Over the years of using your computer, you would probably have downloaded a fair number of Windows updates. These updates help fix bugs in the software, patch security vulnerabilities, add new features, and more. Some of these updates tend to be bigger than normal, but that’s just par for the course.
However, these updates that you download can end up eating into your hard drive space. These can be files leftover from the update that weren’t deleted properly, which means that over a period of time, the files can accumulate and end up taking up more space than you would like.
If you’re trying to free up space on your computer and feel like you’ve deleted everything you possibly can, then perhaps clearing out these unwanted update files could help free up a few extra gigabytes to tide you over.
Delete Old Windows Update Files
- Open the Start Menu and type Control Panel and press Enter
- Go to Administrative Tools
- Select Disk Cleanup
- Choose the drive you want to clean up and click OK
- Click on Clean up system files
- Select the drive
- Make sure “Windows Update Cleanup” is checked and click OK
- Wait for Windows to complete the process
Yes and no. These files are technically no longer in use so it is safe to remove them if you want to free up space. However, do take note that removing these files also means that in the event you need to revert to an older update of Windows, it will not be possible. If you’re fine with the current build of Windows then deleting these files should be OK.
How often you need to delete these files depends on how much space you have. If you have a hard drive with 4TB of space and you don’t really use that much of it, chances are you could ignore these files for years and it probably wouldn’t make a dent. However, if you’re using a smaller SSD just for booting up Windows, then it could eat into your storage pretty quickly.
Filed in . Read more about Microsoft, Social Hit, Windows and Windows 10.