The first service pack for the Windows 7 operating system has been released yesterday (see Windows 7 Service Pack Update Downloads Live) and it seems as if most Windows 7 users did not have troubles installing the update. Service packs are installed with an option to uninstall them again, which is helpful if incompatibilities or stability issues occur after the system has been updated.
Then again, users who have installed the service pack without complications do not necessarily need those backup files that allow them to uninstall the service pack anymore. These users can free up disk space on the Windows partition by deleting the backup files.
I recommend to test the operating system with service pack at least for a few days before you make the decision to delete the backups. Impatient users may create an image of their system partition instead that they can use to restore the system if the need arises to uninstall the service pack after the backup data has been removed from the system.
How much disk space are we talking about? I just made the test on a Windows 7 Professional 64-bit system. The free space increased from 18.9 Gigabytes before the cleanup to 22.2 Gigabytes after. That’s more than 3 Gigabytes of space. It is likely that 32-bit users will be able to free up less space than that due to the nature of their operating system. Still, they will free up Gigabytes as well.
Removing Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Backup Files
The easiest way to remove the backup files of the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 installation is the following. Open an elevated command prompt. You do that with a click on the start orb, the selection of All Programs > Accessories, a right-click on Command Prompt and the selection of Run as Administrator.
Use the following command to free up disk space after the service pack installation:
dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded
The process takes a few minutes to complete, it ends with the sentences “Service Pack Cleanup operation completed. The operation completed successfully”.
Please remember that you cannot uninstall the service pack after you have cleaned up the disk space. Please let me know how much disk space you freed up with the command.
Want additional information on dism? Take a look at the Driver Servicing Command-Line Options over at Technet.
Related Articles:
How I Freed Up 12 Gigabytes Of Hard Disk Space In Windows 7Free Up Disk Space By Deleting Older Google Chrome Versions
Remove Old Chrome Versions To Save Disk Space
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2.7 Gb for me :) thank you!
went from 1.40gb to 4.62gb running windows 7 64bit (Home Prem)
damn i needed this clean up, thanks for the heads up
Hi
This is done now by simply clean your harddisk ( Drive’s properties / Disk Cleanup / Service pack Backup Files) .
That is still cool to script it using command line…
Just ran this on two PCs, both running Win 7 x64. First PC gained 3GB, second gained 2.5GB free space. The first PC was running a new install of Win 7 with very few other programs on it, and the second was my own PC with lots of programs on it.
Free space before: 3.1gb, After: 11.3gb (!)
Win 7 x64 with 80gb SSD
No media, just developer stuff and some sql dbs.
Free space before: 100Mb (!)
Free space after: 4.00Gb
Win 7 x64, 4Gb RAM /128Gb SSD
Adobe Design & Office Pro suites, web development, software development
Regular cleanups performed
Brilliant – many thanks!
Thanks , that was helpful and appreciated .
Went from 28.3 free space to 32.8
Win7 x64, saved 2.8 GB of precious SSD space. Thanks for the tip! =)
so dificult. my C: have 13GB up to 30GB i don’t how to clear them
went from 897 meg to 4.21 gig – (on vitual machine) really needed the space, thanks.
Awesome. Saved me 2.1GB on x64
Thanks! I´m running 64bit-version on 30GB SSD, and this freed up from 2GB to 5,60GB. So this was quite helpful. =)
Hibernation and page file are off, and few days ago had 4gigs free, and today noticed that was running again low on disk space.
Free space was 3,36Gb, after this help 6,59Gb. Thanks!
Mika; Running SSD too as a C:? =)
Also name sounds Finnish. :D
free 2.2 gb. Thank a lot
Windows 7 Professional x64 SP1.
3.56GB of disk space freed up.
Thank you so much for the great post.
Great…
Before
76.1 GB Used
35.5 GB Free
After
69.5 GB Used
42.1 GB Free
Thanks Man
tskler arkadaslar guzel bır calısma olmus
To answer your request: Windows 7 Ultimate, 32-bit, ~4 GB of disc space cleaned up after running this command. (previously 138 GB free space, moved to 142 GB Free).
Freed up 3 GB of space! 64 bit system
Removing Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Backup Files. I use a SSD 64 Gb disc to run Windows 7 64 bit, I only install programs on the disc and all ‘special’ folders (My Documents and other data) are on a normal SATA 2 hard drive. The SSD drive was just over half full (Capacity 59.9 Gb formatted) and running the above routine removed a staggering (to me!) 2.7Gb of files. So saved me a lot of space.
Users who want to save space should note that you can put your Paging file (pagefile.sys) on a different drive (ie, not the boot drive). There are instructions on doing this on the net, just google it. This saves you space equal to the amount of Ram installed. Mine was 4Gb.
Also, with an SSD you don’t really need hibernation as bootup is so fast that hibernation literally becomes redundant. So disabling hibernation is not a problem. Again, the saved space being equal to the amount of Ram installed.
Many thanks for the ‘Removing Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Backup Files’ routine, it certainly works fine for me. Moving the pagefile and disabling hibernation saved a further 8 Gb of disk space.
the same for win 7
thanks