Windows have been developed and updated over the years with the innovation in technology. There have been improvements in the basic formats of Windows. For different computer systems, Windows provided a platform as an operating system to run all the applications and software that is necessary for a user to perform his tasks. With development and changes over the years, the size of Windows has been changed a lot.
People wonder how big is Windows 10 as the size of the image of the Windows version changes each year. Since from the very beginning, there have always been some efforts in trying to reduce the size of Windows so that it can squeeze into less storage and work pretty well on different platforms. But the problem is, Windows may start as a compressed file with less storage, but it slowly grows, which can change a lot of things.
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The Windows doesn’t change its size without any reason, and it doesn’t mean that you are changing its size. How big is Windows 10 mainly depends on the apps, drivers, and other such components inside its software that develop over time and update themselves. Regular cache and temporary files of the data can increase the size of your Windows 10 over the years, which is why you have to manually reduce the size by performing disk cleanup and exporting files to other locations. This leads us to the discussion about how big is Windows 10 and how it changed.
How Big is Windows 10
You cannot exactly tell how big a Windows 10 is and how does it change its size. There are different ISO sizes for all the Windows that are of different models released over the time period. The size increased steadily over all these years which we have made a table to share the details completely.
| Windows 10 | ISO size |
| Windows 10 1511 (10586) | 3.75GB |
| Windows 10 1607 (14393) | 4.20GB |
| Windows 10 1703 (15063) | 4.15GB |
| Windows 10 1709 (16299) | 4.45GB |
| Windows 10 1803 (17134) | 5.21GB |
| Windows 10 1809 (17763) | 5.32GB |
| Windows 10 1903 (18362) | 5.13GB |
| Windows 10 1909 (18363) | 5.42GB |
| Windows 10 2004 (19041) | 5.24GB |
| Windows 10 20H2 (19042) | 6.08GB |
All the ISO files mentioned above contained multiple images, but the image files 1703, 1709, and 1803 are Windows 10 Enterprise. If we just want to see the size of Windows 10 Enterprise, then DISM for the size of these Windows will be something like this in decompressed size.
| Windows 10 release | Decompressed Size |
| Windows 10 1511 (10586) | 13.66GB |
| Windows 10 1607 (14393) | 14.61GB |
| Windows 10 1703 (15063) | 15.29GB |
| Windows 10 1709 (16299) | 15.77GB |
| Windows 10 1803 (17134) | 16.25GB |
| Windows 10 1809 (17763) | 14.92GB |
| Windows 10 1903 (18362) | 14.75GB |
| Windows 10 1909 (18363) | 15.00GB |
| Windows 10 2004 (19041) | 14.60GB |
| Windows 10 20H2 (19042) | 15.64GB |
Basically, these sizes show how big is a Windows 10, but if Oses is applied to the hard drive, then it will show that it’s only reserving half of the disk space. DISM is responsible for reporting the size consumed by all files of a Windows version. This doesn’t involve any hard links that are used in Windows 10 files; it will display double-size results.
The duplication of files can occur in the C drive in which the “TOTALBYTES” value may match according to the DISM report, but the “HARDLINKBYTES” is mainly responsible for duplication. These values can impact the size of a Windows 10 like this.
| Windows 10 release | Size (decompressed, with hard links) |
| Windows 10 1511 (10586) | 6.24GB |
| Windows 10 1607 (14393) | 6.48GB |
| Windows 10 1703 (15063) | 7.17GB |
| Windows 10 1709 (16299) | 7.45GB |
| Windows 10 1803 (17134) | 7.48GB |
| Windows 10 1809 (17763) | 6.08GB |
| Windows 10 1903 (18362) | 6.02GB |
| Windows 10 1909 (18363) | 6.00GB |
| Windows 10 2004 (19041) | 5.96GB |
| Windows 10 20H2 (19042) | 5.80GB |
Conclusion
This was a discussion about how big is Windows 10, and we discussed the changing size over the years with compression and decompression.
FAQ’s
Q#1: How many GB does Windows 10 take up?
Ans: If you download or install the latest version of Windows 10, it will take about 15 GB of your hard disk space to properly install on the system. This is due to the system reserved memory and reserved files along with default apps and cache files that come from playing different games and running multiple tasks.