Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 7 Jul 2018 10:19:55 -0400, Keith Nuttle
wrote:

I am the one who suggested deleting files in SoftwareDistribution, and I
can confirm that this folder can take up a lot of space. I never
checked the exact number of bytes, but I know I have spent hours
deleting the files.

Hi Keith,
I'm curious to hear why it took hours to delete those files, when I
think it should have taken less than a minute. Do you have any thoughts
on what was going on?


I've experienced this (Win10 SoftwareDistribution) :-)

I think there were more than 8GB of tiny tiny files,
all unpacked in there via some crazy-ass "delta"
Upgrade procedure. I didn't care to count them,
because the deletion operation was already underway.
But it took... forever to finish. Poor I/O performance
on Windows 10, can be chalked up to Windows Defender,
which can interfere with the speed of just about
any operation.

Not all SoftwareDistribution runs are "self-cleaning".
Windows 10 seems to "clean" if the first Upgrade install attempt
fails. There might be a cleaning step thrown in. But there
have been cases, where users are obviously suffering
from an issue where whatever cleaning is supposed to
happen, no longer happens, and that folder gets
bigger and bigger. That wasn't my case. Mine was
a "single case of indigestion", and did not repeat.

Paul