Why your Home windows set up recordsdata maintain getting greater – AI is filling up smaller drives

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ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Microsoft’s Home windows set up recordsdata have ballooned in measurement.
• Within the final 10 years, the obtain has doubled to greater than 8 GB.
• The almost certainly trigger is Microsoft’s AI recordsdata for Copilot+ PCs

Home windows downloads are greater than ever. I observed this a couple of occasions over the previous six months (“Huh, I do not keep in mind a obtain being this huge earlier than”) however hadn’t had time to dig into the small print.

Then I noticed a current publish from Michael Niehaus titled “How can Home windows 11 maintain getting greater?” and I noticed, no, it was not my creativeness.

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Simply how huge are these downloads?

This is Michael’s chart exhibiting the rise in measurement for multi-edition downloads from Microsoft’s Visible Studio (subscription required). The primary worth is from the preliminary launch of Home windows 11 model 24H2 in November 2024 up by the newest model 25H2 from July 2026. (As a result of 25H2 was delivered as an enablement bundle for 24H2, each releases are from the identical department.)

As Michael notes, nearly 6,000 new folders and over 20,000 new recordsdata have been added over that stretch of lower than two years.  

I went by some further ISO from my assortment to plot the change in obtain measurement because the preliminary launch of Home windows 10 in 2015. See for your self.

Even utilizing the Media Creation Device to obtain the newest ISO would not assist. That file remains to be a humongous 6.8 GB, practically twice the scale of the unique Home windows 10 launch.

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Michael’s findings deserve further weight, given his background. He spent 16 years at Microsoft engaged on nearly every little thing to do with Home windows deployment. I realized quite a bit from him, and if you happen to ever had “deploy Home windows machines in a enterprise” as a part of your job description, you most likely did, too. (He is nonetheless in the identical enterprise, working for the Swedish firm 2Pint Software program.)

Is that this simply evolution, or is it bloat?

I am at all times reluctant to make use of the time period “bloat” to discuss with Home windows, as a result of individuals have been complaining about Microsoft’s bloated software program because the days of MS-DOS. I wrote about it 20 years in the past — Home windows bloat? It is at all times been that approach. My favourite might be this overview of Home windows XP, which referred to as it…

a monstrous, bloated brute that requires a state-of-the-art PC and two gigabytes of exhausting disk house earlier than it should even say ‘howdy’. This implies any client silly sufficient to need to run XP will most likely have to purchase a brand new PC.

Two gigabytes of exhausting disk house? It appeared like quite a bit again then.

However possibly this time is totally different. Prior to now, Microsoft and its OEM companions may remedy the issue by throwing extra {hardware} at it. Given the large value will increase in reminiscence and storage which are prone to persist for years, the “simply add {hardware}” possibility is now not possible.

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The largest weak spot is system storage. Microsoft’s official necessities for Home windows 11 name for at least 64 GB for the system drive. Only for enjoyable, I put collectively a digital machine utilizing a digital drive that measurement and put in the newest launch of Home windows 11 on it. It reached a peak storage utilization of 28.2 GB earlier than it completed putting in Home windows and the newest updates. That is roughly half the scale of the drive, earlier than putting in any apps or saving any consumer information recordsdata.

The place’s the bloat coming from?

I wasn’t certain precisely why this was occurring, so I chatted with Michael to see if he had any concepts. One motive the cumulative updates are so massive is that they embody a large quantity of AI-related code, particularly 3GB of shared AI fashions utilized by numerous native AI options on Copilot+ PCs. Dig into these recordsdata and you will find dozens of WindowsWorkload.* recordsdata devoted to that mission. When you’ve got a plain-vanilla, no-NPU, Copilot-minus PC, you continue to must obtain these bits, which the Home windows installer will then ignore.

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“Is Home windows getting greater? Sure,” he instructed me. “Are updates getting greater? Sure. Does Copilot+ make it worse? Sure, a lot worse.”

One downside he identified is that Microsoft is delivery many of those large code dumps within the month-to-month cumulative updates delivered by Home windows Replace fairly than distributing them as system elements by the Microsoft Retailer.

Sure, that is an possibility. Home windows 11 is already delivering a few of its most necessary elements that approach, lowering the burden on Home windows Replace and making certain these updates are delivered solely when the underlying app is in use. (Additionally they do not require a restart to finish set up, which is a giant win.) Test the Downloads & Updates web page within the Retailer to see examples of system elements now managed by the Retailer as a substitute of Home windows Replace.

Why does it matter?

These are points for anybody whose job includes deploying Home windows and Home windows updates on company networks or sustaining Home windows PC on smaller enterprise networks.

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The true problem is for anybody who owns a system with a paltry 64 GB system drive. Microsoft says that is sufficient to run Home windows, but it surely’s exhausting to think about how minimal your workload needs to be for that set up to make sense. I agree with Michael that 128 GB ought to be a naked minimal, and anybody doing severe improvement or inventive work wants a terabyte of storage.

Asserting Home windows 11 Inside Out, Second Version

I am about to ship the ultimate pages of my new ebook, “Home windows 11 Inside Out, Second Version,” to the writer. I have been engaged on it for six strong months, and it is a large revision that anybody who made all of it the best way to the tip of this publish will respect. It is out there for preorder from Amazon now, and I will have hyperlinks to different buy websites on my web site.