If you have recently upgraded your Windows 8 installation to Windows 8.1, you can reclaim 6GB of hard drive space by removing the old Windows 8 files. Here’s a little background info for you…
When you upgrade to a newer version of Microsoft Windows, the version being replaced is retained in a folder called Windows.old just in case the upgrade fails or you wish to revert back to the previous version for some reason.
The amount of space required to store the previous version of Windows varies depending on the versions involved. Since you have just upgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1, you now have roughly 6GB of old (and now useless) Windows 8 system files just sitting there taking up valuable disk space.
You can safely reclaim that 6GB of wasted disk space by deleting those old Windows 8 files. I realize that 6GB of storage space might seem insignificant now that modern hard drive capacities are measured in the Terabytes, but if you have an older PC with a smaller hard drive that 6GB can make a huge difference!
If you would like to reclaim that wasted space, follow these simple instructions:
1 – Thoroughly test your new Windows 8.1 installation to make sure everything works as it should before continuing on to step 2. Why? Because once you have deleted the old Windows 8 files, there is literally no going back unless you have already created a backup of some sort.
(Note: It is very important to ALWAYS have a current backup on hand before attempting to upgrade Windows to a new version!)
2 – Once you are satisfied that all is well and good with Windows 8.1, press the Windows+E key to open the “File Explorer” utility.
3 – Right-click on the C: drive, then click Properties>Disk Cleanup.
4 – Select Clean up system files. The “Disk Cleanup” utility will now begin scanning your hard drive for files that are no longer needed and can safely be removed.
5 – After the scan has completed, select Previous Windows Installations from the resulting list.
6 – Click Ok.