With Windows 10, Microsoft is belatedly addressing a storage crisis that has been years in the making.
In a
blog post published today, Microsoft confirmed that it is actively working on reducing the disk footprint of Windows 10, leaving more space for data. The changes involve compressing Windows system files (an option that was
added without explanation in Windows 10 Preview build 9879 and is available in the Disk Cleanup utility in current builds). It also plans a drastic redesign of the way recovery images work.
In the example Microsoft used in today's blog post (accompanied by the pie chart shown here), the changes would cut the disk footprint for Windows system files by as much as 45 percent.
Before getting into the details, a little history is in order.
