Windows 7: how much free space should I maintain on my OS drive?

[Jumpem]

To not impact performance how much free space do I need... 5GB? 10GB?

 

[mmntech]

As much as the page file needs. Usually the amount of physical RAM you have x1.5.

It's a good idea to keep at least one archival drive to keep the crap off your OS drive, and defrag once a month or so.

 

[Jumpem]

As much as the page file needs. Usually the amount of physical RAM you have x1.5.

It's a good idea to keep at least one archival drive to keep the crap off your OS drive, and defrag once a month or so.

I have 4TB of data drives, but only an 80GB SSD for OS and apps.

I'm bored, and reinstalling Age of Conan, which is taking up 25GB+.

 

[JackMDS]

To be comfortable I would say to leave at least 10GB.

Win 7 page file and Hibernation On, with Office 2007 Pro + Visio + Project + MapPoint + Expression Web, takes about 18 GB.

The rest is up to whatever other applications you use.

 

[Cattykit]

As mentioned, if you have pagefile on C drive along with hibernation and system restore, 10GB isn't going to cut it. Just give it at least 80GB to save possible headaches and you know it's better to use something like 70% of partition for performance.

 

[RebateMonger]

There's no single answer. I've seen Windows Small Business Server 2003 continue to function with 12 MEGABYTES of free space. The only way the client knew there was a problem was that they couldn't print .PDF files larger than 10 Megabytes. This server was acting as a file server, a DNS server, a DHCP server, a WINS server, hosting several web sites, running Exchange Server, and acting as a print server.

 

[JackMDS]

I currently keep my old HDs that are above 10GB. All my Desktops have at least one Mobile tray and with subscriptions to MSDN, and TechNet, I have plenty of software to test, and experiment with.

So, as a frame of reference.

Win 7 Starter on a 939 Athlon 64 3200+, 2GB RAM, HD 10GB.
OS + Firefox + Word + few small applications. Hiber Off, and pagefile set to 1GB static.

It works well and there is about 1 GB empty room on the HD.
[FONT=&quot]
Installation of Win 7 Ultimate/Enterprise/Pro with full Office 2007 + Nero +Paint shop Pro + Sony DVD Architect, and few other application of this caliber (No Games beside the one included with Win 7).[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]It takes about 20GB, works well on a 30GB HD.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]However if One wants to leave room for future in place type of Upgrade more head room need to be available. Thus 40GB (without games) is the Entry Level HD that is needed as the primary OS HD for Win 7.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]If you have Games and other space hogging application, check how much it takes and add it to the minimum. If you have more RAM it adds to space added to the pagefile and Hiber and need to be taken into consideration too.[/FONT]

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Totally Rock Bottom. Toshiba laptop 2GHz Celeron, 512 RAM, and 30GB HD.
Win 7 Ultimate RC1 works on it. It can be used for surfing Word processing and streaming Music and video. It is not fast but as long as it Not multitasking it works OK.

 

[13Gigatons]

According to Microsoft you should keep at least 20% for various functions like defragging and installing updates. So on a 80 gig partition that would be 16 gigs.

Right now I have 27 gigs free on the system drive.

 

[lopri]

It's one of the major reasons why I can't jump on SSD for my OS/applications. Even without games my C: is ~100GB full, and imagine installing a game or two there. Even a 160 GB won't cut it.

 

[sticks435]

Right now, I have a 40 gig partition for my OS, and it's at 20~25 gigs full. I don't install any large apps or games to it, as I have a 650Gig partition for that on the same drive.

 

[vshah]

remember, the more free space an SSD has, the better it performs and longer it lasts. keep only the essentials on the ssd.


and 25gb for a game? that's insane...