During most upgrades, Windows saves a backup copy of the previous installation in the Windows.old folder. This is done in case you need to restore data afterwards or the operating system needs to roll back the installation.
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 Pureinfotech | 2016-04-16 15:21:15 |  592 Views |
How to free up disk space after an upgrade using Windows 10 settings
However, after the installation is successfully completed, the user is not informed about the remaining folder. And this folder takes up a lot of valuable hard drive space, especially if you are using a solid-state drive, which still has a much smaller capacity than the drives with spinning platters.
Windows.old lies quietly in the root of C:/ and contains the operating system files, the Users folder (with your personal documents), Program Files and Program Files (x86) and other data. And if you no longer need the contents after upgrading to Windows 8, you can safely delete them and free up valuable disk space, which can be several gigabytes (12-20 GB or even more) in size, depending on your version of Windows and installed applications.
Before deleting data to free up extra hard drive space, be sure you don't need any of your old documents, music files, videos or pictures anymore. (This previous guide can help you recover any files if needed.)
