Split that 49GB into separate piles of OS binaries, configuration data, and third-party crap that gets dumped into the Windows directory, and the problem won't look so bad. And SSD prices have been dropping fast for several months now, and the drops will continue well into next year.

But the ideal solution would be a copy-on-write filesystem supporting snapshots, rather than A/B partitions.

> But the ideal solution would be a copy-on-write filesystem supporting snapshots, rather than A/B partitions.

NTFS is already that via Volume Shadow Copy. They just don't use it in the way we're discussing, but the tech is there.

SSD are getting surprisingly cheap, you can now get 250 GB for 50 euros, 500 for less than 100 euros (and we're talking samsung 860 evo, not cheap knock off)

I just recently discovered the same. I hadn't shopped SSD prices in a quite a while, so I was pleasantly surprised when I did last week. I picked up the Samsung 860 evo for $87 (USD).

> My Windows directory is currently sitting at 49GB.

That doesn't sound like how much Windows is actually using for itself. How much of it is \Windows\Installer\?

Why is it so big though? On my system the Windows directory is only 5GB.

I just checked mine and it is at 33 GB. Are you running a fresh installation? Do you have very many MS development tools installed?

I know in the past, any Windows updates would be cached in your windows directory forever and there was no safe way to remove them. That would gradually grow the windows directory size forever. Also, it seems there are a lot of files that get thrown in there when you start installing multiple versions of SQL Server or Visual Studio.

Right-click on the drive -> Properties -> General.

Disk Clean-up.

Clean-up System Files.

Windows Update Clean-up (and Temporary Windows installation files).

Ok. Ok.

Enjoy.

I did a clean install of Windows 10 on my workstation less than a month ago and my Windows directory is sitting at 23GB, methinks something funky is going on here.

Do you have a bunch of applications installed? IIUC, Windows keeps different versions of each of its DLLs around for whatever apps requires them. I would expect that installing applications might embiggen your Windows directly a lot.

I wouldn't say I have "a lot" of applications installed, although I'm not too sure how to quantify that.

I assumed it WinSxS related as the other reply mentions, and upon investigation found that it is 9GB alone! I don't run Windows outside of work so I've just never really bothered looking into it, but if it continues to balloon I guess I'll have to.

It's probably due to WoW64 and WinSxS inflating due to dll caching and backup resources after Windows Update.