Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Blackberryroid

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 8, 2012
588
0
/private/var/vm/
I installed bootcamp, hoping that I'd be able to install my Windows stuff. I have a 128 GB SSD. I installed Windows and it's 25 GB. This leaves me 5 GB of storage since the partition is just 30 GB. What a space eating OS. If only developers would pick the Mac to develop on instead of Windows, I wouldn't be dealing with this crapware.

What are your thoughts on Bootcamp?
 

vistadude

macrumors 65816
Jan 3, 2010
1,423
1
Windows 7 takes up less than 10 GB on my install. And why did you get such a minuscule disk for a dual OS computer?
 

thejadedmonkey

macrumors G3
May 28, 2005
9,155
3,265
Pennsylvania
Well, I for one hate bootcamp. Leave it to Apple to crap up Windows with ****** drivers and make it more unusable than my Dell.

Otherwise I think I'd prefer running Windows as my main OS on my MBA.
 

blackhand1001

macrumors 68030
Jan 6, 2009
2,599
33
I installed bootcamp, hoping that I'd be able to install my Windows stuff. I have a 128 GB SSD. I installed Windows and it's 25 GB. This leaves me 5 GB of storage since the partition is just 30 GB. What a space eating OS. If only developers would pick the Mac to develop on instead of Windows, I wouldn't be dealing with this crapware.

What are your thoughts on Bootcamp?

How much ram do you have. The hibernate file will be the same size as that and the page file is also the same size by default. You can reduce the default pagefile size.
 

Wardenski

macrumors 6502
Jan 22, 2012
464
5
I installed bootcamp, hoping that I'd be able to install my Windows stuff. I have a 128 GB SSD. I installed Windows and it's 25 GB. This leaves me 5 GB of storage since the partition is just 30 GB. What a space eating OS. If only developers would pick the Mac to develop on instead of Windows, I wouldn't be dealing with this crapware.

What are your thoughts on Bootcamp?

Bootcamp is awesome and generally so is Windows 7.

Your partition is woeful. Crysis (which is 5 year old) takes up 12 GB!
 

chrono1081

macrumors G3
Jan 26, 2008
8,446
4,146
Isla Nublar
Windows is pretty bloated OP, not sure why others here are trying to tell you otherwise.

There is a tool called nLite that works excellently. You'll be able to trim it down pretty good. I used to use it when I had to cram XP installs on eeEPC's when they came out and all the higher ups at my job wanted them.

I never tried it on 7 but I assume its been updated for that.
 

fluxburn

macrumors newbie
Sep 8, 2012
2
0
Well Windows has a lot of drivers, but lol Linux does too. You're lucky, my macbook pro even after partitioning with bootcamp wouldn't install Windows7 because, as far as I figured, I had a Windows 7 OEM disc and the Apple software wasn't written for that.

So I've used VMware Fusion for quite some time, for the absolute need of using Windows.
 

ixodes

macrumors 601
Jan 11, 2012
4,429
3
Pacific Coast, USA
I installed bootcamp, hoping that I'd be able to install my Windows stuff. I have a 128 GB SSD. I installed Windows and it's 25 GB. This leaves me 5 GB of storage since the partition is just 30 GB. What a space eating OS. If only developers would pick the Mac to develop on instead of Windows, I wouldn't be dealing with this crapware.

What are your thoughts on Bootcamp?

It's your fault for not choosing the larger SSD.
 

jason221

macrumors 6502
Jun 26, 2009
400
0
Google "disable windows 7 hibernation" and "reduce windows 7 page file size." It should free up a few GBs for you.

It's your fault for not choosing the larger SSD.

Apple's 256 GB SSD is massively overpriced. Get a 256 GB Crucial M4 SSD for $200 now, or wait for Black Friday and possibly get a much better deal on the 256 or even the 512 (which is $400).
 

Quad5Ny

macrumors 6502a
Sep 13, 2009
984
22
New York, USA
Here is some steps you can do to Gain/Reclaim some free space.

But first note that OS X and Windows report space differently. (In OS X 1GB is 953.67432MB | In Windows 1GB is 1,024MB)

______________________________________________________________________________________________

How to Shrink your Pagefile (To a Minimum of 16MB and a Maximum of 4GB):
  1. Open up a Administrator Command Prompt
  2. TYPE - wmic computersystem where name="%computername%" set AutomaticManagedPagefile=False
  3. Press Enter
  4. TYPE - wmic pagefileset where name="C:\\pagefile.sys" set InitialSize=16,MaximumSize=4096
  5. Press Enter
  6. Restart your Computer
Note that You can also do this through the GUI, but its easier for me to just tell you 2 commands.
Video of How to COMPLETLY disable the Pagefile using the GUI -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM1UZc9AkE4
If you have 12GB of RAM I don't see any reason you couldn't completely disable it.



To Set the Pagefile back to default:
  1. Open up a Administrator Command Prompt
  2. TYPE - wmic computersystem where name="%computername%" set AutomaticManagedPagefile=True
  3. Press Enter
  4. Restart your Computer


Also please note if your Windows partition ever goes under 4GB of free space and then try's to allocate the full 4GB for the Pagefile, you'll probably get a BugCheck Bluescreen.
You can avoid this by setting InitialSize to 4096. This way you always have 4GB allocated.
How to disable Hibernation (Sleep will Still work):
  1. Open up a Administrator Command Prompt
  2. TYPE - powercfg hibernate off
  3. Press Enter
  4. TYPE - del /A "C:\hiberfil.sys"
  5. Press Enter

To Re-Enable Hibernation:
  1. Open up a Administrator Command Prompt
  2. TYPE - powercfg hibernate on
  3. Press Enter

Disabling Hibernation will give you back %Space% in HD storage space.
Where %Space% is == 75% of your Physical RAM
Example: If you had 4GB of RAM, you would re-gain 3GB of storage space on your Windows Partition.
How to disable System Restore in Windows 7 <-- This is a Youtube link, Click it.

It will probably do it automatically, but you might also want to click the "Delete" button to remove any old restore points.


To Re-enable System Restore: Follow the steps in the video but instead of clicking 'Turn off system protection' click "Restore system settings and previous versions of files'.


By default I think its 8ish GB or so on a 50GB Partition. If your careful you should never need it.

How to reset the Transactional Resource Manager Metadata & USN Journal for C:\
  1. Open up a Administrator Command Prompt
  2. TYPE - fsutil usn deletejournal /n C:
  3. TYPE - fsutil resource info C:\
  4. Verify that 'Running Transactions' says 0 (if not wait a bit, Restart and re-check)
  5. TYPE - fsutil resource setautoreset true C:\ (Do not do this if Running Transactions is > 0)
  6. Restart

(How) To clean up all files on the computer:
  1. Open Disk Cleanup by clicking the Start button
    4f6cbd09148c4dd8b1f248f.jpg
    . In the search box, type Disk Cleanup, and then, in the list of results, click Disk Cleanup.
    .
  2. In the Drives list, click the hard disk drive that you want to clean up, and then click OK.
    .
  3. In the Disk Cleanup dialog box, click Clean up system files.
    18abb370ac1e4b6bb663e02.jpg
    If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
    .
  4. In the Disk Cleanup: Drive Selection dialog box, select the hard disk drive that you want to clean up, and then click OK.
    .
  5. In the Disk Cleanup dialog box, on the Disk Cleanup tab, select the check boxes for the file types that you want to delete, and then click OK.
    .
  6. In the message that appears, click Delete files.
    .
    The More Options tab is available when you choose to clean files from all users on the computer. This tab includes two additional ways to free even more disk space:
    .
    • Programs and Features. This option opens Programs and Features in Control Panel, where you can uninstall programs that you no longer use. The Size column in Programs and Features shows how much disk space each program uses.
      .
    • System Restore and Shadow Copies. With this option, you can delete all but the most recent restore point on the disk.
      .
      System Restore uses restore points to return your system files to an earlier point in time. If your computer is running normally, you can save disk space by deleting the earlier restore points.
      .
      In some editions of Windows 7, restore points can include previous versions of files, known as shadow copies, and backup images created with Windows Complete PC Backup. These files and images will also be deleted. For more information about System Restore, see What is System Restore?


Source © 2011 Microsoft Corporation

Download CCleaner and clean up some more crap


______________________________________________________________________________________________

quadwindows.png


This is my Windows 7 x64 SP1 install after doing all those steps.
(I have 8GB of RAM and keep Programs/Games on a separate partition).
.
 
Last edited:

MJL

macrumors 6502a
Jun 25, 2011
845
1
My fault? SSDs are dead expensive and Microsoft is just sitting there on it's ass, making bloated software while Apple is working hard on making their OS take 8 GB of HDD only.


Windows 7 is larger because it has to incorporate all the drivers for all the different hardware out there as well as catering for legacy hardware. Apple's brown stuff is only supported for a few years whereas for instance XP was supported for what, 10 years?

If you have 25 Gb then it is my guess that you have a large pagefile and a large hibernation file. With a SSD you do not want to hibernate so you can switch it off and delete that file. There goes a file the size eqaul to your memory. Also you could check how much of your pagefile is being used, there are some utilities for that. But normally with 4 Gb you seldom (if ever) need 128 Mb so if you set it to 256M you should be fine. There goes another file which by default is equal to the amount of memory +16Mb.

My whole installation was not more than about 11 Gb before installing Office and other software. Windows 7 is the best version yet and on my laptop I am running it with a 40 Gb SSD and it takes on that only 9 Gb inclusive office software.
 

ixodes

macrumors 601
Jan 11, 2012
4,429
3
Pacific Coast, USA
My fault? SSDs are dead expensive and Microsoft is just sitting there on it's ass, making bloated software while Apple is working hard on making their OS take 8 GB of HDD only.
My you're emotionally attached to hating Microsoft. Perhaps they've done something personal to make you feel violated. One can only guess.
 

Quad5Ny

macrumors 6502a
Sep 13, 2009
984
22
New York, USA
I'd like to point out that a new install of Windows 7 is always under 10GB and that's why I posted those different Tweaking/Cleaning steps.

If you follow them correctly, you will regain your missing space. The only thing you'll loose is hibernation (which can be re-enabled if you feel you need it).
 

terraphantm

macrumors 68040
Jun 27, 2009
3,814
663
Pennsylvania
My fault? SSDs are dead expensive and Microsoft is just sitting there on it's ass, making bloated software while Apple is working hard on making their OS take 8 GB of HDD only.

A) When Windows 7 was released, SSDs were still basically vaporware, and large HDDs were plentiful

B) A typical Windows 7 install should take 10-15GB. Hibernation + Virtual memory will consume quite a bit of HDD space with 8GB or more RAM though.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.