If you’re one of the folks out there who is always running out of disk space on your Surface Pro tablet, I have some good news.
It turns out that Windows 10 could use up to 10.6 GB less space on your Surface Pro tablet!
It’ll do so by compressing the system files which Microsoft says will reduce the disk footprint by as much as 2.6GB for a 64-bit installation (which Surface tablet’s use). In addition, they will be removing the on-disk recovery image to free up to another 8GB of space (the recovery partition on a Surface Pro is 8GB).
On a 64GB Surface Pro 3, this means you could gain as much as 17% of your disk space back. Here’s a graph depicting this disk savings:
Basically, you will get the green and the yellow space back for your data.
Windows 10 will use less space: Will the Compression Slow Down my Surface?
Microsoft says no. According to a blog post from the Windows Team yesterday, the compression is simply an evolution of the WIMBoot technology already present in Windows 8.1
Windows 10 will use less space: What if I Need to Refresh or Reset My Surface?
The recovery options will still be available, it’s just instead of a complete recovery partition, like Windows 8.1 uses, Windows 10 will use runtime system files which take up a lot less disk space to do a refresh or reset of your Surface.
Microsoft also says that you’ll be able to create a separate recovery disk (as you can in Windows 8.1) that will let you re-install Windows 10 and the pre-installed software.
Windows 10 will use less space: What about My Surface RT or Surface 2?
Unfortunately there’s nothing specific in the announcement indicating that the reduced functionality version of Windows 10 for the Surface RT/2 will include the reduced disk footprint.
Though, to me, it seems that the lower-capacity Windows RT devices would benefit the most from a lower disk footprint and more usable space. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
So, even if you don’t pick up a new Surface Pro 4 when they are released, you’ll still get an “upgrade” to your usable disk space when you install Windows 10 on your Surface Pro tablet.
If you want to read more about these space savings or more about WIMBoot, you can do so HERE and HERE.
Tim
