Win7 massively huge on boot camp drive... or?

[ptolemyi]

Hey, first post, not luck finding an answer with search function or google... just covering my bases here.

I'm running a Macbook Pro 13" with Windows 7 via Boot Camp.

I made my partition 30GB when installing Windows, thinking it would be more than enough for what I needed, especially after reading this...

I opted for 20GB, which left me with just a bit over 16GB to use after installing Windows 7.

from: http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/1...ndows-7-on-your-mac-the-complete-walkthrough/

So I figured 30GB would mean I would have up to 26 GB of free space to play with after install.

My problem is, I only have 12.5GB free space left over to play with... and seemingly my Windows 7 installation is what, 17GB?

I'm sort of thinking maybe for whatever reason there's a copy of my Windows 7 installation files somewhere on the partition that didn't get deleted, or all the expanded files used for installation are still sitting somewhere. Before I go ahead and delete the partition and reinstall Windows 7 again, I'd like to know if Windows7 is actually that bloody big and why on the guide I read it says it's only 4GB?

Any ideas greatly appreciated.

 

[vistadude]

Well you probably only got 28 GB to start out with, windows and mac calculated GB differently. And windows 7 takes a lot more than 4 GB, the 32 bit version probably takes at least 10 GB, and the 64 bit version even more. The apple drivers seems to take about 1.5 GB space. How much RAM do you have installed? That determines the size of the hibernation file, if that feature is activated. Reduced your system restore size to 2%, and turn off shadow copies (this is like time machine for windows). In 2 days, run disk cleanup - I think it won't delete files that are newer than 48 hours old.

What other software did you install?

Edit: Even windows XP takes 4-5 GB space without any drivers.

 

[lythium]

What other software did you install?

You mean "what else did windows randomly decide to install?".

 

[ptolemyi]

Well you probably only got 28 GB to start out with, windows and mac calculated GB differently. And windows 7 takes a lot more than 4 GB, the 32 bit version probably takes at least 10 GB, and the 64 bit version even more. The apple drivers seems to take about 1.5 GB space. How much RAM do you have installed? That determines the size of the hibernation file, if that feature is activated. Reduced your system restore size to 2%, and turn off shadow copies (this is like time machine for windows). In 2 days, run disk cleanup - I think it won't delete files that are newer than 48 hours old.

What other software did you install?

Edit: Even windows XP takes 4-5 GB space without any drivers.

Well, I've got 4GB RAM. I've already deleted the boot camp drive as it was pretty useless to me the way it was, seeing as I needed up to 25G free for a PC game I wanted to install/patch. Yeah... hadn't installed any software, it was that much space consuming after a clean install and after using the "shriker" tool.

Though, now when I try to redo the whole process, it won't even let me partition my drive now saying "it can't move the files" or something. Blah.

 

[LOLaMac]

You mean "what else did windows randomly decide to install?".

Ignorance, gotta love it.

To the original poster, I hate to burst your bubble, but 17 gigs is pretty normal for Windows 7.

Also, the "can't move files" problems may be because the drive is too fragmented to create enough contiguous space for the Bootcamp partition. You could try a defrag program like iDefrag.

 

[balamw]

By default Windows 7 will allocate two files the size of your RAM. The swap file and the hibernate file. On a machine with 4 GB of RAM this will contribute 8 GB to the install and is half of what you are seeing.

There were some links posted some time ago to reduce the size of these files.

B

 

[LOLaMac]

By default Windows 7 will allocate two files the size of your RAM. The swap file and the hibernate file. On a machine with 4 GB of RAM this will contribute 8 GB to the install and is half of what you are seeing.

There were some links posted some time ago to reduce the size of these files.

B

It really isn't recommended to disable the swapfile in Windows 7......and as for the hibernation file, it is, I think, 50% of your RAM size and can be be removed (along with disabling hibernate) by entering the following at a command prompt, as an administrator:

powercfg -h off

This will delete the hiberfil.sys file and turn off hibernation. Mess around with the swapfile at your own peril.

 

[balamw]

It really isn't recommended to disable the swapfile in Windows 7......and as for the hibernation file, it is, I think, 50% of your RAM size and can be be removed (along with disabling hibernate) by entering the following at a command prompt, as an administrator:

powercfg -h off

This will delete the hiberfil.sys file and turn off hibernation. Mess around with the swapfile at your own peril.

I concur, better to give it the space it wants than to mess with either, but here's the thread I was thinking of:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1047604/

FWIW my current hibernation file is 3/4 of RAM 6GB for 8GB of RAM.

B