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PC To Mac Pro Users... How Much Space You Giving to Windows?

W

Whitelightning

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 21, 2007
219
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For those of you going from PC to Mac Pro... how much space are you allocating for windows vs mac with bootcamp? 50/50?

Personally I will be using photoshop cs5/after effects the windows side and a few games like SC2, Crysis, here and there. I know not all of you would use the same programs that I use, but just wanted to get an idea of what you guys did based on your needs.
 
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I give Windows 7 80GB to munch on. A clean, fully updated install is around 30GB, so there's plenty of space for me to install a few games on. It's worth noting that I only use Windows 7 to game on, in addition to a very few utilities that I find useful.
 
PC is short for Personal Computer and a Mac is a PC and PCs can run other OSs than Windows too.

Depending on your Windows needs, one can survive with 10% of the HDD's capacity used for the Windows partition.

Therefore I conclude: What do you want to use Windows for? If all you need is to install some small applications like MS Office or similar, you might be okay with 10 to 20GB, if you want to game, have 30 to 50GB ready, if you want to game a lot of games or run a lot of other big software, use 50 to ... GB. It really depends on what you want to use Windows for, or would you create a 500GB Windows partition on a 1TB HDD for Windows when all you do is use some Windows only software which takes around 1GB of HDD space and the resulting files accumulate to nothing more than 512MB, leaving you with at least 465GB unused storage capacity?
 
simsaladimbamba said:
PC is short for Personal Computer and a Mac is a PC and PCs can run other OSs than Windows too.

Depending on your Windows needs, one can survive with 10% of the HDD's capacity used for the Windows partition.

Therefore I conclude: What do you want to use Windows for? If all you need is to install some small applications like MS Office or similar, you might be okay with 10 to 20GB, if you want to game, have 30 to 50GB ready, if you want to game a lot of games or run a lot of other big software, use 50 to ... GB. It really depends on what you want to use Windows for, or would you create a 500GB Windows partition on a 1TB HDD for Windows when all you do is use some Windows only software which takes around 1GB of HDD space and the resulting files accumulate to nothing more than 512MB, leaving you with at least 465GB unused storage capacity?
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Over the years i learned that its much easier to let people believe what they want to instead of convincing them. Saves a lot of time.
 
i gave it half, but i'm in windows 7 a lot

i have the 2010 macbook pro 15" version and it runs pretty well. The drivers are kinda weird (like when I tried to install the free hp printer I got with it, it wouldnt install b\c it thought the computer had no USB ports). Battery life is about 3 hrs instead of 6 or so in osx. But other than that, it works just fine.
 
AdamRock said:
Over the years i learned that its much easier to let people believe what they want to instead of convincing them. Saves a lot of time.
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Yeah, and one comes off as quite smug I suppose, when one tries to "educate" that way.
It can also be some kind of relief though.

On another matter, when I wrote (wrote almost "wroted") that sentence of mine you so kindly bolded and didn't use pink Courier Sans on, I was reminded of the PC and Mac commercials from Apple, which surely propagated the notion of PC being short for a Windows computer, even if only for a tiny bit. I felt quite angry and smashed my neighbours' cars due to it. Gladly I had a tennis ball to use as leverage.
 
Whitelightning said:
For those of you going from PC to Mac Pro... how much space are you allocating for windows vs mac with bootcamp? 50/50?

Personally I will be using photoshop cs5/after effects the windows side and a few games like SC2, Crysis, here and there. I know not all of you would use the same programs that I use, but just wanted to get an idea of what you guys did based on your needs.
Click to expand...

50 GB would be enough, for everybody ;)
Windows for gaming - OK, but leave all the other tasks for MacOS
 
75gb, enough for gaming and that's it. I really don't find a need for W7, ever, unless I'm gaming.

With my 175gb left for OSX, 140gb is filled, about 100gb of which is media.

To put it into perspective, most of my computing is either web browsing, typing, viewing/listening to media, or gaming, so I'm not a power user by any means.
 
Originally, I had it at a 50/50 split. I had all my Windows applications installed, so I needed the space. Slowly, I got more used to using Parallels and migrated a lot of my applications over to my VM. At this point, I have 75gb dedicated to Windows 7, with about 50gb free (only the essentials installed now). I basically only use bootcamp for gaming and programming now. All my productivity work is done using Parallels. It makes for a nicer work environment, since I can have Windows and OSX running at the same time.
 
I did about 80GB on my MBP. I use the Windows side only to play a few games, such as Borderlands and NBA 2K11. It is more than enough for me,but I may perhaps buy Black-Ops as well, since I sold my XBOX.

Just depends on how much you will be using the Windows side and what for. I am actually using the windows side right now, as Steam is installing Borderlands.. wierd not using Safari.
 
I use Dreamweaver, and PS, but no games. I have allocated 100GB to Windows 7, which I think is more than enough. I like to have a bit of wiggle room, though.
 
I gave it 200GB on my 2011 MBP (750GB HDD). Reason being I use Windows for AutoCAD and ArcGIS, which can require large data files (surface models, etc).

Leaves over 500GB for Mac...plenty ;)
 
I have the 128GB ssd. Will this be enough room to install windows for the sole purpose of playing a few games (crysis, Total War games)? How much room would I need to dedicate to Windows for this use only? If not, it's not a big deal, I don't game much on my computer.

If I booted from an external 7200RPM drive for Windows, would the performance loss be so significant it would be pointless? I don't mind losing fps on Total War games, but on games like Crysis, bad fps make it unbearable to play.
 
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75GB on a 500GB hard drive, 100GB on a 750GB hard drive, and 125GB on a 1TB hard drive. Not a massive Windows user but always feel I'd rather give plenty of space while allowing me to keep my Mac partition at a good size
 
evaporateddwarf said:
I have the 128GB ssd. Will this be enough room to install windows for the sole purpose of playing a few games (crysis, Total War games)? How much room would I need to dedicate to Windows for this use only? If not, it's not a big deal, I don't game much on my computer.
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~10-15gb for the Windows files, depending on how much you strip it down. Another ~5gb for swap file, so 20gb for your system to be safe. Then you will need whatever space the games would take up. I wouldn't go under 50gb, which doesn't leave you a lot for OSX.

If I booted from an external 7200RPM drive for Windows, would the performance loss be so significant it would be pointless? I don't mind losing fps on Total War games, but on games like Crysis, bad fps make it unbearable to play.
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It would be pointless. It would be unbearable whenever the game has to load something from the hard drive. It wouldn't affect framerate so much, it would more than likely cause large pauses every few seconds of gameplay.
 
0 space as there is no software I need to run on my new MacBook that isn't already available for the Mac. If I want to play games I goto my gaming pc lol.
 
mikeo007 said:
~10-15gb for the Windows files, depending on how much you strip it down. Another ~5gb for swap file, so 20gb for your system to be safe. Then you will need whatever space the games would take up. I wouldn't go under 50gb, which doesn't leave you a lot for OSX.



It would be pointless. It would be unbearable whenever the game has to load something from the hard drive. It wouldn't affect framerate so much, it would more than likely cause large pauses every few seconds of gameplay.
Click to expand...

Guess I won't game for a while then...
 
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