A new Windows 10 version will ensure seamless Windows Updates by introducing a new feature called Reserved Storage.

Available in the upcoming update for Windows 10, version 19H1, reserved storage will set aside some disk space to be used by updates, apps, temporary files, and system caches.

Microsoft's goal is to improve the day-to-day function of your PC by ensuring critical OS functions always have access to disk space. Without reserved storage, if a user almost fills up her or his storage, several Windows and application scenarios become unreliable. Windows and application scenarios may not work as expected if they need free space to function. With reserved storage, updates, apps, temporary files, and caches are less likely to take away from valuable free space and should continue to operate as expected.

Reserved storage will be introduced automatically on devices that come with version 1903 pre-installed or those where 1903 was clean installed. This process will automatically run in the background. When apps and system processes create temporary files, these files will automatically be placed into reserved storage. These temporary files won’t consume free user space when they are created and will be less likely to do so as temporary files increase in number, provided that the reserve isn’t full. Storage sense will automatically remove unneeded temporary files, but if for some reason your reserve area fills up Windows will continue to operate as expected while temporarily consuming some disk space outside of the reserve if it is temporarily full.

In the next major release of Windows (19H1), Microsoft anticipates that reserved storage will start at about 7GB, however the amount of reserved space will vary over time based on how you use your device. Additionally, over the last several releases Microsoft has reduced the size of Windows for most users. The reserved storage cannot be removed from the OS, but you can reduce the amount of space reserved.

The amount of storage that is used by Windows 10 depends on things like how many optional features you have enabled, or how many languages you have installed on your device. Microsoft says the feature will initially use 7GB for the reserved storage, though that may change in the future. You will be able to check how much storage is reserved by Windows 10 from the Settings app, however.

Although the addition of the new feature sounds like a good idea, it may not work too well for low-end devices where storage is limited to 32GB or 64GB. These devices already don’t have a ton of space available, so reducing that even further by 7GB could really make life hard for users who have a device that only has 32GB or 64GB of storage.