Microsoft puts the squeeze on Windows to shoehorn it into 16GB devices
Microsoft last week revealed how it will squeeze Windows 8.1 onto devices with storage space as small as 16GB to fulfill a promise earlier this year that OEMs could produce low-cost tablets and laptops.
The technology Microsoft will use, dubbed "WIM" for "Windows Imaging," is a file-based disk image format introduced in Windows Vista, the OS flop that debuted in 2007. Work on WIM, however, took place during the long -- and oft delayed -- development of "Longhorn," the code name for the project that was originally to produce an operating system in 2004.
To put Windows 8.1 Update on devices with tight storage constraints -- 16GB in particular, but also 32GB -- Microsoft has applied the decade-old technology to free up more space for applications and user content.
"This new deployment option, called Windows Image Boot (or WIMBoot), takes a different approach than traditional Windows installations," Michael Niehaus, senior product marketing manager in the Windows Commercial group, wrote on a Thursday blog. "Instead of extracting all the individual Windows files from an image (WIM) file, they remain compressed in the WIM. But from the user's perspective, nothing looks any different: You still see a C: volume containing Windows, your apps, and all of your data."
As Niehaus explained it, the WIM file -- an aggressively-compressed file that contains all the files necessary to run Windows 8.1 -- will sit in its own partition on a device's SSD (solid-state drive). By moving Windows to its own partition and then compressing it into a WIM file, Microsoft frees up space in the C: drive partition, which is traditionally where Windows is stored in an uncompressed state. That means there is more space left for user content and applications.
To boot and run Windows, a set of pointer files are stored on the C: drive which, in turn, aim at a file index within the WIM file. Windows, then, runs from the compressed, read-only WIM file.
:story: Computerworld
