Size of your Windows 11 OS partition?

[NeilF]

About to set up a whole new Window 11 machine to replace my current Window 10 one. My 240gb C drive on my existing PC (so Windows 10 OS and a lot of apps etc) has 75gb still free.

I was planning on making the new Windows 11's C drive 300gb just to be safe, plus I envisage after a clean install (the old machine came from Windows 8.1 10yrs ago), it'll use a lot less than the existing 240gb of usage as well.


300gb sound a sensible amount for a Windows 11 OS? Don't want to fall short in a year or so...

ps: Games and the like are all stored on a different partition.

 

[Removed User 345456]

Yeah 300gb would be fine if you know what you have left currently, it's always good to leave say 50gb or something free on an SSD, but you've accounted for that and a bit more space for any future apps that you may want to install, so I'd say 300gb is more than enough to cover your back mate.

 

[NeilF]

I suspect there's a lot of stuff tied up on the old machine in ten years of Windows 8.1-->Windows 10 updates and the likes...

 

[BananaDunka]

To give you an idea, here is my Windows install, it is an old install just in-place upgraded each OS release since Vista, and has been cloned over to new HDDs and SSDs over the years.

Keep in mind you have 16GB of RAM, so Windows will sideline out 16GB of storage space to the pagefile too, so that's 16GB gone just there. Personally I would just upgrade the drive to a larger SSD dedicated to just the OS and apps. Ditch partitions and use a dedicated SSD for games (or the same one if it's large enough like 2TB). Using partitions could pose a risk if a drive fails or there's an issue that renders is unusable, your documents or games partitions would be lost etc.

 

[Raggs]

My windows 11 folder is 26gb i've stuck it on a 120gb old ssd for now recently installed have got 35 gb left after some apps have been put on it.


32gb is being taken up by pagefile hiberfil.sys wiztree says.

 

[NeilF]

To give you an idea, here is my Windows install, it is an old install just in-place upgraded each OS release since Vista, and has been cloned over to new HDDs and SSDs over the years.

Keep in mind you have 16GB of RAM, so Windows will sideline out 16GB of storage space to the pagefile too, so that's 16GB gone just there. Personally I would just upgrade the drive to a larger SSD dedicated to just the OS and apps. Ditch partitions and use a dedicated SSD for games (or the same one if it's large enough like 2TB). Using partitions could pose a risk if a drive fails or there's an issue that renders is unusable, your documents or games partitions would be lost etc.

That's fine... I'll do regular backups in effect of the whole 4tb drive (with all the partitions). Any failure, new 4tb drive in, restore... Done.

That said, I've not had a drive fail in over 10yrs now...

ps: New machine will have 32gb of ram.

 

[NeilF]

My windows 11 folder is 26gb i've stuck it on a 120gb old ssd for now recently installed have got 35 gb left after some apps have been put on it.


32gb is being taken up by pagefile hiberfil.sys wiztree says.

Thanks...

My Windows 10 (from Windows 8.1) is 29 gb. My program folders add up to about 32gb.

So I'm guessing/hoping 300gb will be more than safe partition size wise...

 

[ED209]

My OS Partition is 125GB and I currently have 76GB free.

I do not install much on the OS drive apart from Windows\updates etc and all my games and libraries are kept on the other partition of the drive (1TB in total)

 

[andshrew]

I'd suggest just getting a 512GB or 1TB drive for your OS drive and then you don't have to worry about it too much. Smallest I'd suggest is 256GB, but you'll probably have to do some management from time to time with the amount of junk some applications still like to dump on C.

You might want to think about whether you use Hibernate, by default that will reserve a minimum of 40% of your system RAM at C:\hiberfil.sys (~13GB with 32GB RAM). If you don't use it, turn it off to claim that back:

powercfg /H OFF

Fast boot uses hibernate though, so if you want that you can configure so hibernate is disabled but support for fast boot remains enabled. C:\hiberfil.sys will then consume less space, but personally I'd suggest just turning fast boot off as the time saving you may get on boot is outweighed by the issues that often get introduced by the system rarely clean booting.

powercfg /H /TYPE REDUCED

 

[adrichardson81]

215GB for me, of which 103GB is free. I only use the OS partition for apps and OS though.

 

[SoundsGood]

1.5TB because OneDrive doesn't let you sync to other drives

 

[TheVoice]

Mine is 200GB with just over half free, only used for the OS and applications. Games, docs, media, downloads etc are all on on the other partition or other SSDs entirely.

1.5TB because OneDrive doesn't let you sync to other drives

Not sure what you mean, my Documents folder is on a different drive to my Win11 install and OneDrive backs it up without issue.

 

[alex24]

To give you an idea, here is my Windows install, it is an old install just in-place upgraded each OS release since Vista, and has been cloned over to new HDDs and SSDs over the years.

Keep in mind you have 16GB of RAM, so Windows will sideline out 16GB of storage space to the pagefile too, so that's 16GB gone just there. Personally I would just upgrade the drive to a larger SSD dedicated to just the OS and apps. Ditch partitions and use a dedicated SSD for games (or the same one if it's large enough like 2TB). Using partitions could pose a risk if a drive fails or there's an issue that renders is unusable, your documents or games partitions would be lost etc.

How have you maintained the same install since Vista? That’s seriously impressive. I would have thought the OS would grind to a halt by now. Are you repairing or reinstalling at all?

I’ve abandoned Windows, hopefully for good, one of the reasons being the regularity of reinstalls due to general junk and slowdowns.

 

[SoundsGood]

Not sure what you mean, my Documents folder is on a different drive to my Win11 install and OneDrive backs it up without issue.

Ah thats good to hear, too late for me now though!

 

[BananaDunka]

How have you maintained the same install since Vista? That’s seriously impressive. I would have thought the OS would grind to a halt by now. Are you repairing or reinstalling at all?

I’ve abandoned Windows, hopefully for good, one of the reasons being the regularity of reinstalls due to general junk and slowdowns.

NO repairing/reinstalling, just monthly manual maintenance/upkeep. It's not too hard really just a grounded understanding of how Windows deals with drivers and application installs/uninstalls.

I have a maintenance folder and the folders linked within are grouped by modified date order in Explorer, so any new files or folders created or left behind after I get rid of a game or application are easily spotted and removed if Revo Uninstaller doesn't catch them. for whatever reason:

Zero stability issues and performance is that of a "clean" install at all times anyway really.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

What's the advantage to having a smaller boot drive partition rather than just using the whole drive?

 

[BananaDunka]

There is no real advantage. back in the days when Windows was actually unstable or needed a fresh install etc for many folks, it would have been useful I guess. There are no performance or stability benefits in doing this on an SSD.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Fair enough. I often partitioned my HDD in the old days for that reason and more recently with SSDs being expensive I usually had a smallish SSD for my boot drive but recently I got a 2TB NVMe SSD and used that as my boot drive without partitioning. I was just wondering how much of a mistake I'd made.

 

[Sin_Chase]

Have not partitioned off an OS drive since forever. Don't see the point nor that any benefit outweighs having to guess space requirements and with space between the 2 being unusable.

1 partition and just use it.

You don't need to underprovision modern SSDs, they will manage that themselves.

 

[BananaDunka]

You mean overprovision surely