21Gb enough for Windows 7 system drive?

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Xophile

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I’m currently running XP but received Windows 7 RTM through my University yesterday. My C:\ drive is only 21Gb, is this enough for Windows 7?

I will put the swapfile and My Documents on another drive and also turn off Volume Shadow Copy and System recovery. I don't run too many "heavy" applications and my games etc will be on my D:\ drive.

If it’s not enough, which program do you suggest to resize my System drive (I have free space on D:\)

Thank you kindly!
 
Depends on what you put on it, I guess. I ran a virtual machine of Windows 7 RC 32-bit with an 18GB virtual HDD, and it was perfectly fine. Of course, I also put all my applications, games, and other stuff on a separate partition. I hear the 64-bit version has slightly greater requirements in terms of hard drive space than the 32-bit version, but I would think 21GB should be fine if it's just for the OS.
 
Danny Bui:

I think both you and I and everyone else know that that the published system requirements for applications/games rarely are equal to reality.

I need feedback from users who have installed W7 and how much space it takes on their drives

Thanks
 
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I had Win7 Ultimate installed on my Dell Mini 9 with an 8GB SSD (7GB usable) and used 6GB to install, leaving me 1GB for apps and stuff.
 
Hello again!

I installed W7 Pro yesterday.

C:\Windows takes 8,40Gb
ProgramData 180Mb

Totalt 8,60Gb on a freshly installed system
 
Xophile said:
Hello again!

I installed W7 Pro yesterday.

C:\Windows takes 8,40Gb
ProgramData 180Mb

Totalt 8,60Gb on a freshly installed system
Click to expand...

Which will grow because of Shadow Copy, virtual memory, cache, and so on.

Watch that 8.40gb double in a matter of days.
 
If you disable hibernation (powercfg -H off from an admin prompt or powershell) and put swap on another drive/part, 21GB should be plenty, even with some extra stuff like drivers and other software that automatically writes to C:\ . Currently, I'm using about 20GB on my 50GB C:\ drive with indexing and shadow copy working.
 
Xophile said:
My C:\ drive is only 21Gb, is this enough for Windows 7?
Click to expand...

It's possible, but it's kinda silly to do so. You can't 'upgrade' your XP installation, so why not have a fresh start completely, with a more appropriate partition structure?

I will put the swapfile and My Documents on another drive and also turn off Volume Shadow Copy and System recovery. I don't run too many "heavy" applications and my games etc will be on my D:\ drive.
Click to expand...

Not necessary nowadays. There's minimal to no benefit from moving the swapfile, Volume shadow Copy/System Restore can actually come in handy, and the Libraries feature now makes it really easy to add another storage location elsewhere and set it as the default one.

An ~ 20Gb partition is kinda restrictive even for an XP install. Nowadays, unless a person is trying to cram an OS install onto a smallish capacity SSD it's probably best to allow plenty of elbow room for the OS partition.

If it’s not enough, which program do you suggest to resize my System drive (I have free space on D:\)
Click to expand...

Depends upon what the existing scenario is, really.

Backing up to an external drive prior to a change is one option. External 1Tb drives are selling pretty damned cheap nowadays, If you already have ample storage space to use as a temporary repository for backups then fine. Otherwise....

Nowadays I keep an extra external drive just for such (tempory) purposes.


Wherever the backups go, the Windows install disk is probably the best one to use. Rather than 'extending' the partition, it's probably best to back up the necessaries, choose a 'Custom' install after booting from the install disk, and then delete existing partitions and create a new (and more appropriate) partition structure before installing and restoring data.

If a dedicated partition management tool is to be used then any of the commonly used ones will be fine to use. Make sure, though, that the tool used is one which can run from a boot disk rather than from inside Windows. Most can, and no matter how good a program might claim to be, altering the system partition whilst inside Windows is a dumb idea.

GParted is a popular and very capable freebie tool. Others have different preferences.




Simple fact, though. It's quite possible to get modern Windows versions working well enough on smaller partitions, but if you do that you're forever afterwards conscious of and concerned about 'space'. I by far prefer to start with heaps more space than I actually 'need' and then afterwards only need to worry about tidying up every once in a while.
 
Been using 7100 for a long time now and my windows directory alone is 14Gb. Entire C: in use is 36Gb and that includes office 07 and a game. I could trim a max of 5.5gb off of that if I uninstalled the game and one work app that I have on here.

21Gb sounds a little low, I am prepared to overflow the 80Gb primary X25M if/when I have to.
 
Xophile said:
Danny Bui:

I think both you and I and everyone else know that that the published system requirements for applications/games rarely are equal to reality.

I need feedback from users who have installed W7 and how much space it takes on their drives

Thanks
Click to expand...

Space requirements are typically spot on, nowadays. Ignoring all this TH stuff, I have 18GB used, after Office 2007 home and student, 7 Ultimate 64, and F@H installed. I also have all updates, and a bit of media (school) files I have not sorted out, and just put into that '18gb' number.
 
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