Does Update fill hard drive over time?

I notice that some updates (Vista/MS Office) are quite large. Over time,
these updates can take a lot of hard drive space. My question is, do the
older updates get automatically deleted to reclaim space? If not, what is the
right thing to do, and how would you know what updates are ok to
delete/uninstall???

trebor239 wrote:
> I notice that some updates (Vista/MS Office) are quite large. Over
> time, these updates can take a lot of hard drive space. My question
> is, do the older updates get automatically deleted to reclaim
> space? If not, what is the right thing to do, and how would you
> know what updates are ok to delete/uninstall???

You can fill up a hard drive with updates.

If an update gets superseded - then the changes it made are over-written by
the newer update, yes. However - if you have made your system partition
small enough - you can theoretically fill it up over time and run out of
space.

That's why most IT people (with Windows XP) made their system partition
10+GB (usually 20+GB). I would suggest 25+GB - better yet 40+GB with
Windows Vista. It's not a whole lot of space in the long run. DVDs hold
(single layer) 4.5GB. That means that between 5 and 10 DVDs worth of space
is all you are setting aside in the above Windows Vista scenario.

While I could speak for Windows XP and tell you what 'uninstall directories'
were decently safe to delete - I cannot do that for Windows Vista. If the
amount of space you would gain by such actions is significant enough to
actually matter 3 months later - then your planning initially was poor and
you may want to reconsider the amount of space you originally installed
Windows Vista onto.

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html