Windows 10 October update will kill Disk Cleanup Utility

Vaughn Highfield September 12, 2018

Microsoft’s upcoming October Windows 10 update will bring with it a brand-new feature to help save space and keep Windows 10 running in optimal condition by offloading disk space to the cloud.

Windows 10 October update will kill Disk Cleanup Utility

The October update places emphasis on OneDrive cloud storage, upgrading the autumn update’s ability to use placeholder files to make OneDrive seamless to use. Currently, placeholders make local OneDrive directories seamless as it appears to contain everything in your OneDrive storage but only retrieves it from the cloud when needed.

Now, as part of the next update, a lot of this sort of file management and options tinkering will be performed automatically as part of Windows’ Storage Sense feature. Now Window 10 will automatically remove local copies of OneDrive files unless specifically marked as being made available offline. Windows 10 will determine the files that need removal based upon when they were last opened. Files used more recently than a set number of days will be retained locally, while those not being used will be replaced with placeholders that’ll be streamed from the cloud when needed.

The process, outlined in a blog post from Microsoft, will only remove files until Windows 10 believes it has enough free space to resume normal operations.

Storage Sense is also able to remove temporary files and other unneeded files like system longs and image thumbnails. The temporary-file cleanup, which removed cache files, driver packages and other expired files, has now been integrated into Storage Sense as Microsoft’s new programme supersedes the Disk Cleanup Tool.

Storage Sense also runs its cleanup process periodically in a set pattern or automatically whenever Windows 10 detects its low on disk space. Not bad, really.