ZachBui
Member
I'd thought it would be nice to have a compiled thread of what space saving ways are out there
Mr.NK
Add Music/Video/Picture content to SD
http://www.surfaceforums.net/forum/...-content-library-use-primary-destination.html
Description: By performing the following, instead of storing all of your music and videos on your main hard drive, you can have it link to folders from your microSD. This helps saves a ton of space, and the functionality of how music and videos are handled still works.
JVB
Free up storage space
http://www.surfaceforums.net/forum/...how-free-up-4-gigabytes-storage-space-rt.html
Description: By performing the following, you can free up to 3.5GB of space. However, some may not recommend to do this. If you do attempt to do this, make sure to backup to plenty of places (Laptop, SD Card, etc). The USB you use will be formatted and then it will have the recovery files copied into it.
ZachBui
*Remove Temp Updates Downloads
1) Run the following command in a command prompt as admin
2) rmdir /S /Q C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download
Description: By running the following command, it will delete and temporary downloaded files from windows updates. It freed around 500MB for me.
*Remove Older Version Updated Applications
1) Navigate to C:\Program Files\WindowsApps (Hidden)
2) You may need to be an administrator or activate the administrator account via
4) You can safety delete those ones with the older version
Description: You can save around 500MB or more space. When you restored or had your Surface at some point, there was a update that upgraded all of these main core applications. I'm not sure why they weren't cleaned out or at least for me, but I had to do it manually by what I said above.
*Move Application Resource Files ElseWhere
UPDATE: You can actually move the whole application folder to your SD card as oppose to just its resources
Description: Some ways to install applications to a new directory
1) In which I did was using symbolic links, this just helps moving resource files of applications over, which is safe.
2) An easy way is in which I found on another forum by tamarasu which allows you to choose a directory to install applications to
Steps:
1) WIN+R to run regedit
2) Find the structure below
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Appx
change the key labeled PackageRoot to whatever directory you want, and all new apps will install in that directory
Mr.NK
Add Music/Video/Picture content to SD
http://www.surfaceforums.net/forum/...-content-library-use-primary-destination.html
Description: By performing the following, instead of storing all of your music and videos on your main hard drive, you can have it link to folders from your microSD. This helps saves a ton of space, and the functionality of how music and videos are handled still works.
JVB
Free up storage space
http://www.surfaceforums.net/forum/...how-free-up-4-gigabytes-storage-space-rt.html
Description: By performing the following, you can free up to 3.5GB of space. However, some may not recommend to do this. If you do attempt to do this, make sure to backup to plenty of places (Laptop, SD Card, etc). The USB you use will be formatted and then it will have the recovery files copied into it.
ZachBui
*Remove Temp Updates Downloads
1) Run the following command in a command prompt as admin
2) rmdir /S /Q C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download
Description: By running the following command, it will delete and temporary downloaded files from windows updates. It freed around 500MB for me.
*Remove Older Version Updated Applications
1) Navigate to C:\Program Files\WindowsApps (Hidden)
2) You may need to be an administrator or activate the administrator account via
net user administrator /active:yes in a cmd prompt
3) You may see applications with the same name, mainly the microsoft ones (Video, Camera, Music, Finance). These ones I saw that there were two versions, one with a more updated number.
4) You can safety delete those ones with the older version
Description: You can save around 500MB or more space. When you restored or had your Surface at some point, there was a update that upgraded all of these main core applications. I'm not sure why they weren't cleaned out or at least for me, but I had to do it manually by what I said above.
*Move Application Resource Files ElseWhere
UPDATE: You can actually move the whole application folder to your SD card as oppose to just its resources
Description: Some ways to install applications to a new directory
1) In which I did was using symbolic links, this just helps moving resource files of applications over, which is safe.
2) An easy way is in which I found on another forum by tamarasu which allows you to choose a directory to install applications to
Steps:
1) WIN+R to run regedit
2) Find the structure below
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Appx
change the key labeled PackageRoot to whatever directory you want, and all new apps will install in that directory
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