How much space does boot camp take up?

Big-Mac-Please · 8 Sep 2006 at 14:46

Hello

I'm planning on getting a new Intel mac mini and I want to decide what size hard drive to get.

I plan to use OS X as the main os and only use XP for a few things like Visual basic and borland C++ and possibly DVD shrink if I not get on with shrinking my DVDs in OS X.

I was thinking like 20GB of space would be about right but how much space does that take up with boot camp, because I heard it leaves empty space around the windows partition?

Cheers for anyhelp with this!!!

BigMac

Darryn · 8 Sep 2006 at 17:15

The Bootcamp installer lets you choose the partition size you want for Windows, I went with 32gb, if you choose more than 32gb you need to use NTFS, under that FAT, the advantage of FAT is that you can natively read and write to it under OSX.

As for it using more space, not sure, ive got it partitoned off a 250gb drive, which in reality is 233gb (250,059,350,016 Bytes), OSX partiton is 201gb and XP is 32gb.

Big-Mac-Please · 8 Sep 2006 at 18:37

Thanx for the reply

So it doesn't seem to take up any or much extra space so hopefully a 80gb hard drive should be ok.

If I said 20gb for windows that should be 50gb for osx and then minus 15gb for apps and os x should give me about 35gb free.

Does that shound about right? I've gone on the workings that 80gb harddrive would be 70gb of real space.

Cheers for anyhelp!!!

Darryn · 8 Sep 2006 at 18:50

Yup, seems about right to me. Have you looked at using parallels instead of bootcamp? that create a single file virtual HDD, that grows and shrinks with what you have on it under Windows. It also lets you switch OS without a reboot.

RobH · 8 Sep 2006 at 18:54

20GB sounds about right, I have my 120GB harddrive in my Macbook set to 10GB at the moment but that was because I was just testing it, I'll likely put it up to 20GB when I want to use it properly.

I'd tell you to buy the smallest drive possible and buy a big one from elsewhere and upgrade it yourself but I don't think Mac Mini's are easy to take a part and/or void the warrenty. I saved over £300 on my MacBook by doing the RAM/ harddrive upgrades myself but they are designed to be upgraded.

Big-Mac-Please · 8 Sep 2006 at 22:39

Thanxs for the replsy

To be honest I hae heard people mention parallels but I don't really know what it is? Have you tried it?

Do applications run nativly or is it like emulation software?

RobH I did think about do that

I have managed to swap out the ram in my current mac mini but I have read the new mini crams so much in there its bit of a job!

I did think though I could always get one of the mini style hard drives to sit underneath the mini if I do find it short of space

Thanx again for all the help!!