How big is your windows partition?

How much space for Windows 7 pro and games?

  • < 50GB

    Votes: 9 14.3%

  • 50-100GB

    Votes: 10 15.9%

  • 100-150GB

    Votes: 20 31.7%

  • 150-200GB

    Votes: 2 3.2%

  • 200-250GB

    Votes: 12 19.0%

  • 250+GB

    Votes: 10 15.9%
  • Total voters
    63
C

cinohpa

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
288
Hey all,

I'm going with an SSD + HDD set up and I will also be dual booting. I guess I just want some ballpark figures of how much space your windows OS and core apps take up.

I'll be using my windows partition for games and of course I want to put most games on the SSD to get better load times. I want to try to get a feeling for how much space I should allot for this. I'm planning on going with Windows 7 Pro.

Thanks.
 
I voted wrong. I have a 256 GB main windows partition. It is large enough for my games as well. Works out nicely.
 
50 to 100GB, it makes backing up Windows less of a chore and takes less space, plus AV scanning etc takes less time.
All games are installed to another drive/partition, no need to install them into the Windows partition and no need to back most of them up.

Op make 2 main partitions on the SSD, one for the OS + Apps and another for the games you are currently playing.
This is what I have done, all Steam games etc go to the second partition and are copied off to a hard drive if not being played.
 
As of this moment my OS partition takes up around 80GB with programs. dafuq that can't be right...I'll have to investigate this cause that sounds stupidly wrong :confused:

EDIT: Yeah I see it....pagefile.sys is 25GB and hiberfil.sys is 19GB. Forgot about those hehe
 
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I have a 150GB Windows 7 partition on my 250GB SSD, and use a 1.5TB 7200RPM eSATA drive for games and media.
 
Nenu said:
50 to 100GB, it makes backing up Windows less of a chore and takes less space, plus AV scanning etc takes less time.
All games are installed to another drive/partition, no need to install them into the Windows partition and no need to back most of them up.

Op make 2 main partitions on the SSD, one for the OS + Apps and another for the games you are currently playing.
This is what I have done, all Steam games etc go to the second partition and are copied off to a hard drive if not being played.
Click to expand...

Nenu, your suggestion sounds like the best to me.

Just out of curiosity, when you copy games off of the second partition to the larger disk, how exactly do you do it? Do you just pull out the save files from what ever game it is and uninstall the game itself? Do your mirror the partition on the hdd? With steam games do you rely on the functionality in steam to back up your progress in games or do you physically copy something to the hdd? If so, what exactly do you copy?
 
The save files are stored on the Windows partition for practically all games, these get backed up with Windows.
You can remove or delete these at your pleasure.
You may need to check on the web where they are located, not all games use the My Documents folder.
When you move a game or uninstall it, the save games tend to be left alone where they are.

To copy a game, I move the whole folder.
If you want to run it from another location, most games will still run ok when put elsewhere.
If not, when you want to play it again, put it back on the SSDs gaming partition.

Steam allows you to install games to another partition/drive, I told it to use the second partition on my SSD.
You can move/copy the game elsewhere and move it back later.
I've managed to run most steam games from my backup drive by locating the exe in the backup.
They require Steam to be running.
 
40GB and currently using 17.5GB since 2010. I don't install games on that partition though.

At the moment I only have a few semi-large applications installed on it, a few web browsers, system utilities, etc..
 
shetu said:
< 50GB is good enough
Click to expand...
For a gaming system that's probably true, but there are a lot of other situations where 50GB is insufficient.

I'm a developer, and while I could move/symlink folders, it wouldn't make things easier to back up. Plus with a large padding of available space, I can actually use recovery features (previous file versions, etc) in a meaningful way. With a SSD, having more space on the partition to write to can help with wear leveling if you write to the partition a lot.

Obviously, keeping the Windows partition a manageable size can make backing up the OS and applications easier. I just don't think that necessarily means choosing a very minimal partition size.
 
pxc said:
I'm a developer, and while I could move/symlink folders, it wouldn't make things easier to back up. Plus with a large padding of available space, I can actually use recovery features (previous file versions, etc) in a meaningful way.
Click to expand...

I am too, but I do all of my development inside of a VM and I keep the VM file on a partition separate from Windows.

I think if I were a Windows developer (.net/etc.) I would still use a VM because the last thing I want is to have like 15 different services polluting my every day Windows installation.
 
ShoeLace said:
40GB and currently using 17.5GB since 2010. I don't install games on that partition though.

At the moment I only have a few semi-large applications installed on it, a few web browsers, system utilities, etc..
Click to expand...
Similar here, I keep the win partition small and only install critical stuff on there. Everything else goes on a different partition on the same drive. (even browsers, I moved chrome elsewhere with a junction point)
 
Single 120gb SSD in my system, single partition. I have my 750gb NAS for storage.
 
My 256GB SSD is the only disk in my desktop. It's plenty of space for everything. Then I have 18TB of space in my storage server.
 
Here's my setup, and it works great.

C: - 120 GB Samsung 840 SSD (Windows and Software)
D: - 2x WD VR 500 GB in Raid-0 (Games)
E: - Old Samsung 640 GB HDD (Storage and Windows User Storage)

I've mapped all of the User storage like My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, etc. to the E: drive to keep the SSD clean. The only User folders I keep there are AppData, ProgramData, Desktop folder, Start Menu, etc. (pretty much anything used routinely, but not for storing stuff).

It works great for me, plus leaves me plenty of room to install software like Office, Adobe, etc. that I want to run fast on the SSD.
 
I dont use partitions in a long time now. What i do now is i have 2 ssds, 1 i put the os and install apps, and the other one i put all my files (docs, music, video, backup, etc). What i do is open the "user\andrerio\..." Folder and i move all the folders there (documents, pictures, videos, and the others) to the other ssd. So everytime i want to reinstall windows or try linux i just erase the 1st ssd.
 
I have win8 on my 128GB ssd and still have about 60GB free I save all games and software to my 1tbHDD. Some apps like iTunes I download to the ssd but save all the media to the hdd.
 
With an SSD though don't you really need twice the size you actually need otherwise you start to take a hit performance wise. So if your games and OS are taking up 60GB then you want a 120GB SSD minimum for best effect.

Normal partition usage/size rules don't really apply.
 
daglesj said:
With an SSD though don't you really need twice the size you actually need otherwise you start to take a hit performance wise. So if your games and OS are taking up 60GB then you want a 120GB SSD minimum for best effect.

Normal partition usage/size rules don't really apply.
Click to expand...

What?
Never heard of such a thing on SSD's, definitely not modern SSD's.
 
I have a 128gb ssd for my OS and most of my apps.
I also have a 256gb ssd that holds my current games and my adobe CS 6 suite.
I have 6 2tb internal drives that hold my downloads, media, and my other games that don't fit on the ssd.

128gb is too small for windows and some of the current games.
Bf3 takes up over 20+gigs with the expansions, some of my other games are nearing 20gb each with expansions and map packs.
My windows folder is less than 40gb, and that is just the windows folder, not the user data folder, which itself can get quite large if some apps store temp files in there, one of my apps was storing 36gb, had to clear that out since I ran out of space on the c drive the other night. Went down to 0 space free.

My%20Computer%204-25-2013.jpg
 
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80GB SSD. Yeah it's small, but 80GB was mainstream at that time :p Certainly no room for video games. Just the OS and other applications.
 
cinohpa said:
Hey all,

I'm going with an SSD + HDD set up and I will also be dual booting. I guess I just want some ballpark figures of how much space your windows OS and core apps take up.

I'll be using my windows partition for games and of course I want to put most games on the SSD to get better load times. I want to try to get a feeling for how much space I should allot for this. I'm planning on going with Windows 7 Pro.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

When I bought my son a Revodrive 3 I was unpleasantly surprised to see that Steam folder alone was 140Gb. Computer load time is usually a non-issue since you don't really need to boot the computer often nowadays. Game load times are a bigger issue since they're a barrier between you and fun when the time comes.
 
I have xp32 on a 64(crucial m4), xp64 on a 64(crucial m4), win 7 on a 120(sammy 830), and win 8 on a 240 (Sandisk). There's a 16 gb ssd for the swap files. Programs reside directly on a 240 disk, each os has it's own folder for programs. Data goes on a Samsung 840 (regular version) 500. All are over provisioned by about 20%, sort of an experiment to see if it makes any difference over time, as I keep my computers for a very long time (just rebuilt my tyan dual tualatin machine from what, 2000? and all the scsi hard drives were still chugging along). The above ssds are all residing in chenbro hotswap bays, so I can change drives whenever necessary w/o opening the case. I'll post in the drive forum when anything fails.
 
I use a 120gb ssd for windows and apps, minus games. Games are on a separate 120gb ssd. All of the user folders (downloads, pic, etc) are on a 1tb hhd.
 
180GB for the OS with 3 SSD's in RAID 0 (I'm deliberately trying to make them fail) and 1TB for games.
 
Quicksilver_ said:
180GB for the OS with 3 SSD's in RAID 0 (I'm deliberately trying to make them fail) and 1TB for games.
Click to expand...

Why would that make them fail?

I'm using multiple ssd's in RAID0, since I need space and pefromance.
 
Quicksilver_ said:
I want something faster.
Click to expand...

Unless you have a good raid controller you may not get as much benefit from raid 0 as you think.

I use the PCI-E Revodrive 3 myself for OS (after I figured it was too small for my sons games).
 
Got 120GB intel SSD from bestbuy, shoulda got the 180GB. As is, I can only fit BF3 on the C: drive with Windows, and still have a comfortable amount of room. Skyrim is on a 5900 GP drive, which is probably why I don't mess with it much. One of these paychecks I am going to get a 240GB Corsair Neutron GT..
 
B00nie said:
Unless you have a good raid controller you may not get as much benefit from raid 0 as you think.

I use the PCI-E Revodrive 3 myself for OS (after I figured it was too small for my sons games).
Click to expand...

Highpoint controllers work very well with SSDs. In my work computer I Have four Samsung 830 256GB ssd's in raid 0 on a Rocketraid 2720 controller, and the read / write is about 1.5Gbytes/s. And the 4k performance is as good as without RAID.
 
<50GB. Actually I don't have one. I know i should and it's not that hard to do but since I've got a smaller 320GB HDD and 2 big 1TB storage drives, I just never got around to it. I pretty much only use my rig for gaming, internet and storage of music and pictures which are all on my 1TB drives so if I have to reinstall my OS, it wouldn't be that big a hassle to reinstall the few programs I use.
 
256GB SSD for C: but don't need all that because I rarely install stuff to C: and put all files I download on a different partition too.
 
On my gaming system, I just have a single partition across a striped RAID of 2 SSDs. I don't need partitions on that system. For my smaller VM systems, I use a small partition for the ESXi, then I setup a partition for my VM storage, and a final partition for my other shared data. With modern OS's there is a lot less need though for multiple partitions. Typically 1 partition for your OS+Apps and one for your data is fine.
 
I keep mine at 32gb. I try to install everything and keep data on a secondary partition. Unfortunately some apps require C drive installation.
 
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