Microsoft Gives An Explanation Of The Low Free Storage Space On Surface Pro

February 7, 2013
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Ever since details came out a few days back, the free storage space on Surface Pro has become bit of a talking point in, which is quite odd, once you think about it, because pretty much all traditional computers do things this way.

Long story short, the 128GB model of Surface Pro provides only around 83GB of free storage space. By the same token 64GB version only has to contend with 23GB of available free space. The reason for this is simple — both Windows 8 and the recovery image eat up a lot of hard disk space.

While this is pretty self-explanatory, the Surface team, nevertheless, took it upon itself to clarify the details. In an IAmA session on Reddit, the team explained:

“We designed Surface Pro (and the allocation of disk space on our systems) to have the power of full Windows 8, the ability to have a simplified and fast upgrade to full Office and the confidence of a recovery image already available on your device.”

Even with all this, the 64GB version has quite enough space for users that want to install large applications, like games and productivity software, the company said.

Microsoft further pointed out that it was possible to expand storage capacity using multiple ways — SkyDrive cloud storage being one, a microSD card another, and of course an external USB 3.0 storage devices.

And speaking of USB, if you are thinking that a USB flash drive with recovery image was a much better choice to preserve space on the Surface Pro, Redmond disagrees:

“We could have done this, but then there would be a chance it would be lost. We give you the ability to make one if you choose and free up the space.”

The Surface team did admit that there may be times when a recovery image would not be needed at all, but this is just Microsoft’s way to make sure that users are on the safe side at all times:

“Ideally, you will never need your recovery image, however this is a choice we would prefer the customer to make vs. having the customer need the recovery image not realizing they needed to create one themselves.”

Of course, more experienced users can easily remove the recovery image and free up a few acres of disk space without too much effort. And this is something, I expect, a lot of Surface Pro owners will do.

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Mike Johnson is a writer for The Redmond Cloud - the most comprehensive source of news and information about Microsoft Azure and the Microsoft Cloud. He enjoys writing about Azure Security, IOT and the Blockchain.

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