How much space for Windows boot drive?

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philbagg

philbagg

Just Killing Time
Long story short: I've created a 50gb partition on my iMac, and I'm using MacDrive to allow XP to see the "other drive", which I'll be running my data off.

Just wondering, I've used 10gb so far just on software and shizz on the 50gb xp partition, so I have 40gb left. But before I go any further in setting up XP, should I be creating a larger partition for the windows boot drive, or is 50gb enough for just software?
 
philbagg said:
Long story short: I've created a 50gb partition on my iMac, and I'm using MacDrive to allow XP to see the "other drive", which I'll be running my data off.

Just wondering, I've used 10gb so far just on software and shizz on the 50gb xp partition, so I have 40gb left. But before I go any further in setting up XP, should I be creating a larger partition for the windows boot drive, or is 50gb enough for just software?
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Depends on how much software you're installing. That is, 50gb might be overkill, might not.

I've personally never created a windows boot drive over 35gb, but I like to keep my systems as streamlined as possible, only installing the necessities. I always keep my other data on a separate partition, so the boot drive stays cleaner.
 
I've got a 64gb SSD as my boot drive for my 'everyday stuff' and have managed to fill about half of it with an installation of Windows 7 and a reasonable selection of software.

I'm guessing an XP installation would be smaller than Win 7. My dedicated XP partition for audio stuff is 80gb and I've filled 44gb of it (with Sonar and and a handful of other apps), though I think some audio files from a project managed to stray themselves onto there as well when I accidentally saved a copy in the wrong place.

Probably 50gb is a good bet and just keep an eye on things.
 
XP is quite small

I ran it on a 4gb I-ram, but if you are wanting to install programs etc, then you will want to have some free space. 50gb is certainly enough.

I currently have Vista installed on a 34GB raptor, and it's not got a lot of breathing room, I'd recommend at least 50gb for a vista or win7 install.
 
It should be OK for XP, unless you get crazy and install a ton of apps and keep other data on it as well. I'd recommend you create another partition and point the My Documents folder to it, just to keep it separate from your OS drive. Then you can put your data there.

For Windows 7, especially 64bit I'd say you'd want at least 120GB. I've seen the WinSxS folder grow to some crazy levels, and unfortunately there are no good workarounds to that. You can't even safely move it out of the Windows folder. So yeah.
 
Thanks d00ds :D

Well I'm sticking with XP. It's just "safe" to me. I know it works, whereas I've heard other stories about vista and 7. Not only that, I just f**king love it. I have copies of Vista and 7 lying around here. I also have copies of Leopard and Snow Leopard lying around (I know it doesn't sound legit but trust me it is :p ), and there's a reason why I've stuck with XP on my pc and have now thrown it on a mac. So, no need to worry about larger boot drives so :)

Cheers
 
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