Disable/(Re)enable Reserved Storage on Windows to Claim Huge Free Space

If we're running Windows 11 or 10 and find ourself constantly battling for free space, we might have come across something called "Reserved Storage." What is it, and more importantly, can you reclaim it? Let's dive in.

Kitu-Tech — Reserved Storage is a chunk of disk space that Windows sets aside for system updates, temporary files, and caches. Microsoft introduced this feature to ensure smooth updates and prevent storage-related hiccups. While it's useful for maintaining system stability, it can be a headache if we're tight on space.

Why we needed to disable Reserved Storage on our Windows laptop

So, I’ve been tinkering with my Toshiba Dynabook R734/K laptop, and since I partitioned my SSD for a multi-boot setup with Linux distros, storage has become a precious commodity. Every gigabyte counts, and I wanted to squeeze out as much free space as possible on my Windows partition.

I tested disabling Reserved Storage on Windows 11, and to my relief, it freed up a few extra gigs (quite huge for my 128 GB SSD that's partitioned into three parts 😂). Not a monstrous gain when larger disk became affordable these days, but when we’re dealing with limited disk space, it adds up!

Benefits of disabling Reserved Storage on Windows

Aside from reclaiming storage, disabling Windows' Reserved Storage means:

More free space for personal files and applications – especially handy if we're running low.
Less background disk activity – since Windows won’t be pre-allocating storage for updates and temp files.
More control over disk management – because let's face it, we like having a say in how our storage is used.

That said, keeping it enabled ensures updates have the necessary space, reducing the chance of update failures. So, if we disable it, be prepared to manually manage storage to avoid running into issues when Windows update happened.

Checking how much Windows Reserved Storage eat up our PC's storage

First thing first, we might want to check just how much Windows took space with its Reserved Storage on our precious laptop:

Open Windows Settings (Handy shortcut: Right click on Windows icon on task bar, then click "Settings" on the bottom).
On the System tab, which is the main tab of Windows Settings, scroll down and click "Storage".
On the Local Disk storage, wait a while until the loading is done and Windows calculated our local disk space usage. Next, click the "Show more categories" link just below the Local Storage section.
Click "System & reserved" item on the list, we could see the total size of storage has been allocated for Reserved Storage on our Windows PC. For me, it's around 7 GB, very huge because I only allocated a ± 24 GB partition for my Windows 11 on the disk. 😂

Steps to disable & (re)enable Reserved Storage on Windows

My environment:

Device: Toshiba Dynabook R734/K
OS: Nexus LiteOS 11 (Windows 11 mod)

Disabling Windows Reserved Storage

Launch "Windows PowerShell" in admin mode. Open our start menu, then search for "Powershell", it should be the first one appears on the search result. Or, we can find it under "Windows PowerShell" folder on "All Programs" menu.
Click the "Run as administrator" on the PowerShell's sub menu (right click on it if we're accessing it from All Programs to show the Run as administrator menu). Wait until the line like PS C:\Windows\system32> or PS C:\Users\... appears.
Type the command to disable Reserved Storage:
```
DISM /Online /Set-ReservedStorageState /State:Disabled
```
And hit enter. It should shows message "The operation completed successfully…" at the end.
Check Reserved Storage again in the Windows Settings (refers to previous section), it should be gone now, and we got free space real estate, baby. 😎

(Re)enabling Windows Reserved Storage

So, now we want to enable Reserved Storage again because it messed with our Windows update? Easy, just launch the Windows PowerShell in administrator mode again, but this time we just type slightly different command:

DISM /Online /Set-ReservedStorageState /State:Enabled

Windows PowerShell command to enable Reserved Storage

And hit enter, "The operation completed…" message should appears again at the end of the result message. Now go check those in the Windows Settings again if that big boy of Reserved Storage came back again.

Disable / Enable Reserved Storage on Windows (11) to Save Disk Space video on YouTube

If we're in a situation where every GB of storage matters, disabling Reserved Storage on our Windows PC might be worth a shot. Just be mindful that we’ll need to manage Windows updates and temp files more carefully. And if we ever change our mind, re-enabling it is just as easy!

Now, time to reclaim that space! 🚀

#windows