LibreOffice installer for Windows (MSI) writes to these locations (drive C: is assumed the system drive below):
- Most files go to install location - that is
C:\Program Files\LibreOffice by default, and is customizable on Custom Setup step of installation wizard. - Fonts: about 70 MB goes to
C:\Windows\Fonts - System components used by LibreOffice: installer runs MSU for UCRT and merge module for MSVC - in total, about 3 MB files go to
C:\Windows\System32 (if not yet present).
That's all that MSI does. Now there is also one thing that Windows Installer service does itself for own needs: it caches the MSI into C:\Windows\Installer hidden folder. Given the size of LibreOffice MSI, it takes ~300 MB.
So for installation on another drive, it would be normal for install process to take size of installer plus slightly more than 70 MB on system drive after the installation finishes. That is confirmed by direct measurement I did when testing this on a dedicated clean VM with Win7SP1 and 2 virtual disks: took "space used on drive" before and after installation, and also before and after removal.
The different thing is what installer tells in "Disk Space Requirements" dialog. And that indeed shows it needs almost 600 MB space on system drive when installing on another drive. But that number doesn't mean that it will actually take all that space after installation finishes: it's just the free space needed in the process of installation (e.g., for temporary files created in Temp directory; for undo information kept while installing to enable rollback on installation error in hidden C:\Config.Msi, etc.), which is cleared at the end of the process. So that number indicates the space without which installation cannot proceed successfully.
By the way, removal of that cached MSI from Windows\Installer is not a good idea, because it would make clean uninstallation of programs impossible without the original MSI at hand.
Wow! Hard to believe. Have you tried defragmenting your drive? Or cleaning up with something like CCleaner or Glary Utilities?
Do you mean that you had some massive system reconfiguration in the past, which made your pre-existing LibreOffice installation orphaned (but still working), and then you used LibreOffice installer to "add" some components onto another drive (C:?) - which ignored your old orphaned installation (on D:)?
In case a system upgrade corrupts system's installation database keeping track what was installed where and how, there's nothing LibreOffice (or its installer) could do. It simply didn't know of an older installation; it honestly shown you that it will need 600 MB on your chosen drive; and that 60 MB of that would be the component you highlighted to inspect. The data on your other drive is most likely obsolete and might be simply removed.
D:\ had an "orphaned" installation that was still usable, C:\ was formatted.
I've removed the "orphaned" installation (just deleted the folder from D:\ ) and installed the newest available version to D:\ what annoys me is that it has also taken ~600mb from C:\ along with the ~550mb installation to D:\
@ve3oat this is specific to libreoffice installation. And yes I know about ccleaner and degragmentation.
Could you please tell what is the contents of C:\Program Files\LibreOffice, C:\Users\<yourusername>\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice, and D:\<libreofficeinstalllocation> (all with their total sizes)?
@Mike Kaganski I've performed a full C:\ search for "libreoffice" and couldn't find anything of large enough size; the Roaming folder I've moved to D:\ so the libreoffice folder there wasn't contributing to the size taken from C:\ . The D:\ installation was about ~550mb.
Anyway. I haven't found a solution so I just uninstalled libreoffice, which has cleared the space from C:\ as well as (obviously, since it was the target of the installation) from D:\ .
I've moved to the actual portable version (though it is an older buggier version), that doesn't eat up anything, but the ~536mb main folder, which is exactly the predictability I want.