0x80070070 – 0x50011: the upgrade runs out of disk space and rolls back

Fix it now

Setup ran out of room on the system volume. All three 0x80070070 pairs say the same thing at different points in the run, and both companion codes are disk space checks too. You need real free space, not a tidied recycle bin.

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup
cleanmgr /sageset:1
powercfg /h off

1. Aim at Microsoft’s published figures: an upgrade wants 16 GB free for a 32-bit installation and 20 GB for a 64-bit one, and Windows 11 requires 64 GB or greater available disk space.
2. Component store cleanup is the biggest single win on a machine that has been patched for years, and it is safe to run while Windows is up.
3. Turn off hibernation with powercfg /h off to reclaim the hibernation file, and turn it back on afterwards if you use it.
4. Reduce shadow copy storage if it has grown: check with vssadmin list shadowstorage, then resize with vssadmin resize shadowstorage.
5. If you still cannot free enough, attach external storage for setup to use. Microsoft asks for at least 8 GB, recommends 16 GB, and it must be formatted NTFS.

Do not free space by deleting the recovery partition or by emptying folders under Windows by hand. Both create worse problems than the one you are solving.

If the upgrade completes you can stop here. If not, the next section explains why setup needs so much more room than the finished installation does.

Why it happens

An upgrade briefly holds two operating systems. Setup downloads or reads the new image, expands it onto the system volume, keeps the old installation intact so it can roll back, and writes migration state alongside both. Peak usage is much higher than the space the finished installation occupies, and it arrives part way through rather than at the start, which is why a machine that had plenty of room when you pressed the button can fail an hour later.

0x80070070 is the plain out-of-space error, and the three extend codes here just say where setup was when it noticed. That is worth knowing because it explains why freeing a little space and retrying often produces the same failure at a slightly later point: you moved the moment of exhaustion rather than avoiding it.

The two companion codes are disk space checks in their own right, and one of them is routinely misread. 0xC1900211 is MOSETUP_E_DOWNLOAD_UNPACK_DISKSPACE_BLOCK: the system does not pass the disk space requirements to download and unpack media. 0xC1900123 is MOSETUP_E_INSTALLDISKSPACE_TIMEOUT: the install disk space issues were not resolved within the required time limit. The second one appears when setup asked you to free space, waited, and gave up.

Full reference

The figures Microsoft publishes

Treat those as floors rather than targets. They are what setup checks against, not what makes an upgrade comfortable, and a machine sitting exactly on the line is the one that fails at the point where rollback data and migration state are both on disk at once.

Where the space actually goes

/ResetBase removes all superseded versions of every component in the component store. Once it has run, installed updates can no longer be uninstalled.

Using external storage properly

Setup can use an attached drive for its temporary needs, which is the sanctioned way through a volume that cannot be made big enough. Format it NTFS, give it more room than the minimum, and leave it attached for the whole run including the restarts. Do not point setup at a network location or at a drive that sleeps.

When the space is there and it still fails

• Confirm you are looking at the right volume. On a machine with several partitions, the one that matters is the one holding Windows.
• Check for a quota or a policy limiting what setup can write, particularly on managed machines.
• Look for a folder redirection or a junction pointing part of the system volume somewhere small.
• Read $Windows.~BT\Sources\Panther\setuperr.log and confirm the error really is the space one rather than a different failure being reported alongside it.
• If 0xC1900123 appears, note what it means: setup asked for space and timed out waiting. Free the space first, then start the run again rather than responding to the prompt during it.

Stopping it happening again

A machine that has just scraped through an upgrade will be in the same position at the next one. Schedule component store cleanup, keep an eye on shadow copy storage, and if the system volume is genuinely undersized for the work the machine does, treat the disk as the thing to fix rather than repeating the cleanup every six months.

Every code this article covers

Confirm the fix worked

1. The system volume shows free space above the published figure for the upgrade you are running.
2. Dism /online /Cleanup-Image /AnalyzeComponentStore reports that cleanup is not recommended.
3. The upgrade completes and the machine boots into the new build.
4. After the upgrade, previous installation files have been removed through disk cleanup rather than left in place.

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