No it's not. Did you even read the link that I posted that I wrote up some time ago? It's your reporting tool of choice that is reporting that it's taking 6.6GB of space...when in actuality it is not.
- Yes I did. What I'm saying is that even if it's a bunch of hard links, Windows 7 is still going to show that space as being allocated in every program (including Windows Explorer). It may not be allocated on the hard drive, but it's less space I will have to use. So I can have Windows 7 report that I'm using 100% of my hard disk, yet my hard drive will actually have free space equivalent to the amount of space that Windows Explorer says is being taken up by Winsxs.
Arghhh...this is not true. It's not actually consuming the disk space......Please read this carefully, it's not just a regurgitation, but I am providing more explanation.
In my example, I had a 200MB partition. Plain and simple. 200MB of space, no more and no less. Then I copied in a 13MB file...which does exist and it did reduce disk space by 13MB. I then hard linked it 20 times...which took up 267MB of disk space (at least according to Windows explorer when I right clicked on the folder and looked at the properties).
However, the drive was not full beyond capacity. In fact, using Windows explorer I could then copy 150MB of other stuff onto the drive. So, now there was 163MB of stuff on the 200MB drive. But if I went to E:\winsxs and right clicked and choose properties, it said there was 267MB of stuff in that folder alone. Therefore, if this were actually true there must be 150MB + 267MB thus a grand total of 417MB. But there really isn't 417MB of stuff on the 200MB drive....it's actually still only 163MB. Thus, there is still free space available totaling 200 - 150 for the other stuff - 13mb for the original file. So, 37MB free.
So, it's completely and totally irrelevant how big C:\windows\winsxs appears to be when you look at the properties from Windows explorer or use a tool like TreeSizeFree or WinDirStat. That view is showing you stuff that really isn't there. Deleting that folder would NOT get you back X GB of disk space...because the files are actually elsewhere on the file system and simply linked to this directory. If you could circumvent windows and delete it, you free space would not change at all...in windows explorer, in any app and from the command line.
Let's say for example sake that you have a 30GB SSD drive on your computer. Let's say that you install Windows and it takes up 20GB of disk space in real files which exist. Let's also say, that you install 8GB worth of applications/games onto your computer. Now, your total space consumed is 28GB. Thus, you have 2GB left....right? Let's say 2 months from now, your computer says you have 1.8GB free. So, in an effort to find out what you can delete, you stumble upon a folder called WinSXS that is taking up 7GB of space. Wow, if I could delete that, I'd have 8.8GB of space back, right???? NO, NO, NO, NO. See, windows took 20GB right at the start, if you installed 8GB of games and have 7GB in WinSXS and you total this all up..you would be consuming (20+8+7) 35GB. How could that be...you only have a 30GB drive and it says you have 1.8GB free. See how Windows explorer is 2 faced and telling you 2 different things? It says you have 1.8GB free...but it also says that your WinSXS folder is 7GB. In my example, both cannot be true as we would be more than 100% out of disk space.
So hopefully this is clear now. While tools like explorer will claim that the folder is X amount in size....when you actually look at My Computer and the C drive, or go to a cmd line and run a directory...these tools will show you what you really have free and will not be including that misleading amount from winSXS that seems to be consumed.
