Not enough disk space to upgrade to Windows 10

I am on Windows 7 and wish to upgrade to Windows 10, but I do not have enough disk space for the upgrade. I think that I need to upgrade to Windows 10 through Windows 7, rather than start from a reformatted hard disk.

The biggest chunk of disk space is taken up by the winsxs folder (some files are 6 years old), but the proper way isn't working. I ran Disk Cleanup as an admin, and the selection to clean up Windows Update files still doesn't appear:

I also tried DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /SpSuperseded and got:

Service Pack Cleanup can't proceed: No service pack backup files were found. The operation completed successfully.

^{(Click image to enlarge)}

[EDIT] Trying to work out Disk Cleanup still. I have KB2852386 installed:

C:\Users\Zeno>wmic qfe | find "KB2852386"
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2852386     WIN7SSD  Update
      KB2852386               NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM  12/1/2013

Why is "Windows Update Cleanup" not showing up like it does here?

Solution 1:

There’s an easier way to achieve your goal: Obtain a Windows 10 1511 installation medium somewhere and perform a clean installation directly.

Since Windows 10’s November Update (called 1511), it is possible to activate directly using a Windows 7+ Product Key (or Windows 8+ Embedded License). The result is the same: You get a “Digital Entitlement” type activation that is valid for your PC. That means it’ll be automatically picked up whenever you reinstall Windows 10 on the same PC. Details on this procedure, including which types of Product Keys are not eligible for this method, are available at Microsoft.

Apparently, you can enter the “old” Product Key even during Setup, but you could also skip entering the Key there. I used this method once. I skipped entering the Key during Setup.

Prior to the 1511 version you could not activate directly using a non-Windows-10 Product Key, making the whole “upgrade and then clean install” procedure necessary. Because the 1511 update is relatively new, information in the previous state of affairs is more dominant in the Internet.

I also recommend using partition that’s at least 60 GiB for installing Windows.

Solution 2:

The big green file, is it a pagefile? Change the pagefile size, maybe even consider temporarily disabling pagefile whatsoever. The same goes for hiberfil.sys (disable hibernation using powercfg -h off). You need around 20GB of free space before upgrading - how far are you from reaching the goal?

I have struggled with HDD space issues and the fix I've found is involving an NTFS junction to the files - I have done that with Visual Studio Program data to redirect the gigabytes off from my SSD to a HDD. I've used junction utility from SysInternals. While I would advise against moving WinSxS through a junction point to another (removable) drive, you might find it handy to move non-system critical files to a different drive this way. You will want to use a junction for folders that must be accessed at the specific path (ex. C:\Program Files) - even though the actual data will reside on a different drive. While I can't testify for accuracy of this article it might give you some overview on how would you actually move the WinSxS directory, even temporarily.

Solution 3:

Looks like you've already cleaned the RTM files or installed Windows 7 with a DVD which already has the Sp1 included. In both cases you can't shrink WinSxS with this Sp clean command any longer.

But you can cleanup WinSxS by removing old and replaced Updates after installing Update KB2852386 and running disk cleanup again.

If the WindowsUpdate option doesn't show up, Windows can't remove any updates.

If you have low free storage to upgrade, you need to use a 2 USB drives. Install the Windows 10 Media to the 1 USB stick and leave the second empty. During the Windows 10 setup, that you started from USB drive 1, Windows setup will tell that you don't have enough free space and will allow to use the 2nd (empty) USB drive for storing temporary files.