clean windows install

terminator2k2 · 9 Mar 2011 at 19:42

hi there, ive just done a clean windows 7 install on my new intel ssd.....

how big is win 7 sp1 64bit?

reason i ask is

total space is 37.2 gig

free space after install 14.2 gig

surely windows isnt 23 gig ?

cheers chris

Mr Krugga · 9 Mar 2011 at 19:53

17.8 GB according to Properties in Windows folder. That is with most things installed on my SSD (if that makes a difference). I remember it being less than 10GB after a fresh install though.

BinnsY · 9 Mar 2011 at 20:00

Dont forget you will also be using space equal to your ram for the hibernation file, and the same amount for your page file.

If you have 6GB of ram that would be an easy 12GB accounted for.

Having said that my Windows folder is up to 26GB but i do have rather a lot installed and it is a 9 month old install.

terminator2k2 · 9 Mar 2011 at 20:05

surely it shouldnt be 24 gig though?

ive got 9 gig of ram.......

anyway to get this space back?

Mr Krugga · 9 Mar 2011 at 20:28

BinnsY said:
Dont forget you will also be using space equal to your ram for the hibernation file, and the same amount for your page file.

If you have 6GB of ram that would be an easy 12GB accounted for.

Having said that my Windows folder is up to 26GB but i do have rather a lot installed and it is a 9 month old install.

I have hibernation disabled, pagefile shrank to 1GB, Index and Downloads folder moved over to the storage drive. All Libraries link to storage drive folders too.

Have a look at this guide too, I found it quite useful - http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/windows-7-and-ssds-cutting-your-system-drive-down-to-size/2941.

terminator2k2 · 9 Mar 2011 at 21:22

Mr Krugga said:
I have hibernation disabled, pagefile shrank to 1GB, Index and Downloads folder moved over to the storage drive. All Libraries link to storage drive folders too.

Have a look at this guide too, I found it quite useful - http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/windows-7-and-ssds-cutting-your-system-drive-down-to-size/2941.

thank you, very much appreciated..link helped a lot.....got some space back now.......

it was using 9gig for the page file.....as i have 9 gig of ram......my system uses no where near this, so i set it to 4 gig max.......

cheers chris

Mr Krugga · 9 Mar 2011 at 21:29

terminator2k2 said:
thank you, very much appreciated..link helped a lot.....got some space back now.......

it was using 9gig for the page file.....as i have 9 gig of ram......my system uses no where near this, so i set it to 4 gig max.......

cheers chris

Having 9GB of RAM (odd value??) makes using pagefile pretty much pointless.

terminator2k2 · 9 Mar 2011 at 22:06

its triple channel.... 3 x 1 gig and 3 x 2 gig strips, same make and model......

i only had 3 gig to begin with then wanted to go to 6 gig...and brought a 3x 2 gig kit.... i thought it waste of time trying to sell 3 gig, so put it back in with my 3 x 2 gig strips......
hence reason why there is 9 gig....

5er driver · 10 Mar 2011 at 09:56

I just installed W7 64 SP1 on an SSD last night. After running all the updates, turning Hibernate off, shrank the Back Up & Restore space from 10GB to 3GB, I'm down to 17GB. The page file can actually be moved to another drive, I've got it going to an HDD.

Mr Krugga · 10 Mar 2011 at 10:11

5er driver said:
I just installed W7 64 SP1 on an SSD last night. After running all the updates, turning Hibernate off, shrank the Back Up & Restore space from 10GB to 3GB, I'm down to 17GB. The page file can actually be moved to another drive, I've got it going to an HDD.

Moving pagefile to an HDD misfits the purpose of SSDs. Make it smaller but leave it on your SSD. I've got mine set to 512-1024MB and don't feel in need of having any more. Having it on the HDD would never be as beneficial though.

I would also second disabling Windows backup (use third party tools like Acronis/Intel software) and setting Restore to 1-3% (depending on the SSD size).

Alasdairhurst · 10 Mar 2011 at 10:21

Also, if you have a high amount of memory -like 6gb+, then a page file isnt always necesarry, depending of your usual memory usage. the page file is used when you run out of RAM and when activated, often gets used alongside the RAM, so if it is set really small, or better, disabled. then the poerformance of the pc should speed up sa all the data is accessed from the RAM with is the fastest component (apart from the cache).
enablei t if you have a low amount of memory, or are worried about stepping over the amount of memory you have (you will loose data if it overflows, as there is nowhere else for it to go.

5er driver · 10 Mar 2011 at 16:24

Mr Krugga said:
Moving pagefile to an HDD misfits the purpose of SSDs. Make it smaller but leave it on your SSD. I've got mine set to 512-1024MB and don't feel in need of having any more. Having it on the HDD would never be as beneficial though.

I would also second disabling Windows backup (use third party tools like Acronis/Intel software) and setting Restore to 1-3% (depending on the SSD size).

Windows will increase your manually set page file allocation if it needs to. I moved it to an HDD to minimize the writes to the SSD. Also, I just shrank the Recycle Bin size down from 8GB to 256MB. I'm now down to 9.24 GB on the SSD.

BinnsY · 10 Mar 2011 at 17:05

Alasdairhurst said:
Also, if you have a high amount of memory -like 6gb+, then a page file isnt always necesarry, depending of your usual memory usage. the page file is used when you run out of RAM and when activated, often gets used alongside the RAM, so if it is set really small, or better, disabled.

This isnt quite right, shrinking the page file if you are confident you don't need it is a good idea but you shouldnt completley disable it. Some actions rely on virtual memory. It's also where error dumps are copied too during BSOD's.

One source and a paticular paragraph of interest below.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/10/running-xp-with-the-pagefile-disabled.html

So, if you have a lot of RAM, you don't need a pagefile, right? Not necessarily. When certain applications start, they allocate a huge amount of memory (hundreds of megabytes typically set aside in virtual memory) even though they might not use it. If no pagefile (i.e., virtual memory) is present, a memory-hogging application can quickly use a large chunk of RAM. Even worse, just a few such programs can bring a machine loaded with memory to a halt. Some applications (e.g., Adobe Photoshop) will display warnings on startup if no pagefile is present.

My advice, therefore, is not to disable the pagefile, because Windows will move pages from RAM to the pagefile only when necessary. Furthermore, you gain no performance improvement by turning off the pagefile. To save disk space, you can set a small initial pagefile size (as little as 100MB) and set a high maximum size (e.g., 1GB) so that Windows can increase the size if needed. With 1GB of RAM under normal application loads, the pagefile would probably never need to grow.