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Cannot upgrade Windows 10 on NUC6CAYS

JMalm
Beginner
2,034 Views

Hello,

Microsoft wants me to upgrade Windows, but when I try to do this the NUC complains about not having enough memory. The built-in SSD is only 30GB, but I have added a 120GB SATA SSD.

I have removed all applications, and all douments, photos, videos etc.

What more can be done?

0 Kudos
3 Replies
DPers1
New Contributor III
236 Views

You probably need to download ISO and do a clean install. If you upgrade there is not enough room for Windows Old on your 30GB SSD. If I'm not wrong win10 will need 16GB on it's own.

n_scott_pearson
Super User Retired Employee
236 Views

What I did on the NUC5CGY and NUC6CAYS NUCs and the FC and SC Compute Sticks, as well as my Windows tablet, is as follows:

  1. Manually remove everything that you can from the system drive.
  2. Note: In the NUC5CGY and NUC6CAYS cases, steps 3 and 4 can be done using a secondary SSD/HDD/SSHD as well. Consider whatever media you add to be permanent.
  3. Insert a 32GB+ (I used 64GB) SD flash card. Format this flash card with the NTFS file system.
  4. In Settings, choose System, then Storage and then Change Where New Content Is Saved. Point everything to save onto the SD flash card.
  5. Start the Disk Cleanup app.
    1. If you haven't done so already, select to Cleanup System Files.
    2. Once the app. has enumerated everything, Click on the More Options tab.
    3. Under System Restore and Shadow Copies, select Clean up and then Delete.
    4. Once this complete, click on the Disk Cleanup tab again.
    5. In the Files to Delete section, checkmark every entry.
    6. Click on Ok and then Delete Files.
  6. Using the Rufus tool and the latest Windows 10 ISO file (downloaded from Microsoft) and format and load this ISO onto a >8GB USB flash disk. Make sure you choose GPT partitioning.
  7. Insert this USB flash disk into the NUC and start it running using the Setup program.
  8. If it says not enough space on the System volume, select to use the SD flash card as additional storage.
  9. Complete the update. It may take a considerable amount of time.
  10. Once you are done, have applied all outstanding updates and are happy with things, repeat step 5. If deleting old Windows files, the app can take a considerable amount of time to run (sometimes more than an hour).

Hope this helps,

...S

JMalm
Beginner
236 Views

I am sure that by cleaning up and removing as much as possible, it is possible to update Windows. I already did some of this, and also turned of hibernation to save disc space, but I don't see myself doing this evertime Microsoft makes a (larger?) update.

The NUC6CAYS is nice product for its price, but it seems that Intel has underestimated the disc requirement for Windows.

So instead, I installed Windows on the SATA SSD, and reformated the internal 30GB SSD in order not to have two Windows installation on the computer. Otherwise, I wiould have to answer which Windows to use everytime I boot. I hope this will not slow down the computer noticeably.

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