My new second hand laptop has arrived. I was wanting if poss to retain a
windows partition *just in case*. I might for instance need to confirm
that a .docx file displays correctly on a native install of Office, or
convert an old .pub file - that's always a problem. The laptop only has
a 240GB SSD and windows on its own is taking up 64GB which seems
excessive (!) So two questions:

Windows 11 - I am not familiar with it - does it have things i can
easily just delete or uninstall? Cortana? xbox? some of the apps I have
never heard of? some of the system stuff?

Windows offers the option to compress the drive (doesn't that date back
to dos?). Is it useful? do I do it before or after partitioning? How
much space would I gain?

Tim W

On 2024-02-09, TimW <timw@nomailta.co.uk> wrote:
> My new second hand laptop has arrived. I was wanting if poss to retain a
> windows partition *just in case*. I might for instance need to confirm
> that a .docx file displays correctly on a native install of Office, or
> convert an old .pub file - that's always a problem. The laptop only has
> a 240GB SSD and windows on its own is taking up 64GB which seems
> excessive (!) So two questions:
>
> Windows 11 - I am not familiar with it - does it have things i can
> easily just delete or uninstall? Cortana? xbox? some of the apps I have
> never heard of? some of the system stuff?
>
> Windows offers the option to compress the drive (doesn't that date back
> to dos?). Is it useful? do I do it before or after partitioning? How
> much space would I gain?
>
> Tim W

I bought a computer that came with Windows 10. I used the Windows
compression utility to reduce the size of its partition to 78 GBs than
installed Linux Mint "alongside" Windows. For my use that was plenty of
room. The only time I boot to the Windows side is to update — every other
month or so.

--
"Evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant, then it tries to silence good."
-- Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

On 2/9/24 09:04 AM, TimW wrote:
> My new second hand laptop has arrived. I was wanting if poss to retain a windows partition *just in
> case*. I might for instance need to confirm that a .docx file displays correctly on a native install
> of Office, or convert an old .pub file - that's always a problem. The laptop only has a 240GB SSD
> and windows on its own is taking up 64GB which seems excessive (!) So two questions:
>
> Windows 11 - I am not familiar with it - does it have things i can easily just delete or uninstall?
> Cortana? xbox? some of the apps I have never heard of? some of the system stuff?
>
> Windows offers the option to compress the drive (doesn't that date back to dos?). Is it useful? do I
> do it before or after partitioning? How much space would I gain?
>
> Tim W
I'd look first to see if it's GPT and uefi.
With 240G total, I'd leave Windows alone. Yes, remove stuff of course that you don't need, but
leave it alone. My Windows is 70G of stuff, and even a VM I have is 50G.
Boot Linux, and install. Put the loader in the EFI partition and set the bios to boot Linux. That
once a week/month I boot Windows I do it through the grub menu.
--
Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon
Al

On 2/9/2024 9:04 AM, TimW wrote:
> My new second hand laptop has arrived. I was wanting if poss to retain a windows partition *just in case*. I might for instance need to confirm that a .docx file displays correctly on a native install of Office, or convert an old .pub file - that's always a problem. The laptop only has a 240GB SSD and windows on its own is taking up 64GB which seems excessive (!) So two questions:
>
> Windows 11 - I am not familiar with it - does it have things i can easily just delete or uninstall? Cortana? xbox? some of the apps I have never heard of? some of the system stuff?
>
> Windows offers the option to compress the drive (doesn't that date back to dos?). Is it useful? do I do it before or after partitioning? How much space would I gain?
>
> Tim W

Don't compress the drive!

The reason why, is New Style Compression prevents Linux access to the
compressed files. Linux groks old style compression OK. That is where
you do Properties on a folder and click the compression button.

New style compression uses a Reparse Point. The Linux driver does not
understand that Reparse Point, so it reports "I/O Error", which it is not.
An "I/O Error" is a thing like a CRC error. This is not a hardware failing,
it's a file system driver missing a "feature".

fsutil behavior set disablecompression 1 # On tablets, this can prevent excessive compression
# The setting is machine wide, it's a driver setting.
# It is not applied partition by partition in Windows,
# as you would expect. Typically this only needs to be done
# to C: , and it should have been left as a user option on D: Data.

You may find New Style Compression applied by the OS to System32 files
or similar. It is usually an OS resource that is compressed the New Way.

For example, if you need to hack the OS, to regain an administrator account,
you may need to modify some system files to do it, using Linux for the job.
Not being able to change an item in System32, is going to cost you some
hair loss.

Old Style Compression is the one you optionally turn on as a user
on a folder or an entire partition.

That setting above is a bludgeon, since it applies to both compression types.
But if you were a Windows users, you would be thankful it exists.

*******

It used to be, I could confidently predict that "a Windows OS needs
10-12GB for a base install". But this observation is hardly meaningful
today.

Today, it is equivalent to "pushing on a piece of string". Quite indeterminate.

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/qBNvK5hn/win11-pro-randomly-selected-disk.gif

when I picked up that drive today and plugged in, C: was using 35GB.
I removed some downloads, it was 26GB. If I had not installed and
used WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), that would have saved another
3GB, so 23GB core install. Hibernation is off.

powercfg /h off

The pagefile.sys was reduced to 1GB or less

sysdm.cpl Advanced:Performance:Advanced:Change Custom size 1024,1024 Set button OK button

Some of these settings help reduce the wastage of the disk.

*******

If this was fall of last year, SSD prices were attractive.
They are not as attractive now. The drive last year
at 90 is 160 now. It's almost doubled in price. The flash
manufacturers reduced production, so the price could rise.

It's not practical for them to do that, because the flash fab
building is only "solvent" if the fab production level is
really high ("at capacity"). Some manufacturers back-fill by
making other product in the plant, to keep the lines full.
If you don't have the capability to do that, you can bankrupt
the plant.

This is one of the reasons IBM sold off some fab capacity.
The lines weren't full, and they could not leave it like that.

OK, here is 1TB MLC for $65 USD. They make money off shipping now.

SanDisk SSD Plus 1TB Internal SSD - SATA III 6Gb/s, 2.5"/7mm - SDSSDA-1T00-G26

https://www.newegg.com/sandisk-ssd-plus-1tb/p/N82E16820173317?Item=N82E16820173317

Not all laptops have SATA III ports, but SATA is backward compatible,
so a SATA III drive can run on a SATA II port.

Using a decent size of drive, eliminates the "too-small config" problem.

Paul

TimW <timw@nomailta.co.uk> writes:
> My new second hand laptop has arrived. I was wanting if poss to retain a
> windows partition *just in case*. I might for instance need to confirm
> that a .docx file displays correctly on a native install of Office, or
> convert an old .pub file - that's always a problem. The laptop only has
> a 240GB SSD and windows on its own is taking up 64GB which seems
> excessive (!) So two questions:

You'll probably find that there are two very large files that have the
extension .SYS in the C: root directory that are making your Windows Partion
larger than it needs to be..

What you can do is mount the C:drive filesystem on Linux and remove those.

Windows will recreate them on next Windows boot, so don't panic about
removing them.

When Windows recreates them it will try to place them in the middle or end
of the Windows partition. So shrink that Windows partition before you run
Windows again. Otherwise the locations of those files will prevent you from
reducing the size of the Windows partition as much as you could do.

Now you have gotten rid of the files that were using up such a lot of
Windows' disk space you can recover more disk space for Linux.

Under Linux run 'gparted'. Select the *correct* Windows partition, you'll
know which one because of its size. and then use the 'resize' option in the
'partition menu'. Don't be too greedy, leave space for a smaller Windows
swapfile to be re-created.

The two .SYS files:

One those .SYS files in the Windows root directory will be the hibernate
file (IIRC) its' called 'HIBERFIL.SYS' or something like that. You can do
without hibernation and never need that huge file again.

To Disable Hibernate
NOTE: This step will disable hibernation, delete the hiberfil.sys file, and
remove the Allow hybrid sleep and Hibernate after Power Options under Sleep.
1. Open a Elevated Command Prompt (run as administrator) in Windows.

2. In the elevated command prompt, type

powercfg -h off

The other .SYS file is usually caled 'PAGEFILE.SYS' and is basically a
swapfile. There are settings in Windows will will allow you to reduce the
file's size to something more manageable than 'Let Windows' manage that file
size'.

Regards,

Jack
--
She came late to bed at 3AM. "You're drunk" I said.
She asked "How do you know?"
"You live next door." I replied.

On 2/9/2024 10:19 PM, Jack Strangio wrote:
> TimW <timw@nomailta.co.uk> writes:
>> My new second hand laptop has arrived. I was wanting if poss to retain a
>> windows partition *just in case*. I might for instance need to confirm
>> that a .docx file displays correctly on a native install of Office, or
>> convert an old .pub file - that's always a problem. The laptop only has
>> a 240GB SSD and windows on its own is taking up 64GB which seems
>> excessive (!) So two questions:
>
> You'll probably find that there are two very large files that have the
> extension .SYS in the C: root directory that are making your Windows Partion
> larger than it needs to be..
>
> What you can do is mount the C:drive filesystem on Linux and remove those.
>
> Windows will recreate them on next Windows boot, so don't panic about
> removing them.
>
> When Windows recreates them it will try to place them in the middle or end
> of the Windows partition. So shrink that Windows partition before you run
> Windows again. Otherwise the locations of those files will prevent you from
> reducing the size of the Windows partition as much as you could do.
>
> Now you have gotten rid of the files that were using up such a lot of
> Windows' disk space you can recover more disk space for Linux.
>
> Under Linux run 'gparted'. Select the *correct* Windows partition, you'll
> know which one because of its size. and then use the 'resize' option in the
> 'partition menu'. Don't be too greedy, leave space for a smaller Windows
> swapfile to be re-created.
>
> The two .SYS files:
>
> One those .SYS files in the Windows root directory will be the hibernate
> file (IIRC) its' called 'HIBERFIL.SYS' or something like that. You can do
> without hibernation and never need that huge file again.
>
> To Disable Hibernate
> NOTE: This step will disable hibernation, delete the hiberfil.sys file, and
> remove the Allow hybrid sleep and Hibernate after Power Options under Sleep.
> 1. Open a Elevated Command Prompt (run as administrator) in Windows.
>
> 2. In the elevated command prompt, type
>
> powercfg -h off
>
> The other .SYS file is usually caled 'PAGEFILE.SYS' and is basically a
> swapfile. There are settings in Windows will will allow you to reduce the
> file's size to something more manageable than 'Let Windows' manage that file
> size'.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jack
>

It works better if you just use the controls. These give relatively
easy cleanup.

powercfg -h off # Removes hiberfil.sys (and system can no longer hibernate).
# Try "dir /ah" if you cannot see the file listed in Windows.
# File Explorer also has a panel which has tick boxes for
# making system things visible.

[Pagefile.sys reduction]

sysdm.cpl Advanced:Performance:Advanced:Change Custom size 1024,1024 Set button OK button

Some of the other cleanup steps give smaller gains.
One porker is MSEdge, where there are at least four installs worth of
files on disk, *plus* a cached MSI stuffed somewhere. What a bloody mess... grrr.

*******

I did a test install, and cleaned it up a bit. Allowing 2x space
so there is a bit of room for a Repair Install to run, gives me
64GB as a comfortable partition size. But that doesn't leave 20GB for
Visual Studio or something, to be added :-) During Repair Install,
Windows folder becomes Windows.old folder, and a new Windows is made.
Some of the VMs I use for demos, are also sized 64GB (65536 megabytes).

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/G34DhDFQ/Win10-Partition-Sizing.gif

The metadata in that example, did not get in the way of shrinkage. Normally,
Windows Shrink is limited to a 50% shrink of C: . On the Test Install, I
was able to shrink it a lot more than normal. This is a new behavior I
haven't seen before (right from a clean install and without using Gparted).

With regard to the notion of "making ESP 500MB", I found a reference
to it here, and Rod explains the history of where that suggestion
comes from. I'm disappointed, to find out what it is for. So if I'd been
using Arch, maybe it would have been used at some point.

https://superuser.com/questions/1230741/how-to-resize-the-efi-system-partition

That's why I won't write up any more ideas on the subject of messing around
with this particular example. The topic is dynamic enough, each multibooter
just has to "deal with it". It's just not recipe material, because all of
these fucking OSes are rolling releases, and as fast as I establish some "rules",
some weasel changes things again.

By the way, this is NOT what OSes were invented for. They're not a toy
for 7000 developers. Take the Unix on the computers I used at work.
Hardly anything changed on those machines. Quite stable. The machines
were truly appliances, compared to the schlock of today (where we
PRETEND we've made appliances of the machines when we have not made
appliances of them, they have reverted to mere toys).

Paul

Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> writes:
> The metadata in that example, did not get in the way of shrinkage. Normally,
> Windows Shrink is limited to a 50% shrink of C:

That's because the PAGEFILE.SYS is located about halfway through the
partition. On a 100GB C: drive, the PAGEFILE.SYS is roughly about the 50GB
mark.

If you remove that PAGEFILE.SYS *before* you shrink the drive, you can
shrink that partition with gparted right down to just above the file-stored
area.

> On the Test Install, I
> was able to shrink it a lot more than normal. This is a new behavior I
> haven't seen before (right from a clean install and without using Gparted).

That's what happens when you can move those .SYS files

Regards,

Jack

--
My wife says I have two faults:
I don't listen and something else.