What does it mean to remove temporary files from storage?
What does it mean to remove temporary files from storage?
Is it secure to remove this 28GB of information!
Link: https://imgur.com/a/vvmF2pd
Yes, if you're certain you won't go back to an earlier version or feature of Windows. Typically these files only include outdated system components and not user data folders.
In recent versions, those old files are meant to vanish automatically after ten days. Ten years ago in early Windows 10 releases it was thirty days, and users still voiced concerns when they couldn't revert to Windows 7 or 8.1. Likely Microsoft now feels more assured that you'll appreciate it, or that future updates causing issues will be more obvious so you'll notice them promptly.
When using Windows 11 24H2, these updated files might come from either Windows 11 23H2 or 22H2. If you received them only through monthly quality updates, they are typically smaller—usually under 4GB. These monthly updates became bigger because Microsoft shifted from sending numerous small patches to replace just the changes in files. This change aimed to simplify the process by requiring everyone to download the full replacement set at once, which benefits users with fast internet connections and ample SSD storage. Feature updates, on the other hand, are generally complete OS installs and remain quite large, often needing around 30GB of free space to install, even though the .iso file size stays manageable for a dual-layer DVD. If you’re comfortable and don’t expect to revert to an older version, you can safely remove these files to free up space.
Your laptop was likely sold with an earlier Windows 11 release (such as 23H2). You recently installed the latest version (24H2), which was done automatically through the Windows update. The old version files are stored in windows.old. If you don’t want to go back to the previous version, you can remove those old files—they will be deleted automatically over time.