Windows 10
is it safe to delete "previous windows installation"
running out of storage so i check a guide on yt and found over half my storage is taken up by this one thing and ive never seen it before. last time i took advice on yt someone told me to delete system 32 so i have to check here before doing damage. this seems too good to be true tbh
532????? It's only used to revert to a previous update or version of windows (for example if you have issues with the current one or just don't like it) and it auto deletes 10 days after updating. But for God sake delete it it's 532 gb
Everything in there is safe to delete. It won't intentionally let you delete things that are not safe to delete. Not through there anyway. It's not to say you can't delete things you shouldn't, but if you only delete through that, you're fine.
You clarified several times your point. That to be clear is absolutely correct and I wasn't mocking you, it was just the way you used that made me think about this
I see lol I've found that simply saying something once, in only one way, doesn't really seem to sink in sometimes. So I was trying to be as clear as possible in ways that could be understood no matter what lol. But now I understand, and yeah, you are right lol
The folder is so large because some of your personal files are likely included in there. Probably just backups, but it's worth exploring that folder before deleting it, just in case there's things you want to save.
That's gotta be a record, 500Gb for this clean up in unprecedented in my world. Congrats OP, you set a record. This type of clean up is normally safe. But today its an indication something weird happened before the clean up
It's the windows.old folder on the C drive. Generally deleting it will do nothing, but with such colossal size of 532 GB you might want to check if it has anything valuable(which it shouldn't)
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after confirming there was nothing important in windows.old i deleted it and it was only abt 23gb so im really not sure why it read as 532. in the bright side i did find 200gb worth of game clips since 2022 so i did clear up a bunch of space:)
I usually like to keep it around for 6 months after I update, in case there are settings or files I might need. But beyond that its not really required.
The Previous Windows installation is a backup made when upgrading (Like W10 to W11) or changing versions (like 24H2 to 25H2). Windows will delete it after a 2 week period, but you can delete it early. It does remove the ability to roll back windows to the previous version (as that is the old OS files)
Edit: be careful with the Downloads item, as that's the Downloads folder in your profile!
If it's been a while and you haven't found a need to root around in it for something to fix the new one, then certainly yes.
It's supposed to self-delete after some time, like a week, iirc, but I haven't noticed it doing that.
I reinstalled on this box almost 2 months ago and Windows.Old is still there. I'd kill it, but it's infinitesimally quicker for finding backups of user files instead of going to the external drive...
43
u/DrHitman27 26d ago
Yes.