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winsxs and global assembly cache: relocation possible?

category: offtopic [glöplog]
 
I have a growing problem:
watch me beautiful

I use a 40GB SSD as a system drive hosting Windows 7. I install most of my programs to another drive, and the page file is also somewhere else.

Since I use this machine for developing, I face the problem of the ever growing winsxs and assembly folders inside of C:\Windows. Does anybody know if I can relocate them? Is my only option to buy myself a bigger drive?

I'd be grateful for any suggestions :)
added on the 2011-06-10 11:24:16 by xTr1m xTr1m
Stop using Windows.
added on the 2011-06-10 11:30:59 by decipher decipher
rasmus, that looks like a great idea, but sadly, from your same link:
Quote:
Several people have commented that this will break windows updates.

This should be obvious to anyone that has looked into winsxs, its structure and how files are added to it.

winsxs contains HARD LINKED files that are placed there during updates or installs.

Hard links can only work within a volume, they cannot work across volumes, which is what junctions allow you to do.

You won’t see any errors until a later program tries to create a hard link in c:windowswinsxs from outside of it and will fail with a probably obscure message.

A work around would be to restore winsxs to its original location, run the update then move it back to the other volume with the above procedure, but I think that would defeat the point of attempting the above.


I guess that's it, then...
added on the 2011-06-10 13:21:35 by xTr1m xTr1m
I'm afraid you're doomed. The only thing that comes to my mind is that you should disable windows updates and just not install any software which could use dlls of different versions than the ones you already have.

But this is very likely impossible, since you've admitted you need the box for development, so ..
added on the 2011-06-10 14:33:28 by kbi kbi
I'll go with Decipher on this one :/
added on the 2011-06-10 23:15:30 by cg_ cg_
this; but still; Knoppix has a full suite of software and an OS running from a 2GB image. I'd love windows to be able to do that.

Until then, remove service pack backups to clean up windows side by side.
added on the 2011-06-11 16:52:38 by QUINTIX QUINTIX
QUINTIX: MinWin in Win7 is about 25MB in size, which isn't all that bad.
added on the 2011-06-12 11:33:19 by kusma kusma
I think, most of the files in this directory don´t really exist, but are mapped in there...
added on the 2011-06-12 15:17:46 by Al3x Al3x
Well, if you can't move the winsxs and assembly folders, I found another way to get free space: move user profiles. I use 2 profiles, their size were 3.8GB and 1.8GB, all that big partly because of Firefox/Chrome/Thunderbird/iTunes all putting their vital data there.

jsyk.
added on the 2011-06-15 14:48:22 by xTr1m xTr1m

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