Well the header says it, really. Microsoft is rolling out a major update in October and it's going to be on users to make sure they have enough hard drive space to install it. From what I read, the previous April update was around 16GB for the 32 bit version of Windows and 20GB for the 64bit version. So with that in mind it's probably a good idea that you make sure to clear some space on the ol' boot drive ASAP.

So Microsoft wants to keep the updates rolling. That's good. More security, better stability, better battery efficiency for laptops etc. That's great, when it works. The problem I have is that these major updates are big and seem to introduce a lot of problems immediately after release. Not to mention Windows won't check to see if you've got the space required before downloading and attempting an install. Which seems weird to me since Microsoft basically has full access to your PC's information all the time with the Windows telemetry turned on. Even with telemetry turned off there's a lot being transmitted. Hard to believe that those reports don't include HDD space being used. But whatever.

The other issue is that some folks are probably still using fairly small boot drives for the OS. I was one of them until about two years ago. I had a 40GB Intel SSD as a devoted boot drive and that thing filled up fast when Windows 10 was released. Now I have a 240GB OCZ SSD in that role and it's half full. All it's used for is Windows and GPU drivers. There's probably a bunch of game save files and screenshots from Steam as well because that's just where they're sent but I can't imagine that's more than a gigabyte or two.

My point is that in the case of folks who have pre-built machines that they got a few years back from a local Best Buy for some standard home use, this could very well mean a hardware upgrade just in order to run the latest version of Windows. And it's on them to figure that out because, again, Windows won't warn them first before trying the install and failing to initialize. It's probably a rare case scenario but still kind of silly if you ask me.

Anyway, make sure to check your drive space in the coming weeks and clear up a ton of file space if needed. Maybe you've got a few flash drives, an external HDD around that you can drop your backups into?