recover a device from severe corruption. With Windows 10, you can create your own recovery media and back up the pristine state of the operating system and preinstalled software. If things go wrong and you are unable to refresh or reset your device successfully, you can boot the device using recovery media and reset to the prior pristine state.

 

Windows 10’s compaction is the evolution of WIMBOOT

Prior to Windows 10, Windows 8.1 achieved significant footprint reduction via a special deployment configuration called Windows Image Boot (WIMBOOT). If you are interested, here is a link to a little blog post about WIMBOOT from last year.

 

WIMBOOT enabled specially prepared Windows 8.1 devices to have all the goodness of an efficient compression algorithm without compromise to responsiveness. “Specially prepared” means manufacturers had to use a different install process. The result was only a small subset of Windows 8.1 devices enjoy the goodness of WIMBOOT’s capacity savings. Windows 10 has the compression algorithm seamlessly integrated with the rest of the OS so that the install process is minimally impacted. As noted earlier, Windows 10 can even compress the OS upon upgrade, if a device is suitable and should it need compression.

 

We’re working on bringing upgrade to low capacity devices

The reason Windows 8.1 devices using WIMBOOT are not yet able to upgrade to Windows 10 is because many of the WIMBOOT devices have very limited system storage. That presents a challenge when we need to have the Windows 8.1 OS, the downloaded install image, and the Windows 10 OS available during the upgrade process. We do this because we need to be able to restore the machine back to Windows 8.1 if anything unexpected happens during the upgrade, such as power loss. In sum, WIMBOOT devices present a capacity challenge to the upgrade process and we are evaluating a couple of options for a safe and reliable upgrade path for those devices.

[Arthur]

Perhaps this is the reason Microsoft are reducing the amount of disk space that Windows 10 requires?

 

Windows 10 to support peer-to-peer downloading of apps and updates

 

Last week we saw that build 10031 had made the Start menu translucent. This week, build 10036 has leaked. Perhaps its most interesting new feature? It'll support peer-to-peer (P2P) downloading of both apps and operating system updates.

 

Peer-to-peer downloads will be optional, and if enabled they will support two modes: systems will be able to either retrieve updates from other machines on the same local network, or from both the local network and PCs on the Internet.

 

With Windows moving to a model that sees Microsoft releasing more updates more often, this is a natural addition. While not a problem faced by enterprise deployments, having multiple Windows systems in the home tends to make updating rather bandwidth hungry. Every machine on a network needs to download updates itself, and with major updates sometimes weighing in at several gigabytes, this can waste a lot of time and, for those on metered connections, burn through the precious bandwidth allowance.

 

Enterprises have been able to avoid this wastage through WSUS (Windows Server Update Services), which downloads the updates once to a local update server. Machines then use this as the source of their patches.

[zag]

Just goes to shows how much windows 8 took in the first place really!

[Arthur]

Just goes to shows how much windows 8 took in the first place really!

... and Windows 7 before that (since it required more disk space than 8.x).

[DrCheese]

This is good for us as we only have 90gb SSDs in most of our machines - Windows 7 takes up around 25gb totally fresh/updated.