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How much space should I give to the windows partition?

bluedoggiant

bluedoggiant

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jul 13, 2007
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MD & ATL,GA
So I'm getting Windows XP tomorrow, its either home or professional edition, i will be getting windows XP on the 24" imac, not the 20", and will be installing it via bootcamp. i have a 500GB drive in my imac (498GB free), and will be getting windows to run Flight Simulator X Deluxe. How much space should I give to the windows partition in bootcamp assistant while having 3-4GB free space? and if it gets too tight, can i make the windows partition bigger through disk utility without any hassles?
 
I don't know what FSX requires for diskspace, but with as cheap as diskspace is these days, why not just give Winbloze 50 or 75GB and not mess with it for a while? There's bound to be problems with cutting it too close (running with the disk too close to full) and you'll likely find airplane model and scenery packs and whatnot you'll want to install as well. Thus, I'd wholly recommend NOT going with a "total minimum" type install.

WorstBuy has a 1TB drive for $190 (and I just bought a couple 750GB/32MB cache drives for $130 each from Newegg) -- with storage that cheap, there's no reason to skip now and spend hours of time and frustration increasing partitions/etc. in the near future IMO.

Mike
 
I agree with micsaund. Rearranging partition sizes is still not very easy so you may as well start off with quite a bit for Windows. I gave Vista 20GB just to run the system and it's only just enough. It doesn't leave enough space for gaming.
 
mad jew said:
I agree with micsaund. Rearranging partition sizes is still not very easy so you may as well start off with quite a bit for Windows. I gave Vista 20GB just to run the system and it's only just enough. It doesn't leave enough space for gaming.
Click to expand...

how about 32gb? fsx requires 15gb, and i think windoze is 1.5gb, making the total ~16.5GB of used space (15.5gb free), is that enough free space for it to run well?
 
I would be tempted to go for the upper limit suggested - 75GB maybe even 100 as you have 500 to play with, then you will be fine for quite a while before messing with changing sizes.

Make sure you are maxed out on RAM as well if you are using heavy graphics.
 
riscy said:
I would be tempted to go for the upper limit suggested - 75GB maybe even 100 as you have 500 to play with, then you will be fine for quite a while before messing with changing sizes.

Make sure you are maxed out on RAM as well if you are using heavy graphics.
Click to expand...

but isnt 32GB enough, im only gonna play flight MS on it.
 
I was just thinking to the future, for storage and also I do not know how much space that app takes, or what you intend to do with the PC side eg video ripping?

Also, you have loads of space on the HD and 400GB will be plenty for the Mac.
 
riscy said:
I was just thinking to the future, for storage and also I do not know how much space that app takes, or what you intend to do with the PC side eg video ripping?

Also, you have loads of space on the HD and 400GB will be plenty for the Mac.
Click to expand...

i have 398GB free on the imac, its 460GB all together, FSX takes up 15gb, making 15.5GB of free space for virtual memory and other space just in case. the reason i want 32GB is for MS-DOS, id like to move things from the windows side to the mac side easily, but i guess i can let that go.

any more ideas?
 
bigger, better

definitely give it room, more than you would think...

games, newer drivers, win updates, pagefile.. all these add up quickly... partitioning later is a pain, esp with hd space cheap

i'd say 100gb is safe... and use ntfs, since u can read it in mac side (tho not write to it).. but for win side it will be much more efficient
 
If you plan to never install any addon scenery, aircraft etc. then 32Gb will do the trick.

However, if your planning on installing some fancy airports, planes or maybe the tile proxy project your going to want some more space, 50Gb minimum, 75Gb should enable you fit some funky extras :)


Just to put things into perspective, my old FSX install on my PC was over 60Gb with some photo scenery, loads of detailed airports and a few dozen addon planes. All were freeware addons btw
 
peterlobl said:
definitely give it room, more than you would think...

games, newer drivers, win updates, pagefile.. all these add up quickly... partitioning later is a pain, esp with hd space cheap

i'd say 100gb is safe... and use ntfs, since u can read it in mac side (tho not write to it).. but for win side it will be much more efficient
Click to expand...

wait, mac can read ntfs??? i thought it can read and write MS-DOS, and can do anything about ntfs. Can I drag files out of the windows partition and into the mac partition on the mac side? and how about 45GB, i really am not going to use windows often AT ALL.
 
Ok, I checked addons, they are all like 4MB each, thats not much at all, and I don't see myself downloading tons AT ALL.

i really want as much space on my mac side as possible.

is there even such thing as virtual ram on the windows side? and how much on average would it eat up?
 
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