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

Partition size for windows 7, USB 3 gaming

S

SirBuckinghamVI

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 1, 2012
1
0
I was intending on installing Windows 7 on my baseline macbook pro with retina display (256gb SSD). What would be a good drive partition size for windows? I'm mostly concerned with speed, I want enough space on the windows partition to run games off a USB 3 hard drive smoothly, but not so much that it will affect the performance of the OSX partition.

In addition, will gaming from a USB 3 hard drive be practical? I did some research and it seems to be, but I wanted to be sure.
 
SirBuckinghamVI said:
I was intending on installing Windows 7 on my baseline macbook pro with retina display (256gb SSD). What would be a good drive partition size for windows? I'm mostly concerned with speed, I want enough space on the windows partition to run games off a USB 3 hard drive smoothly, but not so much that it will affect the performance of the OSX partition.

In addition, will gaming from a USB 3 hard drive be practical? I did some research and it seems to be, but I wanted to be sure.
Click to expand...

Depends how much free space is on the drive(mac) and is your external a desktop or portable? If it's a desktop it should be fine, but a portable I'm not sure.

Another point to mention is that USB 3 speed will have no effect on a mac, as no macs have USB 3 only USB 2 so you will be stuck with USB 2 speeds unfortuantly:(

I would give 90GB to windows if it was up to me, as games generally take up 5-8GB per game.
 
Another point to mention is that USB 3 speed will have no effect on a mac, as no macs have USB 3 only USB 2 so you will be stuck with USB 2 speeds unfortuantly
Click to expand...
This is wrong. All the new generations (at least, the Retina) have USB 3.0.
 
USB might be an issue with load times, but gameplay itself should be okay as long as it isn't something that constantly reads data from the drive.

I think a typical Windows 7 install is 16-20 GB (32bit/64bit) so keep that in mind when deciding on your Windows partition size.

Also, if you play a lot of Steam games, maybe use something like Steam Mover. Basically, it just uses a script to copy the game directories to and from your external drive for you to save you from having to redownload if you switch games a lot.
 
SirBuckinghamVI said:
I was intending on installing Windows 7 on my baseline macbook pro with retina display (256gb SSD). What would be a good drive partition size for windows?
Click to expand...

What size partition did you end up going with? Would you recommend ~40gb if I only plan on having 1-2 games installed at any given time. Also how much usable space did you have on the 256gb SSD out of the box?
 
While you can run games off an external hard drive, I wouldn't recommend USB 3.0 to do it. That interface eats up CPU cycles and is subject to performance fluctuations or even random disconnects if you're unlucky. Pony up the extra money and invest in an external Thunderbolt drive. It's less resource intensive and will give a more consistent experience.

For a Windows installation, I wouldn't recommend anything less than 60 GB. That leaves enough overhead for updates and other non-game software you wish to have installed.
 
I also have a 256 GB rMBP. I have a 45GB Windows 8 partition, which is barely big enough to run Windows plus one game. I have a USB 3 drive where I install my other games. It works well enough, I suppose, though the games do hang for a few seconds every once in a while.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back