Anonymous
She wanted to upgrade it to windows 10 (to use Office 2019). I read the news about in the very near future it needing at least 32 gb free space to upgrade, so I said- stick with 8.1…
Holy moly! I bet even the most bloated Linux distro can be installed in about 10GB. If I know Microsoft I think they include the page file in this figure. When Windows Vista came out, it required 15GB space. I have often found even Windows 7 can be installed in about 8GB of space, so I think Microsoft is taking into account some things like the page file and space needed for updates etc.
I think the 32GB might be a “safety net” figure.