Solved Moving the winsxs folder

[ultralame]

I have a system that I set up with two drives; a main SSD and a standard HDD. I used Sysprep to move Users and ProgramData to the larger, slower HDD to preserve the SSD. I realized that most of the writing to the SSD now occurs in the Windows folder, specifically the winSXS folder.

Is there any way to move this folder? I am scared to try a junction (I tried that once with Users and it was a disaster).

Any ideas?

 

[Maguscreed]

I would suggest against it. Actually the biggest writes to the drive will be the system restore information at this point. Most the other stuff is system logs and they are tiny little text files. Not enough activity to get upset over.

 

[profdlp]

I've seen references to it being done with Vista, but I think that's playing with fire.

 

[Bill2]

The winsxs folder actually may not be taking up as much space as windows explorer reports because there're a lot of hard links and junctions used.

 

[logicearth]

DO NOT MOVE THE WINSXS FOLDER. DO NOT! You will actually only take up more space by making the files in WinSxS become real duplicates. Hardlinks only work on the same local partition moving to another partition removes the link and makes the file a real taking-up-space-file. WinSxS contains every system file and everything hardlinks out of it. All the DLLs in System32 for example. Windows 7 in its bare state takes well under 8 GBs of space.

 

[karlsnooks]

I have a system that I set up with two drives; a main SSD and a standard HDD. I used Sysprep to move Users and ProgramData to the larger, slower HDD to preserve the SSD. I realized that most of the writing to the SSD now occurs in the Windows folder, specifically the winSXS folder.

Is there any way to move this folder? I am scared to try a junction (I tried that once with Users and it was a disaster).

Any ideas?

Don't.

 

[pparks1]

WinSXS isn't taking the space that you think
http://www.sevenforums.com/general-...folder-not-actually-consuming-lots-space.html

 

[ultralame]

Ah. thank you.

 

[DalekOverSeer]

there is a article i ran across awhile for moving the winsxs folder. i had a 36 gig wd raptor at that time and with everything i was using and wanted i needed to free up a large chunk of space. the procedure works, but it is not for a novice. it took me a better part of a day, because i was following the step, checking it, rechecking it, then moving onto the next step. if you do decide to do it i strongly recommend you have you os drive backed up.

as for taking up as much space as explorer claims yes it does. the idea behind the winsxs folder is to keep multiple versions of a file. in doing this program abc that needs version .1, but would stop working if it only had access to version .2 of the file. while program def will only work with version .2 or above. in doing this both programs keep working.

 

[pparks1]

there is a article i ran across awhile for moving the winsxs folder. i had a 36 gig wd raptor at that time and with everything i was using and wanted i needed to free up a large chunk of space. the procedure works, but it is not for a novice.

For arguments sake, I'm going to have to disagree that such a procedure exists unless you can produce this article because of the fact that the WinSXS is simply a collection of hardlinks to files that are contained within other areas on the hard drive. Getting rid of that folder, would not free up the space on the C drive, as the actual files themselves are stored elsewhere and simply referenced in C:\windows\winsxs.

If you look at the link that I posted before, I took a 200MB hard drive and created a WinSXS folder on it. Then copied in a single 13MB file. Then I linked to that same 13MB file 20 times. Windows explorer reported that my WINSXS folder was about 270MB in size...even though my entire hard drive was only 200MB. But if you went to a command prompt and typed "dir D:\", it would show the 187MB free...since technically the only "real" file that existed was the original 13MB file. But Windows explorer, windirstat, and treesize free all claimed that D:\winsxs was 270MB in size. Moving everything out of D:\winSXS would not have freed 270MB on my 200MB drive. It would have freed up 13MB and removed 20 hardlinks.

 

[ultralame]

I went ahead and looked at the winsxs folder using a tool called ctts.exe (calculates usage and then subtracts the amount due to duplicated inodes). Mine is a pretty fresh install, and I have 6.05GB in there + 98MB due to hard links.

 

[pparks1]

Hmmm...might have to revist this topic under Windows 7 to see if there are not as many hardlinks as MS led people to believe. If there are legit files in C:\windows\winsxs..they would take space. But my understanding was that these files were Mostly (80%+) hardlinks. However, ctts.exe seems to say otherwise...as it shows my 5.8GB of C:\windows\winsxs consists of only 75MB of hard links and 5.7GB of actual files. Most everything I have read in the past was reverse of this in Technet...meaning 75MB of files with over 5GB of hard links.

 

[logicearth]

Almost every single file in WinSxS is a hardlink. File that are not hardlinked in WinSxS are in hibernation, not currently in used. But moving WinSxS will not reclaim any thing. A file is only removed if all the hardlinks are removed. Link Shell Extension will give a visual indicator of all hardlinks in a directroy. As well as a tab in the properties for hardlinks.

On my system there is about 3 GBs worth of hardlinks in the WinSxS folder, it is also under 5 GB in total size.

 

[logicearth]

I went ahead and looked at the winsxs folder using a tool called ctts.exe (calculates usage and then subtracts the amount due to duplicated inodes). Mine is a pretty fresh install, and I have 6.05GB in there + 98MB due to hard links.

You used that tool in the wrong way. It needs to look at the whole drive not just the WinSxS folder.

 

[DalekOverSeer]

hard links or not in vista anyway if you had a 20 gig drive and windows and everything else was using 5 gigs, winsxs was reporting 4.7 gigs, and you tried to add 12 gigs of files to your c drive you would get told not enough room. now in 7 they may have fixed that i honestly do not know. now once you moved the winsxs to say d in vista your free space in windows did increase by the full 4.7 gigs that winsxs was claiming it was.

 

[maille]

I am aware that winsxs is mainly hardlinks thus it does not take up much space.
From what I have read the idea is if you uninstall a program that has a shared .dll or similar these are not deleted from the disk as the link remains in winsxs?
Thus on a fresh install winsxs should be all hard links and only technically begins to take up space when you uninstall/remove something?
Thus the file physically exists on the drive (SSD) and remains even if one link is deleted.
So why not create a symbolic link of the folder to a slower drive; most likely it won't save you any space immediately but over time you will find more of the links become "active" (ie. they are the only link to the physical data) - would this cause a physical transfer of the file from the SSD to the HD, thus saving space?

 

[Maguscreed]

If I finally understand what you are talking about, I think what you really want is one of the newer z68 motherboards with the smart response system for ssd's.

 

[Corazon]

Stubborn little myth, that "WinSxS is almost all hardlinks" thing...it isn't. Most of it is actual files, and these files are actual copies of real, live system/app files.

If they weren't, then how would one ever be able to reinstall deleted files?
Where would sfc /scannow get missing/corrupted files from in order to replace them if not from winsxs?
And how would anyone be able to upgrade their Windows edition in-place without, say, a huge download?

 

[logicearth]

Corazon, they are hardlinks. The reason SFC can restore files delete by using WinSxS because when you delete a hardlink the file is never truely deleted until every single hardlink to the file is deleted.

Attached is a ZIP files containing a large text file that list all the hardlinks within WinSxS from my system.

 

[KLund1]

So basically what has been said is that this folder is reporting larger used space than is actually being used. Between this thread and the other referenced called WinSXS Folder not actually consuming lots of space
I think most of use can get a handle on what is happening.
But what about third party programs. (I'm talking about SSD drives) My SSD is 80GB. Windows 7 plus 3 or 4 of the newer games and this drive is full. (no hibernate, pagefile move to a fast HDD) Third party programs do not understand about hard links. They just ask windows how much space is available. If there is not enough, well your screwed then. It is great to now know what is going on with the winsx Dir. But that does not help real world use for SSD's
There needs to be a way to reduce or be able to move this dir to another drive (for advanced users). I have removed the SP1 backup files with dism/ & diskcleanup, & cleanmgr sageset/run, but my winsx dir is still over 10GB as windows reports it (57K of files & links) that can not be used to install other programs to the fastest drive I have.
Just for kicks, I made a back up image of my win7 instal. Then deleted 9gb of the oldest files in winsx. I got about 4gb back. I installed a couple more big programs just to fill the drive. As I suspected, when I installed the last program that needed more space than what windows explorer reported, it would not install. winsx grew some in size during this exercise. The system was stable until patch Tuesday. Installing updated hosed the win install. It would boot, then freeze, or sometimes reboot itself, but never got back to the desktop.
I want MS to put a method out in the wild to help me (us) get back that space on SSD's. 12.5% of my SSD is basically not usable, and I want it back.