Enabling and configuring Windows 10 and Server 2019 Storage Sense with registry keys applied via Group Policy

I’ve found that maintaining storage usage on a Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) has always been a challenge as there can be so many ways a user would inadvertently fill up the storage if items such as profile management and folder redirection is not configured to safely manage disk space usage. One of the clients I’ve been working with saw an increase in storage consumption on their Citrix shared desktop servers after moving the entire organization to work from home. This did not come to a surprise but the original design was not meant to accommodate the change so we began reviewing the additional policies we could apply to these Windows Server 2019 shared desktops published through Citrix.

One of the components we noticed that had increased growth was the recycling bin. Many of the users did not have the habit of purging the items so we had to determine a way of cleaning out the items. The immediate ideas were:

1. Disable the recycle bin as the previous Citrix XenDesktop and VMware Horizon View optimization scripts did
2. Configure a logoff script that emptied the recycle bin upon logging off for the user
3. Educate the users to manually purge them

None of the above ideas were ones we wanted to adopt so we looked into whether there was a way to delete the files in the recycle bin after a specified amount of time. What we found to be available is a feature in Windows 10 named Storage Sense as shown in the following screenshots:

Reviewing the shared desktop servers with the Windows Server 2019 operating system showed that this feature was also available without the need to install any additional features. However, the native group policy templates on the domain controllers did not provide the settings found on the Windows 10 operating system:

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Storage Sense:

We had restrictions on installing additional policy templates for the Active Directory domain controllers so I decided to use Process Monitor to determine where the configuration registry keys reside and use them to configure the servers. The following is where these registry keys reside:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\StorageSense\Parameters\StoragePolicy

The following is a table for the configuration mappings:

Setting	Name	Type	Data
Enabling Storage Sense	01	REG_DWORD	1 – Enable 0 – Disable
Delete temporary files that my apps aren’t using	04	REG_DWORD	1 – Enable 0 – Disable
Delete files in my recycle bin if they have been there for over	08	REG_DWORD	0 – Never 1 – 1 day
Run Storage Sense	2048	REG_DWORD	1 – Every day 7 – Every week 30 – Every month 0 – During low free disk space
Delete files in my recycle bin if they have been there for over	256	REG_DWORD	14 – 14 days 30 – 30 days 60 – 60 days
Delete files in my Downloads folder if they have been there for over	32	REG_DWORD	0 – Never 1 – 1 day
Delete files in my Downloads folder if they have been there for over	512	REG_DWORD	14 – 14 days 30 – 30 days 60 – 60 days

The settings we decided on are as follows:

Storage Sense: Enabled

Run Storage Sense: Every month

Delete temporary files that my apps aren’t using: Enabled

Delete files in my recycle bin if they have been there for over: 60 days

Delete files in my Downloads folder if they have not be used for: Never

Setting	Name	Type	Data
Enabling Storage Sense	01	REG_DWORD	1
Delete temporary files that my apps aren’t using	04	REG_DWORD	1
Delete files in my recycle bin if they have been there for over	08	REG_DWORD	1
Run Storage Sense	2048	REG_DWORD	30
Delete files in my recycle bin if they have been there for over	256	REG_DWORD	60
Delete files in my Downloads folder if they have been there for over	32	REG_DWORD	0
Delete files in my Downloads folder if they have been there for over	512	REG_DWORD	0

To apply these registry settings via group policy on the servers, the following GPO with User Configuration were configured:

Here is an example of one of the registry changes:

Key Path: Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\StorageSense\Parameters\StoragePolicy

Value name: 01

Value type: REG_DWORD

Value data: 1

Note that as this GPO will be applied to computer objects, namely the Citrix shared desktops, we will need to enable loopback settings as such:

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Group Policy > Configure user Group Policy loopback processing mode

Enabled / Merge

Link the GPO to the OU that contains the shared desktop computer object, run gpupdate /force and you verify that the settings are applied.