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OSX Lion and Windows 7(w/ bootcamp) on a 128GB SSD, did you do it ?

G

gihad

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 13, 2011
22
0
Did anyone do that ? It seems that 128GB(which is actually 120) is not enough to have Win7 installed.

What are the ideal partition sizes to do this when you only have 128GB ? Anyone did this already ? I don't want to have very little space in my partitions.

The only reason I didn't return my 128GB for a 256GB yet is that I got both Samsung SSD and Screen, and I got this MBA laptop mainly because my Acer i5 had a cheap LCD.

Thanks!
 
I didn't do it on my Air because it's my second laptop, and there wasn't enough room to comfortably do it on 128GBs... I have it installed on my MBP though, which happens to only have 256GBs...
 
I did do this initially just because I was bored and wanted to try it out :p I allocated 35GB to Windows, installed Home Premium 64bit, Office 2007, Firefox, iTunes and some printer software, and still had 19GB free. There are a few tweaks to minimise the space requirements, like reducing/disabling page file (I set mine to 512MB), disabling hibernation (4GB back right there) and stuff. My music was still on mac partition (which is natively readable in windows which was weird..?) so just directed iTunes to it (but had to authorise my windows account, so used 2 authorisations on 1 machine which sucked). I only have about 20GB of music/podcasts etc tho... There's a good free app called iTunes Library Updater which keeps the Windows iTunes library up to date with newly purchased stuff from OSX. Overall I had about 19GB free on my 35GB (32.55 formatted) Windows partition and 30GB free on OSX. I got rid of it though cos I never really needed to use Windows...

My one concern when trying to decide partition size was the notorious winsxs folder which stores previous versions of any .dll's you have had. I don't know if they've fixed this in Windows 7, but on an old Vista machine my winsxs folder grew from ~4GB to over 15GB, so I factored in a bit of extra space for Windows to 'grow.'

Hope this helps.

IC
 
I've been using a Windows 7 partition on my 2010 11" (128GB) since I got it last December without incident. I primarily did this to install a few games that I wanted to play on the road. My Windows partition is at 44GB and my OS X is at 76GB. I also have Tuxera NTFS so I can easily read/write to my Windows partition from within OS X, which helps minimize the loss of space. I only have a few games installed on Windows and delete them once I finish, so it's worked out really well for me. As long as you don't want to run too many large Windows programs, in my experience 128GB is more than enough for a dual boot.
 
I have an MBA11 with a 128 gig SSD with Win7 installed via Parallels. I have 55 gigs free on my SSD.
 
gihad said:
Did anyone do that ? It seems that 128GB(which is actually 120) is not enough to have Win7 installed.

What are the ideal partition sizes to do this when you only have 128GB ? Anyone did this already ? I don't want to have very little space in my partitions.

The only reason I didn't return my 128GB for a 256GB yet is that I got both Samsung SSD and Screen, and I got this MBA laptop mainly because my Acer i5 had a cheap LCD.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

On my Rev D, I had Snow Leopard and Windows 7 64-bit on a 120GB SSD. Try using XSlimmer to remove any latent PowerPC code from your applications, and also consider running Windows 7 32-bit to save a little bit of space if that's an issue. Consider sharing folders between your Boot Camp and OS X partitions if you want to maximize available data space for each OS. If you have FileVault 2 activated, you'd need to create a separate unencrypted partition to do this, though, since the Boot Camp drivers don't enable Windows to read FileVault partitions.
 
I was going to but instead bought the $220 Acer notebook from Target. It's also 11" screen, 3lb and 320GB HDD. So on the rare occasions I need windows I can whip that out"
 
80gb for Lion, 40gb for Win7 Home Premium 64-bit, just using bootcamp. Works fine so far as I use the Win7 for non-mac applications and I don't plan on saving too much data in the 40gb partition.
 
I did it & play Battlefield Bad Company 2.. It's awesome!
33gig dedicated to Win7.. I have the entire office suite installed & a couple of games. Best of both! :apple:
 
FAsnakes said:
I did it & play Battlefield Bad Company 2.. It's awesome!
33gig dedicated to Win7.. I have the entire office suite installed & a couple of games. Best of both! :apple:
Click to expand...

This. I did Win7 Pro 32 bit with all the updates, Office 2010. Project, Visio, Quicken, and a couple other apps, and am using only 20GB. My partition is 50GB so I have plenty of space left. It can work on a 128GB drive.

Of course, a 256GB drive is a lot more comfortable... :cool:
 
I did it. I have very little data on my MBA so 128GB was plenty for both OS'
 
might also try this to keep windows size down....

-use free program cc cleaner
-after updating windows security...you can delete all items in C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download


i did same as urkel and just bought a cheapo acer ao522 netbook for $229 (on sale) it has a amd c-50 and ati 6250...eats atom netbooks for lunch...
 
I initially split mine 50\50 but soon decided if I was going to learn to use and troubleshoot OSX I should give it more space and really "use" it, so I repartitioned with 35Gb for Seven and the rest for Lion. I also bought a tiny usb key that stays plugged in 24/7 to keep my data on, it's formatted exfat so both os's can read and write as needed.
All my "media" files are on a nas so bulk storage is no problem and the Air is for when I am out working so the lack of space is no biggy. ;)
 
I decided it wasn't fair to ask this question in someone else's thread, so I put it HERE instead.

Any help over there would be appreciated.

Thanks!
 
Sounds Good said:
I decided it wasn't fair to ask this question in someone else's thread, so I put it HERE instead.

Any help over there would be appreciated.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Bootcamp is actually using your Mac as a windows machine. The drive is partitioned (split) into different formats. One for Windows to use the other for OSX. You can natively boot into either one.

Parallels is a vitalization software used so you can run Windows in a virtual environment right from OSX. No rebooting required. The downside is that it uses up a lot more memory since both OSX and Windows need to be loaded for this to work. Since Windows is running vitalized, it's also a bit slower than a bootcamp setup. The advantages is that you can boot windows on the fly while remaining in OSX without having to reboot. I typically have a desktop space specifically for my Windows/Parallels installation. The other advantage is that no partitioning is required. If all you're going to do is run office apps, parallels is fine. If you're going to play games, you will want to go the bootcamp method.

I personally went the rout of best of both worlds. I did Bootcamp setup for the times that I need it and I also installed Parallels which I use to boot that bootcamp partition while in OSX. 80% of the time that's sufficient for me. The other 20% I'll actually reboot into Windows.
 
tom vilsack said:
i did same as urkel and just bought a cheapo acer ao522 netbook for $229 (on sale) it has a amd c-50 and ati 6250...eats atom netbooks for lunch...
Click to expand...
Mine had the AMD C60. I would prefer to use bootcamp but considering it would cost $300 to upgrade to the 256GB SSD then I figure a separate "disposable" notebook is more practical nowadays since there aren't many things I can't do on Windows that can't be done on OSX. Plus it has the Mic jack, security port, SD reader, 250GB HDD and 7hr battery that was all compromised out of the Air, yet since it shares the same footprint it feels the same in a bag. Not bad for $200.
 
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I'm planning on doing it, but I'm currently only using about 20GB of space on OSX thus far - I have all my iTunes media and large files on a networked external hard drive, so I have plently of space.
 
I am expecting my first mac, a 13/256 air in the next few days and would like to run some windows programs that are not available on the mac. I am considering bootcamp, parallels or both. Can I install windows 7 with parallels and later create a partition with bootcamp or would I need another copy of windows 7. Also can I change the partition at any time without losing my data?
 
dread said:
I am expecting my first mac, a 13/256 air in the next few days and would like to run some windows programs that are not available on the mac. I am considering bootcamp, parallels or both. Can I install windows 7 with parallels and later create a partition with bootcamp or would I need another copy of windows 7. Also can I change the partition at any time without losing my data?
Click to expand...

If you just install Windows 7 in Parallels, you can't later convert it to a partition. If you aren't sure which approach to use, the best solution is to install Windows in a Boot Camp partition, since you can use a Boot Camp installation within Parallels. Note that it is difficult to change the size of a partition. The best way would be to back it up with a Windows program, delete the partition, re-create it, and restore it.

Note that if you install Windows in Boot Camp and later run it in Parallels, you'll need to activate it a second time. Parallels installs something called Parallels Tools that prevents you from having to keep re-activating your copy of Windows every time you switch back and forth between Boot Camp and Parallels after that, however.
 
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