Smaller Images / Faster Restore
Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2021 7:21 pm
There is a really useful article at:
https://stealthpuppy.com/cleaning-up-an ... ster-image
...on pre-cleaning your Windows install before you make an OS image backup to make the image smaller and thus faster restore. By installing all of my apps on a non-system drive partition and running the Winmdows dism.exe imatge utility as well as Windows CleanMgr before IFW, I've managed to reduce the combined image size of my Linux+Windows 10 system drive to between 9GB and 13GB, even with my browsers and other apps on a separate partition writing gigabytes of data to Windows Program Files and the Windows user data folders. A IFW backup of a clean install of Windows 10, without any Linux or third party apps, usually clocks in about 6GB on my machines.
I can achieve this because DISM and CleanMgr can remove windows voluminous log files, system partition temp files, as well as the many superceded Windows updates that are not being utilized by your PC, and are otherwise eating up drive space. I know of no other way to safely remove these obsolete updates. However, be aware that all existing updates cannot be uninstalled after the DISM command is completed. This will not block the uninstallation of future service packs or updates.
In my quest to reduce IFW size I did come across one anomoly that perhaps @Brian K or @TeraByte Support can answer: I believe I read in the IFW manual that IFW ignores the huge Windows pagefile.sys in order to make a smaller image. However, when I move pagefile.sys off the system partition to another drive. I do notice a reduction in size of my Windows images, although I don't usually run Windows that way because some apps complain. Why is that?
https://stealthpuppy.com/cleaning-up-an ... ster-image
...on pre-cleaning your Windows install before you make an OS image backup to make the image smaller and thus faster restore. By installing all of my apps on a non-system drive partition and running the Winmdows dism.exe imatge utility as well as Windows CleanMgr before IFW, I've managed to reduce the combined image size of my Linux+Windows 10 system drive to between 9GB and 13GB, even with my browsers and other apps on a separate partition writing gigabytes of data to Windows Program Files and the Windows user data folders. A IFW backup of a clean install of Windows 10, without any Linux or third party apps, usually clocks in about 6GB on my machines.
I can achieve this because DISM and CleanMgr can remove windows voluminous log files, system partition temp files, as well as the many superceded Windows updates that are not being utilized by your PC, and are otherwise eating up drive space. I know of no other way to safely remove these obsolete updates. However, be aware that all existing updates cannot be uninstalled after the DISM command is completed. This will not block the uninstallation of future service packs or updates.
In my quest to reduce IFW size I did come across one anomoly that perhaps @Brian K or @TeraByte Support can answer: I believe I read in the IFW manual that IFW ignores the huge Windows pagefile.sys in order to make a smaller image. However, when I move pagefile.sys off the system partition to another drive. I do notice a reduction in size of my Windows images, although I don't usually run Windows that way because some apps complain. Why is that?