Windows 7 partition size?

Grumbledook

Grumbledook

Grumbledook

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I'm going to get a new hard drive and do a fresh install of win7 pro which I've just bought.

I like to keep my OS on a separate partition though, does anyone have any idea what a fair size partition would be to use for win7?

cheers
 
I'd say 20GB should be okay for the OS and some programs, then bigger progs and games etc be installed on another partition.
 
I made a 40GB partition for Win 7 OS and programs (but not games), and it is now (with all programs installed) just over half filled...
 
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imho 20GB may be a little small. I've got W7 pro 64 and have the pagefile on a seperate drive, programs/games on seperate drives, so my system drive does not change very much: my system partition is 50GB and over 20GB is used, I like to leave plenty of breathing space, but going by my system I would recommend 30GB minimum.
 
I went with 25 then rejigged it to 30. That now has, Office Ultimate, CS4 Suite, Iplayer, VMware and a few other common apps and I have 5GB free.
 
thanks for the quick responses

can you easily resize partitions on the fly in win7, or does changing the OS partition size mean a fresh install again?

I'm so used to the old days lol
 
yea you can mate if you go into disk managment right click on your partition you want to extend then click extend, i personally used 60gb for my OS partition to allow some breathing space with certain apps that install there
 
I think something like GParted or Partition Magic is what you want. Not sure about doing it within Windows. In any case backup everything first! :p

I find 50GB is a nice size for an OS partition. Loads of breathing room and lets you install plenty of updates and software [because let's face it, most of the time if you nuke your OS you reinstall half the crap you use anyway!]
 
I used 40 GB and it was full.

I think it was MS Flight simulator which didn't give any choice as to where it isntalled itself. I also bought some landpacks which also didn't ask where to be installed. Some games don't let you choose either you click install on the exe and they install whereever they want.

I've just for sake of ease kept it on the one 640GB partition. What I like about win 7 is that it hibernates all non used HDs until you ask for a file from them so having separate page file on another HD is just burning electricity for a few milliseconds of time saved. ;)
 
regarding having a page file partition on a separate drive, would that still be better even if my older drives are very old

compared to a newer drive with 32mb cache etc?
 
to be honest I don't know, I've put the page file on a separate drive for so long know it's just become automatic for me to do. Back when RAM was more expensive the page file was probably used considerably more than what my current 6GB RAM system does, so my guess is that if you have enough RAM then moving the page file to a different HDD will probably make little difference. The main reasons I move it are to minimize the use of my system drive for longevity, to keep my system drive tidy as I believe the page file can change in size possibly causing fragmentation on the system drive, and because i've just got in the habit of doing it. There is no harm in trying it though, it's easy to manage where virtual memory is on your system.
 
thanks for that

did some searching around and some reading and it looks like having it on a separate drive is for the best, as you said having enough ram will probably make it redundant a lot of the time

cheers for all the help fellas
 
50Gb is what you want

Windows folder expands with updates

20gb is way too small for Vista/7, it'll expand to that in no time

10gb is fine for XP, 50 gb is fine for Vista/7
 
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