Clean up the Windows To Go drive

[davidinfodom]

Hi All,
I just installed a 8.1 Enterprise on WinToGo disk.
And so I of course tried to connect the drive on several different machines, just to test if it was really working on any machine or not: of course it worked great each time.
Thus I realized something: each time you connect the WinToGo on a new machine, it will first install new files to adapt itself to the host so it can run smoothly.
Therefore each time we do that, the available free space on the disk is of course decreasing.
So here comes the question : is there a way to clean up the WinToGo drive to remove all the files which match a host we won't use anymore ?

Hoping someone will know, I thank you in advance for your feedback.

KR,
David

(Also just for information for those who would be interested : my WinToGo drive is an SSD Crucial M500 240Gb, placed in an IcyBox USB 3.0 compatible UASP.
And honestly this Win 8.1 ToGo drive works much faster than my current Win 7 x64 host system standing an WD500gb !! Really awesome )

[davidinfodom]

UP !

Really no idea ?

[admin]

This is a good idea, but I don't have the time to research the problem and find ways to help.
Anyone have any suggestions, please advise.

[usbear]

Hi All,
I just installed a 8.1 Enterprise on WinToGo disk.
And so I of course tried to connect the drive on several different machines, just to test if it was really working on any machine or not: of course it worked great each time.
Thus I realized something: each time you connect the WinToGo on a new machine, it will first install new files to adapt itself to the host so it can run smoothly.
Therefore each time we do that, the available free space on the disk is of course decreasing.
So here comes the question : is there a way to clean up the WinToGo drive to remove all the files which match a host we won't use anymore ?

Hoping someone will know, I thank you in advance for your feedback.

KR,
David

(Also just for information for those who would be interested : my WinToGo drive is an SSD Crucial M500 240Gb, placed in an IcyBox USB 3.0 compatible UASP.
And honestly this Win 8.1 ToGo drive works much faster than my current Win 7 x64 host system standing an WD500gb !! Really awesome )

Hi David, have a look at this page using Dism commands to remove old drivers and decrease the Windows installation removing unused files:
http://www.howtogeek.com/174705/how-to-r...ws-7-or-8/

[steje]

It's a no finesse, all sledgehammer approach - but I prefer the Beta's VHD file method, where I can keep a pristine backup of the original VHD image plus my preferred apps and tools added in, etc. It's a capacity burden, but I keep an on demand copy of my most updated 'gold' image on the boot drive itself, and I'll maybe keep an archive of some on another slower higher capacity drive as a long term backup. Let 7-zip crunch the VHD filesize down as much as possible (roughly half) and then extract back to the boot drive after deleting an ~old one that might be getting bloated.