Discussion: Reserved Storage

Hellbovine

Hellbovine

Well-Known Member
I read a number of articles recently on "Reserved Storage" which was introduced in Windows 10 a few years ago. I was still left with some questions though, and so I want to ask everyone that has been disabling it, have you noticed any issues besides the obvious problem you would run into if you managed to max out your disk space?

For anyone that has no idea what I'm talking about, go to Start > Settings > System > Storage > Show more categories > System & reserved > and look at the "Reserved" space being taken up. This is 8 gigabytes that Windows sets aside, where it can store Windows Updates it's downloading and installing, and for other cache purposes, according to Microsoft. This was introduced because too many users barely have any disk space left, and it was causing problems for Microsoft's updates, so now they have Windows reserve space to prevent those issues.

What I'm interested in is real world experiences, not just white paper documentation. I'm curious if there is any hidden aspect to this reserve and if it's as cut and dry as it seems. Some thoughts that cross my mind for example, does Windows Update complain if the reserve is disabled, or does Windows stop creating some cache files when it's disabled? Insert other similar questions here.

UPDATE (AUGUST 31ST, 2023):
I've disabled this tweak for months now, without issue, and I have not seen any forum reports of it causing problems either. I think this tweak is safe and mundane, it truly seems to just be a block of reserved space on the drive that gets used in some scenarios, and even then it's optional.

The only time an issue should arise is if there isn't enough disk space for an operation to finish, such as downloading and installing an update, but this is an extremely basic computer management concept and Microsoft is essentially trying to dummy-proof Windows with this setting, instead of urging users to buy a bigger drive or get rid of excess files which is the proper way to solve that problem.

To change this setting in NTLite, load an image, go to Configure > Settings > System > Reserved storage > Disabled.
 
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Hellbovine said:
I read a number of articles recently on "Reserved Storage" which was introduced in Windows 10 a few years ago. I was still left with questions though, and so I want to ask everyone that has been disabling it, have you noticed any issues related to that, besides the extremely obvious problem you would run into if you managed to max out your disk space?

For anyone that has no idea what I'm talking about, go to Start > Settings > System > Storage > Show more categories > System & reserved > and look at the "Reserved" space being taken up. This is about an 8 GB chunk that Windows sets aside, where it can store Windows updates it's downloading/installing, and other "cache" according to Microsoft. This was introduced because telemetry told Microsoft that a lot of users barely have any disk space left, and it was causing problems for their customers, so now they have the operating system reserve this allotment to prevent said issues.

Basically, what I'm interested in is real world experience, not just whitepaper nonsense. I'm curious if there is any hidden aspect to this reserve, and if it's as cut and dry as it seems. Some thoughts that cross my mind for example, does Windows update complain if it's disabled, or by removing this does Windows stop creating some "cache" files? Any insights would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Is this on a ssd or spinning disk?
 
The primary function of Windows 10 (and later) is managing your PC as a Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) host.

Windows wants to self-update (upgrade to new Windows) and manage itself on behalf of users with no technical experience. Every month, Windows Update will install the monthly CU's, and every day Defender downloads new malware definitions, and one day run cloud-based self-healing features.

Every Windows system is expected to be current (or close to) on security and quality fixes. This means WU has to work every single time.
One big problem is not having enough disk space for the monthly update, or the next milestone release.

On newly installed systems, Windows will reserve (steal) disk space for future upgrades. It needs to be able to comfortable save the new release packages, and enough space to revert in case of serious error (or user managed rollback). Right now, that's about 7 GB allocated space.

With DISM, you can disable reserved storage in the image or on a live system.
Windows 10 and reserved storage
Managing reserved storage in Windows 10 environments

Reserved storage is not meant for the expert user, but it's there to guarantee future Windows upgrades will happen for the normal, non-technical user. On a large HDD, 7 GB is not a big deal. Users with low capacity SSD's are obviously affected the most.

Reserved space isn't an actual folder or file (you can't delete or remove it), but really some accounting tricks. Windows tracks the files it creates on behalf of managed updates, and then "subtracts" the padded difference from the disk's reported free space. Therefore you can actually "run out of space", and won't be allowed to create more files; but WU has left itself some hidden capacity.

The second Windows tool is the unlabeled KB3125217, installed by OOBE without your permission. This is basically the normal disk cleanup tool hyped up on steroids. KB3125217 has the goal of scheduling regular disk cleanup of old temp files, so there's enough room to install the monthly update. Is it required? Of course, not.
 
Microsoft said...Our goal is to improve the day-to-day function of your PC by ensuring critical OS functions always have access to disk space. Without reserved storage, if a user almost fills up her or his storage, several Windows and application scenarios become unreliable. Windows and application scenarios may not work as expected if they need free space to function. With reserved storage, updates, apps, temporary files, and caches are less likely to take away from valuable free space and should continue to operate as expected.

As long as you always have enough space then I don't see why disabling it would do anything but restore space. However reserved storage.... couldn't it also be classified under ssd where they also do there work in keeping there performance?
 
To quote thurott.com:
The feature works by reserving 7GB from your main drive, say C: so Windows will report that the amount of free space available has gone down by 7GB once the feature is available. The amount of free space available to regular applications will, therefore, decline by 7GB, but “servicing” will be able to use the 7GB for things like Windows Update.
Click to expand...
 
I appreciate all the effort, but I was specifically looking for real world experiences from people that have had it disabled for a while, and if they noticed any issues since so many things are undocumented and there could be consequences that aren't intuitive.

I'm testing this tweak on my main machine presently, but I also don't use my computer the same way the next guy does, and since Microsoft seemed excited about this feature I figured it was worth asking about. I don't consider most websites to be real world experience because the vast majority of articles are outdated, incorrect, regurgitated, or plagiarized for ad revenue and nothing more.
 
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Necrosaro said:
...couldn't it also be classified under ssd where they also do there work in keeping there performance?
Click to expand...
I wasn't sure at first what you meant by HDD/SSD, but now I think I do. Are you referring to "over-provisioning" which is where an SSD reserves an amount, like 10% of free space for use as a cache?
 
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Hellbovine said:
I wasn't sure at first what you meant by hdd/ssd, but now I think I do. Are you referring to "over-provisioning" which is where an SSD reserves an amount, like 10% of free space for use as a cache?
Click to expand...
No, that's not what "over-provisioning" is for. On any drive (HDD or SSD), there are always reserved spare blocks to replace any bad blocks found by the drive's internal controller. When the pool of spare blocks is exhausted, the next bad block triggers a disk fault. If your drive supports SMART, you can find out what % of remapped blocks are left.

https://kb.acronis.com/content/9105
 
Samsung's manual (link) agrees with what I said, plus I was only trying to clarify Necrosaro's statement, it wasn't about the technical aspect.
 
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Yes
Hellbovine said:
I wasn't sure at first what you meant by hdd/ssd, but now I think I do. Are you referring to "over-provisioning" which is where an SSD reserves an amount, like 10% of free space for use as a cache?
Click to expand...
Over provisioning, yes that's the name just didn't come to mind. In the reserve storage part I will try tonight and see. Don't think much will happen and won't till I do a update.

Since I have removed windows updates and now relying on Ntlite for those updates I would never go back since it allows me complete control over what I want to download when I want to. Because of this it will allow me to test just every day things and later it's affects on updates.
 
As Garlin posted that link I read it

How does it work?
When apps and system processes create temporary files, these files will automatically be placed into reserved storage. These temporary files won’t consume free user space when they are created and will be less likely to do so as temporary files increase in number, provided that the reserve isn’t full. Since disk space has been set aside for this purpose, your device will function more reliably. Storage sense will automatically remove unneeded temporary files, but if for some reason your reserve area fills up Windows will continue to operate as expected while temporarily consuming some disk space outside of the reserve if it is temporarily full.

Jeeze more questions now then answers. Microsoft sure likes to make things complicated. I thought reserve storage was just used only for updates but it just said temporary files which encompasses a lot of stuff.
 
Wow never heard of this before until I came here to search what the option is.

I can 100% understand why this is a thing, but I think the way its been implemented is poor, I myself been blind to the feature would be deliberately keeping space free to make sure updates work without realising its already reserved. Might also get users trying to diagnose where their missing 7-8GB is.
 
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