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What is the minimum recommended hard drive space needed for a Win7 (x64) install?

pgharavi

pgharavi

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 25, 2004
308
229
Hello,

This may be a common question, and I did some searching, but couldn't find an answer. I also have a few caveats for my situation, so I'd appreciate some advice.

I have a MBP 13.3" w/ 4GB of RAM and an Intel G2 160GB SSD. I will need to install Windows 7 and one third-party application (not very large).

So I'm wondering, assuming I only need the OS install and the third-party application takes up minimal space, and I will not be installing anything other than whatever comes with the truckload of windows updates, what is the suggested partition size for Win7 (x64)?

Also, is there anything special I need to do (TRIM?) regarding my SSD?

Thanks!
 
V

vistadude

macrumors 65816
Jan 3, 2010
1,423
1
If it's just one application, could you use windows xp instead? It requires only 20 GB of hard disk space to run well. Windows 7 64 bit likely won't run well unless you leave 40 GB space on the windows partition, which would kill much of your solid drive space.
 
velocityg4

velocityg4

macrumors 604
Dec 19, 2004
7,329
4,717
Georgia
Mine uses 17.86 GB and is fairly minimal. Just Win 7 and a few programs. I suppose I could cut a few GB by removing updater files and the installers for unused features (when you turn them off they remain). Plus drop the pagefile size and disable system restore.

Actually you can go much smaller. One of my customers has Win 7 on an 8GB SSD on a Asus eee 1000 netbook with a couple of programs. With a 512mb page file and no system restore.
 
rhkamra

rhkamra

macrumors member
Nov 29, 2007
31
0
California
I'd go with around 30GB as a minimum. That will give you the 17-18GB for the install + win updates, room for some applications, data, the system paging file (which is usually around 2.5gb). and system restore turned on.
 
pgharavi

pgharavi

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 25, 2004
308
229
Well one thing I noticed is that the x86 takes much less space than the x64 install.

Nevertheless, I had one of those issues where Bootcamp wanted me to reformat my ENTIRE drive, then re-install OSX and try windows again. Screw that. After some googling, it may have had to do with having files larger than a certain size. After not being able to install a partition as small as 9GB, I did some stuff and managed to get it up to 20GB. After all the updates, I have 4GB left. Plenty of space for a small app.
 
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