Windows System Recovery hasn't been backing up since October

[LAwLz]

9 hours ago, mr moose said:

MS removes a feature no one used,  LTT mistakes their own pet peaves for world issues.

MS removes a recovery function to save 140MB.

MS apologists: "Well it saves space so that's good! Barely anyone uses it anyway".

 

MS releases terribly optimized programs and features taking up several gigabytes of data.

MS apologists: "What? You can't afford a few gigabytes of storage? Are you poor or something? Get a job!"

 

 

It's amazing how the same people can defend Microsoft in both instances despite the first basically being MS admitting that even 100MB matters, thus validating the concerns in the second example.

[GoodBytes]

11 minutes ago, Blake said:

Was refering to the 7GB update reserved space.

Which you need regardless to do updates. I don't get the point?

 

11 minutes ago, Blake said:

Others have mentioned it and it's been raised as a potential issue before. They just need to change the required HDD space from the 21GB or so to 28GB and it's a non-issue.

Even better, Microsoft has changed the requirements that it needs more than 32GB. While Windows itself doesn't consume anywhere near that, OEMs can no longer make 32GB devices, they have to include 64GB as their minimum.

[GoodBytes]

13 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

MS removes a recovery function to save 140MB.

MS apologists: "Well it saves space so that's good! Barely anyone uses it anyway".

No one used it. No one here even knew about it.And it could be more than 140MB.

 

Quote

MS releases terribly optimized programs and features taking up several gigabytes of data.

MS apologists: "What? You can't afford a few gigabytes of storage? Are you poor or something? Get a job!"

They have a purpose. It is used.

 

Quote

It's amazing how the same people can defend Microsoft in both instances despite the first basically being MS admitting that even 100MB matters, thus validating the concerns in the second example.

I am amazed by some member of the community scratch the bucket turning nothing into a massive issues, because it is "Microsoft".

[Master Disaster]

18 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Yes. Microsoft pulled the plug on this feature because:

1. No one was using it.
2. You have System Restore already
3. People complain on the size of Windows it takes on disk.

 

If people complain about 100MBs then they have bigger issues than no reg backup.

[GoodBytes]

11 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

If people complain about 100MBs then they have bigger issues than no reg backup.

No one complain about 100MB... People complain about the overall size of Windows.. but that wont' change until Microsoft drops legacy support. But then people will complain about other things... like.. all or nearly all their programs not working. This is a more of a  "nice to have a bit of free space" type of thing on something that was never ever used, and in some ways redundant, as you have System Restore.

[LAwLz]

33 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

No one used it. No one here even knew about it.And it could be more than 140MB. 

 

They have a purpose. It is used. 

 

I am amazed by some member of the community scratch the bucket turning nothing into a massive issues, because it is "Microsoft".

Just to be clear. I do not really care that they removed this. In fact, I think it's good that they are trimming down Windows. I think Windows 10 is massively bloated and shouldn't use anywhere near as much space as it does.

If you want an example look no further than all the shitty programs Microsoft bundles with it. The image viewer app takes up around 350MB. For comparison, IrfanView which is I believe is a far superior takes up around 6MB.

 

The problem I have is that you can't have it both ways. You can't give Microsoft a bunch of excuses for why people just "need to upgrade their hardware" whenever Microsoft releases unoptimized crap, and then turn around and talk about how great it is that Microsoft are saving a couple of hundred megabytes by disabling features.

And come on GoodBytes. Microsoft clearly fucked up here because they did not announce this change from, the task scheduler keeps saying that it succeeded successfully, and it even generates the registry files but they are 0KB in size.

If they wanted to implement this change properly I would suggest listing it in the change log (like all changes should be) and then disable the services rather than neuter the functionality of it. That way the service won't run and think it completely successfully, the 0KB files won't be created, and the task logs will accurately reflect what is happening on the system.

 

 

 

8 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

No one complain about 100MB... People complain about the overall size of Windows.. but that wont' change until Microsoft drops legacy support. But then people will complain about other things... like.. all or nearly all their programs not working. This is a more of a  "nice to have a bit of free space" type of thing on something that was never ever used, and in some ways redundant, as you have System Restore. 

Legacy support is NOT the reason for why Windows is so bloated.

For crying out loud GoodBytes you should know better than this. I am not sure if you are intentionally lying to protect Microsoft or if you genuinely don't know better.

The size of the components necessary to support legacy support going really far back are tiny. They are really, really small in size.

 

Things like system libraries takes up very little space. 

user32_dll for example implements a large part of the user interface components in Windows (for example window management). It also includes components for message passing and input processing. The entire library takes up less than 800KB and contains over 1000 functions. 

kernel.dll is another one of the very large libraries. It has something like 1400 functions in it and takes up 837KB.

 

I mean just think logically for a second here. Old systems did not have an abundance of storage, yet the entire operating systems were able to fit on them quite easily. You could install the entire XP operating system on 1.5GB of storage, and it contained compatibility with software going back quite a long time. Implementing support for all software which could run on Windows XP would therefore take up a maximum of 1.5GB, assuming we actually ship an entire copy of another OS inside Windows 10. However, with optimization, like cutting out everything not needed in XP anymore, we could probably get the size down to half a gig or so. Maybe even less.

So no, backwards compatibility is not the reason why Windows 10 takes up so much space. It doesn't even make any sense to assume that's the reason when you start thinking about it.

[mr moose]

49 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

MS removes a recovery function to save 140MB.

MS apologists: "Well it saves space so that's good! Barely anyone uses it anyway".

 

MS releases terribly optimized programs and features taking up several gigabytes of data.

MS apologists: "What? You can't afford a few gigabytes of storage? Are you poor or something? Get a job!"

 

 

It's amazing how the same people can defend Microsoft in both instances despite the first basically being MS admitting that even 100MB matters, thus validating the concerns in the second example.

The worlds full of people who don't think too deeply about it.  At the end of the day its still an unused feature that has been MIA for a while and it seems people think the world is about end because of it.

[LAwLz]

3 minutes ago, mr moose said:

The worlds full of people who don't think too deeply about it.  At the end of the day its still an unused feature that has been MIA for a while and it seems people think the world is about end because of it. 

Yeah, I think it's good that it's disabled.

I do however think that Microsoft disabled it in one of the worst possible ways they could and have suggested how I think they should have done it in this thread instead (disabled the scheduled task).

And I also wanted to take the opportunity to talk about how bloated Windows 10 is since people in this thread seem to harm on the same old "just buy more hardware" argument which I think is one of the stupidest arguments ever.

It's like people want to use terribly written software, because they sure like defending it and coming up with excuses for why the software doesn't need to get better.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Yeah, I think it's good that it's disabled.

I do however think that Microsoft disabled it in one of the worst possible ways they could and have suggested how I think they should have done it in this thread instead (disabled the scheduled task).

And I also wanted to take the opportunity to talk about how bloated Windows 10 is since people in this thread seem to harm on the same old "just buy more hardware" argument which I think is one of the stupidest arguments ever.

It's like people want to use terribly written software, because they sure like defending it and coming up with excuses for why the software doesn't need to get better.

I have no doubt that win 10 could be thinner and leaner, however just how much in the grander scheme of things is yet to be realised.  But I don't think that is a relevant point either for or against some of the arguments being made in this thread.    It's laughable to think that 100MB makes any real difference, however it's equally laughable to ignore the mammoth size of windows and the beast it must be to maintain and try to hone into a competitive product.   I Think the fact MS are trying to get windows onto arm and similar smaller devices indicates they are concerned about size, just what they can do might be a different issue altogether.

 

 

[GoodBytes]

Just now, LAwLz said:

If you want an example look no further than all the shitty programs Microsoft bundles with it. The image viewer app takes up around 350MB. For comparison, IrfanView which is I believe is a far superior takes up around 6MB.

Superior app that is from the 90's...

• no high-DPi aware
• no touch support
• Uses Windows 2000 open/Save dialog box (could ever be bother added "Ex" at the open/save dialog box API to get the "new" one (vista and up)). Funny thing is that support for XP and older is gone. So yea.. make 0 sense.
• doesn't organize pictures
• can't edit camera/phone videos
• Slideshow maker make flying a space ship look simple... due to lack of any care in GUI design. 
• Settings panel is a mess and could be greatly simplified, same for top menu bar. 
• Doesn't support Color profiles.
• Can't make videos (Photo comes included with many things from 3D models one can have fun with inserting, and music, for example)

.... yea... superior.

But sure, if you like it, go ahead and use it.

 

Just now, LAwLz said:

The problem I have is that you can't have it both ways. You can't give Microsoft a bunch of excuses for why people just "need to upgrade their hardware" whenever Microsoft releases unoptimized crap, and then turn around and talk about how great it is that Microsoft are saving a couple of hundred megabytes by disabling features.

What are you talking about? So now, removing useless thing that no one heard about is a bad thing?

You don't want that ~150-200MB? I mean it is not great... but it is a something.

 

Or you go with the logic, "Windows is over 1GB, so why bother with anything else..."? Well, if you are following the give up logic... fine. Let others that don't live in a depressed life style enjoy their life.

 

 

Just now, LAwLz said:

And come on GoodBytes. Microsoft clearly fucked up here because they did not announce this change from, the task scheduler keeps saying that it succeeded successfully, and it even generates the registry files but they are 0KB in size.

Yes they did. https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/4509719/the-system-registry-is-no-longer-backed-up-to-the-regback-folder-start

 

 

 

Just now, LAwLz said:

If they wanted to implement this change properly I would suggest listing it in the change log (like all changes should be) and then disable the services rather than neuter the functionality of it. That way the service won't run and think it completely successfully, the 0KB files won't be created, and the task logs will accurately reflect what is happening on the system.

Microsoft does not have change logs for Windows itself. They have release notes that covers the more user facing changes.  I don't see that changing any time soon due to the complexity and useless information for 99.99% of users, including most Microsoft employees. As for 0KB files. Legacy support still need to be provided. Microsoft can't test 100% of programs that exists for its OS. Compatibility is key to avoid breaking things.

 

 

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

no high-DPi aware 

It kind of does. It correctly scales to the primary monitor, although it does not do it for the secondary.

That is besindes the point though. HighDPI awareness is something that takes a minuscule amount of space to do. It's not like the program's size balloons to 100 times the sized because of it.

 

3 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

no touch support

What do you mean by that exactly?

 

3 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Uses Windows 2000 open/Save dialog box (could ever be bother added "Ex" at the open/save dialog box API to get the "new" one (vista and up)). Funny thing is that support for XP and older is gone. So yea.. make 0 sense.

Again, this is not something that increases the size of the program to do. It's just a hook into another Windows API that is necessary. The reason why it hasn't been done is because IrfanView has a custom open/save dialog box which includes things such as image previews, something the regular Windows dialog does not have.

 

3 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

doesn't organize pictures

What do you mean by this exactly?

 

3 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

can't edit camera/phone videos

Good. I don't want my image viewer to include video editing functions. If I want that I will open my video editing software.

IrfanView includes all the editing you need from an image viewer, which is to say very little (but it does have some).

 

3 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Slideshow maker make flying a space ship look simple... due to lack of any care in GUI design. 

Seems pretty simple to me. Sure it has a lot of check boxes and text fields, but everything is neatly labeled.

But making the GUI a bit more userfriendly should not increase the size of the program by over 1,000%. In fact, the slideshow portion of the program is 130KB. That's how much space a slideshow function inside a program takes up.

 

3 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Settings panel is a mess and could be greatly simplified, same for top menu bar. 

Good thing you can customize it however you want!

 

3 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Doesn't support Color profiles.

Ehm, it does?

You can set it to ignore color profiles, copy your current monitor profile, or load a predefined profile.

But again, this is trivial in terms of code size.

 

3 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Can't make videos (Photo comes included with many things from 3D models one can have fun with inserting, and music, for example) 

Yes, that's what I'd call bloat. How many percent of Windows 10 users do you think regularly use the 3D model functions in Photos? If the answer is less than 50% then I'd say there is a case to be made that it should be its own separate program.

I know Microsoft hates modular and would prefer extremely complex and ineffective solutions instead, but maybe this is one of those cases where it actually makes sense?

I mean, just a few posts ago you were arguing that "nobody uses this so Microsoft is doing the right thing deleting it" and now you're arguing that the built in image viewer is good because it supports 3D modeling, music playback and a bunch of other crap I bet not even 1% of users use.

 

 

 

3 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

.... yea... superior.

But sure, if you like it, go ahead and use it. 

Yes it is superior at everything which I believe an image viewer should do. Things like loading and rendering images really quickly and accurately, having good save functions, being able to open a wide variety of formats, and being light on the system.

 

 

 

 

3 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

What are you talking about? So now, removing useless thing that no one heard about is a bad thing? 

You don't want that ~150-200MB? I mean it is not great... but it is a something. 

 

Or you go with the logic, "Windows is over 1GB, so why bother with anything else..."? Well, if you are following the give up logic... fine. Let others that don't live in a depressed life style enjoy their life. 

I never said "removing useless thing that no one heard about" is a bad thing. I think it's a good thing they removed it in fact. I have said it several times in this thread.

Stop with the ridiculous strawman argument.

 

I think Windows 10 is extremely bloated and I would not be surprised if Microsoft could save a few gigabytes of space if they put in the work necessary to optimize Windows more.

It's absurd how big Windows 10 is. It's like 30GB on a clean install. That might not sound like a lot when you look at 1TB hard drives for like 50 dollars, but it is a massive amount of data and I can't understand how it can be so big. Like I said, Windows XP was 1/20 the size. What is Windows 10 doing that requires so much space? It's not APIs or such because like I said, the "big" libraries in Windows are measured in KB.

 

 

3 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Yes they did. https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/4509719/the-system-registry-is-no-longer-backed-up-to-the-regback-folder-start

Correct me if I am wrong, but that article seems to have been created AFTER ghacks and Forbes reported on it.

I can not find that page indexed in any archival sites like Wayback Machine or Google Active, and the article itself says tat it was updated the 29th June 2019, which is the same date Forbes reported on it and ghacks posted their "Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10" article.

Now, maybe Microsoft already had that article and had to clarify something which is why it was updated just at that date, but I am not convinced.

I haven't been able to find it in the change logs either.

 

 

3 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Microsoft does not have change logs for Windows itself. They have release notes that covers the more user facing changes.  I don't see that changing any time soon due to the complexity and useless information for 99.99% of users, including most Microsoft employees. As for 0KB files. Legacy support still need to be provided. Microsoft can't test 100% of programs that exists for its OS. Compatibility is key to avoid breaking things.

I think not having change logs is a major issue with Windows and one that I have talked about ever since Windows 10 was released. The patch notes used to be very detailed and even specify exactly which files in the OS were being changed. It's a terrible system Microsoft has right now.

 

And come on... What program needs 0KB registry backup files to exist? If some program accesses those registry backup files then they probably access the data inside them as well. Not having the files or having them but be 0KB shouldn't make a difference. Hell, I checked on my computers and none of them even has the 0KB files.

[The King of the Undead]

3 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Leaving an option is better tha removing features without alerting consumers, specially when is related to recovery/backup.

 

Most people never check the state of the backup until they get a problem that requires the backup. Even companies do that kind of stuff.

 

Compress the registry hives, and update once a week/month to OneDrive depending on the available upload bandwidth.

but they could just download a backup program...

[SansVarnic]

@Jkohl613 your topic does not meet the posting guidlines for this section, please update or it will moved to General Discussion.

 

Quote

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Failure to comply may result in your thread being locked or removed without warning.

 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

If Microsoft wants to address people's complaints about the OS taking up too much space, they need to change the install procedure.  Simply add another window that asks the user which features he/she wants to use and only install those on top of the core OS. 

 

Do you want to use OneDrive?       Yes/No

Do you want to use Cortana?         Yes/No

Do you want the Windows Store?   Yes /No

Will you ever print to fax?                Yes/No

 

etc etc ...

[Loote]

29 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

If Microsoft wants to address people's complaints about the OS taking up too much space, they need to change the install procedure.  Simply add another window that asks the user which features he/she wants to use and only install those on top of the core OS. 

 

Do you want to use OneDrive?       Yes/No

Do you want to use Cortana?         Yes/No

Do you want the Windows Store?   Yes /No

Will you ever print to fax?                Yes/No

 

etc etc ...

It's great, but nobody would read all of that. Though I like how you can get minimal install of Debian and just install additional stuff.

[GoodBytes]

14 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

If Microsoft wants to address people's complaints about the OS taking up too much space, they need to change the install procedure.  Simply add another window that asks the user which features he/she wants to use and only install those on top of the core OS. 

 

Do you want to use OneDrive?       Yes/No

Do you want to use Cortana?         Yes/No

Do you want the Windows Store?   Yes /No

Will you ever print to fax?                Yes/No

 

etc etc ...

Those are meaningless options in terms of saving space. They are very small things, and only make the install process even more complicated than it is already is.

 

Microsoft already tested a "Lean" edition of Windows, by removing everything, including background, registry editor, and built-in apps. It was supposed to be for 16GB device and not have to resort to file compression to fit the OS. They saved, 2GB if we round up... 2GB... and you don't have anything beside a virtually empty Start menu, no background, and it still didn't fit in 16GB storage device without compression. It was a nice exercise to see what they could get, but ultimately, as you can see, Microsoft decided that it obviously doesn't work, and simply raised the system requirement to 32GB, to not only kill of of any possibility to have Windows on 16GB, but also kill off 32GB, to ensure OEMs all use at minimum 64GB. Which, in my opinion, is a good move, as now the user gets to enjoy some free space, and considering how SSD/eMMC storage is dropping in cost by the day, 64GB on a ultra budget system is a reality.

 

The issue of Windows is the legacy stuff (and also 32-bit libraries on 64-bit version of Windows, as you have many duplicated files where you need to have the 32-bit and 64-bit version of them so that 32-bit programs can run).

You want MS to drop the legacy stuff, and potentially drop 32-bit support? No problem, wait for Microsoft next OS (which isn't supposed to be called Windows... but I have no faith in MS marketing dept in naming things), but now you can't complain that you can't run whatever you want. (this new OS will not replace Windows 10, it is targeted for "future" devices, such as Chromebooks, foldable PC/Phones, dual screen PCs/phone, etc.)

 

 

[LAwLz]

26 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

The issue of Windows is the legacy stuff (and also 32-bit libraries on 64-bit version of Windows, as you have many duplicated files where you need to have the 32-bit and 64-bit version of them so that 32-bit programs can run).

You want MS to drop the legacy stuff, and potentially drop 32-bit support? No problem, wait for Microsoft next OS (which isn't supposed to be called Windows... but I have no faith in MS marketing dept in naming things), but now you can't complain that you can't run whatever you want. (this new OS will not replace Windows 10, it is targeted for "future" devices, such as Chromebooks, foldable PC/Phones, dual screen PCs/phone, etc.) 

Please show me how much space Windows would cut by removing legacy support.

Like I said earlier, the libraries for backwards compatibility are tiny. They are measured in KBs.

Again, just think for a minute and you will realize backwards compatibility is not the issue. Windows XP was 1.5GB. Even if Windows 10 came with all the system files from XP that would still only be 1.5GB out of almost 30GB.

 

That means that even in a terribly optimized system, having all programs from Windows XP work on Windows 10 only accounts for 5% of Windows 10's install size.

I would be very surprised if legacy support even accounts for 2% of Windows 10's install size.

 

Like I said earlier, it doesn't even make sense to say that legacy support takes up a lot of space, because the old machines we're supporting did not have that much hard drive capacity.

Back in 2000 it wasn't uncommon for computers to have 6GB of storage. You can check it out in this magazine if you don't believe me:

https://books.google.se/books?id=EwIAAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

It is completely illogical to say that backwards compatibility requires a lot of disk space.

 

 

I have no idea why Windows is so big, but I know for a fact that it is not because of backwards compatibility. At least not from an API standpoint.

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Please show me how much space Windows would cut by removing legacy support.

Like I said earlier, the libraries for backwards compatibility are tiny. They are measured in KBs.

Again, just think for a minute and you will realize backwards compatibility is not the issue. Windows XP was 1.5GB. Even if Windows 10 came with all the system files from XP that would still only be 1.5GB out of almost 30GB.

 

That means that even in a terribly optimized system, having all programs from Windows XP work on Windows 10 only accounts for 5% of Windows 10's install size.

I would be very surprised if legacy support even accounts for 2% of Windows 10's install size.

 

Like I said earlier, it doesn't even make sense to say that legacy support takes up a lot of space, because the old machines we're supporting did not have that much hard drive capacity.

Back in 2000 it wasn't uncommon for computers to have 6GB of storage. You can check it out in this magazine if you don't believe me:

https://books.google.se/books?id=EwIAAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

It is completely illogical to say that backwards compatibility requires a lot of disk space.

 

 

I have no idea why Windows is so big, but I know for a fact that it is not because of backwards compatibility. At least not from an API standpoint.

Show me otherwise.

And, you can't compare like this... you are talking about an OS at the time . All the systems listed on the magazine are budget system for 2000. You can point the price as much as you want, but those where still budget.

 

In 2000, we had the Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon XP., and Windows 98 or 2000.

For ~$3000 US you can get a med range Gateway system back in the days, and typically powered by a 60GB HDD (5400 RPM).

 

Fancy things costs space, legacy costs space, built-in drivers costs space, pretty much an OS over another one for legacy support, costs space.

If you dig in Windows 10, you can still find unused Windows 95, 2000, XP, and Vista icons, just in the case some program uses it so it doesn't crash because there is no check and fail over system in place.Sure it is a few KB, but it all adds up in the end, with the rest.Legacy Windows Media Player 10 is 3MB and 4MB because you need 32 and 64-bit support. 

 

You want fancy looking applications? Great! Frameworks for the win! Those are costly in space. Then you need old frameworks support for legacy programs. Sure Windows 10 COULD only come with .NET 4.8... but then all your program that uses older versions of .NET might not work. So you need all previous versions down to version 4.0, assuming you don't install .NET 3.x for legacy programs.

 

Fonts! You want fonts? No... well your programs might want to install one for its usage of custom ones... Assuming you have Office installed, Font folder is over 300MB. This also includes international fonts so that you can view content using other languages beside the OS. A problem in the past version of Windows, not anymore.

 

Icons! Before, you typically  has 16 color icons in lovely 2x sizes: 16x16 and 32x32

Now, we have 16.7 million color icons with alpha channel, in variety of sizes ranging from 16x16 to 256x256 typically. And we have more icons than before. Icons for all sorts of things that we didn't have before.

 

[LAwLz]

47 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Show me otherwise.

Are you serious right now? That is not how arguing works. You can't just make something up and when someone questions you go "well, prove me otherwise!". You are the one who made the claim so you are the one who has to prove it.

 

 

48 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

And, you can't compare like this... you are talking about an OS at the time . All the systems listed on the magazine are budget system for 2000. You can point the price as much as you want, but those where still budget. 

 

In 2000, we had the Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon XP., and Windows 98 or 2000.

For ~$3000 US you can get a med range Gateway system back in the days, and typically powered by a 60GB HDD (5400 RPM). 

My point is that the computers at that time had 6GB hard drives, at least the portable ones had. Those drives were enough for the OS and some software as well. That means that the entire OS was expected to take less than 6GB of storage, which it did. And if you think that computer was "budget" then let me point you to the "trailblazer" laptop which was almost 3000 dollars at the time, which with inflation would make it a 4400 dollar system today. If you think someone spending 4400 dollars on a computer is someone buying a "budget PC" then you have a pretty poor sense of what budget systems are.

 

To say that the reason Windows is so big because of backwards compatibility makes no sense because the software we used back in the days (which we need backwards compatibility with) were extremely tiny by today's standards. They were expected to fit on a 6GB hard drive, and that includes the OS and several programs. Like I said earlier, Windows XP is 1.5GB installed.

In order to support all the things Windows XP did, which includes a ton of stuff from previous versions of Windows, you would at most need 1.5GB of space in Windows 10. That's 5% of the total install size. But that's assuming we actually port everything over and not just the necessary parts. If we just kept a compressed XP image on the system and extracted only the parts necessary when they were requested then at install complete support up until Windows XP would take up 600MB. If we stripped out the unnecessary stuff and duplicate files which are already in Windows 10 for reasons other than backwards comparability we could probably get it down to 500 or maybe even 400MB.

 

So I estimate that backwards compatibility spanning several decades could and should take up maybe 400MB in Windows 10.

I don't think the 400MB of data in Windows 10 for backwards compatibility explains why it needs something like 30GB.

[79wjd]

 

1 minute ago, LAwLz said:

If you think someone spending 4400 dollars on a computer is someone buying a "budget PC" then you have a pretty poor sense of what budget systems are.

There's a difference between budget and cheap. Something can very easily be budget but still expensive -- and that was certainly the state of the personal computer in the 90s even into the early 00s.

 

Not that it's particularly relevant to the discussion at hand -- in either case older versions of Windows didn't need much space.

[Trixanity]

Ubuntu can apparently work with 2 GB so why is Windows 10 ten times the size? My understanding is that there’s also lots of legacy support in Linux (not yet removed before anyone comments).

[RejZoR]

It's funny that it's not doing registry backups and Microsoft says you should use System Restore instead. Which ironically comes disabled by default for months if not years now. Meaning when shit hits the fan, you are literally left with doing a clean install again...

[jagdtigger]

6 hours ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Leaving an option is better tha removing features without alerting consumers, specially when is related to recovery/backup.

 

Most people never check the state of the backup until they get a problem that requires the backup. Even companies do that kind of stuff.

 

Compress the registry hives, and update once a week/month to OneDrive depending on the available upload bandwidth.

First up by disabling it they gain negligible space compared to the risks. They could save more if they just give in already and remove all the bloatware. But i guess they think swallowing their pride and admitting defeat would cause stomach ache or something....

[jagdtigger]

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I don't think the 400MB of data in Windows 10 for backwards compatibility explains why it needs something like 30GB.

Wanna bet its just some very lazy programming? I mean the built-in crapware eats up ~2,5 GB, that is pretty overkill for a few lackluster phone app....

[Loote]

Or a bit more detailed:

Spoiler

I did clean sxs folder at some point, if I had a 120GB OS drive, it'd be problematic, but I learned to live with that space consumed by Windows. I do agree that 150MB is nothing in that scale.

And if you can't tell, it's Windows 7. I have found that since Vista, new Windows versions don't really increase the resource usage, Windows 10 can actually be the better OS for a low spec PC.