Windows 7: Recommended size for Windows 7 installation?

I'm going to re-install Windows XP on my PC, but I'm preparing it for future installation of Windows 7. I'll partition one of my hard drives NOW for that, so I wanted to know what is the recommended size for that partition/folder(including extra free space for extra memory to run Windows 7 properly)?

TIA

Hello RFE,

The bare minimum required hard drive space for Windows 7 is 16 GB for 32-bit Windows 7 OR 20 GB for 64-bit Windows 7. Plus, you need to add space for any programs or files you may want to install. I would recommend no less than around 50 GB if you have it available.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

The requirement for the system is somewhere between 17 and 20GBs (64bit is a little bigger). Then you have to add your user data although I would recommend you create a seperate data partition. That has a lot of advantages.
Bottom line: for the system alone, 30 to 40GB should be ample. But if you keep your data in the C partition, then you have to add that.

8GB drive will fit a Windows 7 Ultimate installation with 1GB free after it is installed.
I know this for a fact since I had Win 7 Ultimate on my Dell Mini 9 with an 8GB SSD.
7.4GB usable space on the SSD, 6.4GB was the install size.

I personally would do 30GB if you plan on putting your programs on another partition or drive.
Mine is set at 100GB with my main apps on the same drive and games on another drive.

My laptop has a 500 Gb drive and I have 100 allocated for the OS and apps and pretty much everything installed on Windows. The rest is allocated for storage of music, files, apps and documents and whatever else I might put on there. I make an image backup of my OS partition regularly and this recipe has served me well. I am not a gamer and I have heard of people installing their games on another partition, but if you have the space I would give the OS and programs at least 50gb and use the rest for storage. If you don't need that much for storage, go up to 100Gb for OS. This is kind of a personal opinion question, so there is no definitive answer except for you should have at least the minimum requirements for Windows 7 which is 20GB