how much storage space does windows 10 take

If you don’t have 15% free space, Windows won’t be able to properly defragment the drive.

RELATED: Do I Really Need to Defrag My PC? That’s because, traditionally, you needed at least 15% free space on a drive so Windows could defragment it. You’ll commonly see a recommendation that you should leave 15% to 20% of a drive empty. The 15% Rule of Thumb for Mechanical Hard Drives There are a few rules of thumb going around online, but they aren’t necessarily applicable today. Microsoft does not disclose a specific amount of free space you should keep. However, there’s no firm percentage or number of gigabytes of free space you need to maintain. These tools can’t function without some free space, and other programs may also break for no apparent reason unless you realize your system drive is full and free up some space. Windows provides no further detail, but freeing up space allowed the troubleshooters to start. RELATED: 7 Ways To Free Up Hard Disk Space On Windowsįor example, when we filled a Windows 10 PC’s drive completely full and attempted to run its included troubleshooters, we just saw a message saying “A problem is preventing the troubleshooter from starting”. If you open a large number of programs and need extra memory, the Windows paging file will need to grow-but it won’t be able to grow and programs may crash or not open. Programs often need to create cache files, so they may crash or experience other errors. If your drive fills up, you won’t be able to save new files to the drive or download anything, including Windows Updates. You need some available space for a variety of reasons.

How much storage space does windows 10 take