May we delete the Dell SARemediation folder or its content?
In my tutorial Deleting temporary files on Windows 10, I spoke about TreeSize Free, an application to quickly scan directory sizes and find space hogs (you can download the tool from the JAM Software website). When running this tool, I discovered the folder C:\Program Data\Dell\SARemediation, that actually uses 24 GB of disk space on my system.
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24 GB is a lot, and I asked myself: "What are these files? Are they really needed? May I perhaps delete this folder or its content?" I suppose that this folder is present on all Dell computers with Dell SupportAssist installed. It is part of what is called Dell SupportAssist Remediation, or Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery, sometimes just System Repair. SupportAssist uses the mentioned folder to store the data that is required to repair your computer if your Windows system files are corrupted and your computer can't boot anymore (emergency recovery).
The configuration of System Repair is done in Dell SupportAssist. From the menu, choose Settings, then click the Open link of System Repair.
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In the System Repair window of your support assistant, you will probably see what is shown on the screenshot below: System repair is enabled by default, and the hard drive space to reserve for file backups is set by default to the recommended value (15 GB; at least on my system).
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When you choose to turn off System Repair, SupportAssist warns you that this will have as effect that all system backup files will be deleted (the corresponding disk space being freed up).
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So, what possibilities do we have, and which one should we choose?
- Manually deleting the SARemediation folder, or its content? Not an option! Unless you want to try out how much this would mess up your system...
- Selecting the minimum amount of space for backup, instead of the recommended one? This might make you gain some GB of free space, without compromising the system repair features (I did not try it out...). On the other hand, if you consider that the disk space to be reserved is set to 15 GB, and the content of the folder C:\Program Data\Dell\SARemediation\SystemRepair is 23.7 GB, it's questionable if this is a realistic possibility.
- Turning System Repair off temporarily if for some uncommon reason free space has become small on your C: drive, and turning it on again when the situation has normalized? This is a possibility to be considered (after having freed up space by cleaning really unnecessary files). Be however aware, that if something really bad happens during this time, you might have real problems booting up your Windows. Even though, Windows 10/11 have their own system repair software installed, and you have the possibility to boot into these utilities by holding down a given key during the initial phase of the boot process.
- Turning System Repair off permanently? This may be the action to take, if you are really short of free disk space (especially if you only have a small disk drive). Before deciding to do this, you should however consider to create a regular backup of your system. Besides several free backup solutions, the latest Windows releases include their own backup software. In Windows 10, it is located in Control Panel and it is called Backup and Restore (Windows 7). You can use it to make a manual or scheduled backup of your user files, associated or not with taking an image of the EFI, the Windows, and the recovery partitions (note, that this feature is not turned on by default). In the left pane of the Backup and Restore (Windows 7) page, you find the link to run the Create a system image utility, which takes an image of all important partitions. In the case of a corrupted Windows installation, this image can be used to restore the system to the point where the image was taken. To note, that the playback of the image may be launched from the Windows recovery utility, that you can run even if your Windows doesn't work anymore (start it by hoding down a specific key during the boot process).
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