MBA bootcampin' windows

[iphoneuser2040]

Hi all,

I own a 2011 MBA 11" 128gb i5 4gb

Looking to bootcamp Windows 8 when it comes out, however want to test out Windows 7 until then. I have a copy of Windows 7 Enterprise.

My question is how large is the operating system upon a fresh install via bootcamp? Space on MBAs is precious and I want to allocate as little space as possible to the operating system so i can install a game or two on that partition. Realistically I can't afford to make the partition any more than 20 - 25gb.

Do you think I can get Win 7 Enterprise (and what about Win 8?) down to under 10gb? So far methods I know of are:-
getting rid of Hibernate/standby file
reducing paging size to 4gb (that of the RAM)
uninstall windows stuff which I won't use such as Outlook (can this be done!?)

Any other suggestions? I know my way around computers but not looking to do anything to crazy like starting to search through unwanted registry files etc (don't want to muck anything up).

Cheers

 

[KPOM]

For starters, I'd suggest using the 32-bit version, as it takes up less space. Enterprise takes up a lot of space (it is essentially the Ultimate version). Maybe consider if Home Premium would be enough.

 

[goinskiing]

32-bit for sure, I think it was in the 12GB range when all was said and done. Be sure to shrink your page swap file (equal to amount of RAM, shrink by 75% will save about 3 GB), but you can't do this until after the install. I recently made a Windows 8 consumer preview bootcamp partition on 64 bit and after page swap shrink it was somewhere around 20GB.

 

[KPOM]

Also, consider using Winclone 3.3 to back up your Windows partition. If necessary, you can also use it to resize your partition. It is now a $20 utility (previous versions were free), but it's well worth it.

I'd check out the Windows on Mac forum here for more tips.

 

[cvam1985]

I highly recommend using something like VMWare Fusion (it's what I use) over Bootcamp.

Running both OS'es together has major advantages for me on the Air - mainly storagewise.

As far as I know when using Bootcamp, you have to allocate a certain amount of your disk space to the Windows partition. When you run it as a VM, you only need the size of the machine and you can share disk space between the two OS'es.

In this manner, Windows only takes about 13-16 gigs of space on my Air.

 

[goinskiing]

I highly recommend using something like VMWare Fusion (it's what I use) over Bootcamp.

Running both OS'es together has major advantages for me on the Air - mainly storagewise.

As far as I know when using Bootcamp, you have to allocate a certain amount of your disk space to the Windows partition. When you run it as a VM, you only need the size of the machine and you can share disk space between the two OS'es.

In this manner, Windows only takes about 13-16 gigs of space on my Air.

Yup, the only real advantages to bootcamp are native power for gaming and other graphically intensive windows programs.