Starting with the May 2019 Update, Windows 10 sets aside approximately 7 GB of storage on your device for updates and additional files. This will ensure future updates are easy to install, but you can reclaim this space if you wish.
What is reserved storage?
Windows requires a certain amount of free disk space to update. Updates cannot be installed if your computer does not have enough free space. With the recent May 2019 update, Microsoft is looking to address this issue by reserving disk space for future updates.
Previously, if you did not have enough free space on your computer, Windows would not be able to properly install updates. The only workaround is to free up storage space before continuing.
With «reserved storage,» Microsoft is forcing Windows 10 to allocate at least 7 gigabytes of hard drive space to ensure updates can be downloaded no matter how much disk space you have.
When the backup storage is not being used by update files, it will be used for applications, temporary files and system caches, improving your PC’s daily experience.
In other words, reserved storage doesn’t mean that Windows uses the whole extra 7 GB of storage — it’s more likely to store some temporary files that would normally be stored elsewhere on the system drive.
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How to check if your computer is backed up
Before going any further, you should make sure that your system is using Reserved Storage. If it doesn’t, then it’s not necessary because Windows doesn’t reserve additional storage on your device. You can check if the system is using additional storage — and how much — using the Settings app.
This feature will be automatically enabled on new PCs preinstalled with Windows 10 version 1903 (May 2019 Update) and clean installs of Windows 10 version 1903. If you are upgrading from a previous version of Windows 10, reserved storage will not be enabled.
To check if Windows is using Reserved Storage, go to Settings > System > Storage. (You can quickly open the Settings app by pressing Windows + i on your keyboard.) Click Show More Categories below the list of items taking up space.
Click System and Reserved.
If this feature is enabled on your computer, you will see a «Reserved Storage» section with more than 7 GB of storage. If you don’t see «Reserved Storage» here, «Reserve Storage» is not enabled on your system.