Image your system with free Macrium

I'll add an additional comment because I think we are still within (just) the bounds of the thread. Here is perhaps another end of the spectrum to alan10. My OS partition (SSD) tree structure:

I deliberately do not want my page file on another drive but for an SSD it could be substantially reduced but it doesn't get imaged anyway.
I do not have a hybernation file.
Some of my user data could be moved to my spinner. I only do this for large static data.
In the Windows folder is ~13GB Winsx.

So with a cleanup I'd still be looking at ~40GB on the SSD and 50GB on a spinner.
Imaging this is very manageable especially with USB3. A Macrium system image takes me ~10 minutes.

As a final comment, I also use the native Windows imaging and moving system files to another drive can cause headaches.

PCG said:

Speaking of separating everything (OS/Apps and data), I'm curious to find out how whs and lehnerus2000 maintain their systems below 30GB (22GB in lehner's case).

I've been able to streamline my OS drive down to a current size of 33.25 GB. Are the two of you installing some programs on another drive or partition? Is that possible? Are there any general guidelines to follow if doing this?

I attached a snip of some (not all) programs that are currently installed on my C: drive that I might consider moving if this is possible/beneficial.

With a 'normal' set of programs installed (not games), you should easily stay below 25GB. First thing to do is to get rid of the hiberfile (unless you use hibernation). Next is to reduce the pagefile to 2GB. If you have e.g. 8GB of RAM, that saves you 14GB right there - with 4GB of RAM that would save 6GB.

Then I always run WinDirStat. On the colored picture you see immediately where the big chunks are. Just click on any colored chunk and it will tell you.

mjf said:

alan10 said:

So I gave Windows a 25 GB partition,

Each to their own. However, I would recommend to others substantially more than 25GB. On a 1TB spinner I'd go for 50-100GB. This gives you plenty of room for adding software you didn't envisage. After all, 50-100GB out of 1TB is not that great.
I also wonder how performance is affected if you run a partition close to capacity (maybe fragmentation issues)?

Michael, although I agree with you if your C is on a big spinner, on an SSD I would be less generous. Have a look at my C data size on this system - and that is typical of all my systems. It is only over 25GBs because I keep 7.5GBs for restore points. I always enable the restore points because sometimes they are handy to recover files that got created and lost 'in between' images. For the same reason I always enable restore points on the data partitions.

SpaceSniffer, find lost disk space the easy way. Is another freeware that shows in graphical form what the drive has on it. No install, a stand-alone app.

I don't see any advantage of a separate OS partition on a single drive, unless I'm missing something simple. If the drive goes belly up it's all gone, save for the back ups.
Here is my SSD which has the OS and programs only. I have tow graphics program, Office and several others here. My data is on a 2nd 750GB spinner.


I also have 6GB for restore, page files, but no hiberfil.

Wolfgang, I don't use restore points. If I reduced pagefile.sys and moved user data I may save ~14GB. All my installed apps need to be installed so the only thing left is the 13GB winsx which I think is large because of my installed applications. So I couldn't get anywhere near 25GB. I'd be interested in your views or others.

(PS: I use the old style structure of TreeSize to the more flashy WinDirStat).

My winsxs is 8.6GB right now. I try not to install and uninstall programs that I really don't need because that's what makes the winsxs grow. Even if you uninstall the programs, they leave their .dlls behind. No uninstaller touches those.

PS: restore points can really be handy. Have a look at this: ShadowExplorer - Recover Lost Files and Folders

whs said:

Even if you uninstall the programs, they leave their .dlls behind. No uninstaller touches those.

Even revo Uninstaller - even then tha'ts only for 32 bit apps ? That seems crazy to me. So how do you do a cleanout I wonder?

Restore points have let me down more than once so I simply don't use them and rely on imaging.
I use all my installed applications. Admittedly some more than others.

kado897 said:

Although this thread is about Macrium it is useful to cover other areas that make imaging easier. Data doesn't really need imaging but an OS and programs do so it makes sense to separate them as much as possible.

I have the opposite opinion. :)

I am only concerned about my personal data.
Reinstalling all of my operating systems would take about an hour (LM14 - 13 minutes, W7 - 19 minutes, XP - 30 minutes), updating them would take a couple of hours and reinstalling the Windows 7 & XP programs would take about a day.

Trying to recreate and/or download >2TB of personal files would be impossible.

I've accumulated a lot of random stuff during the past 10 years.
For example, my TAFE handouts and exercises would be very difficult to replace.

That said, restoring an image is much quicker than reinstalling everything. :)

I create images (OS and data) every month before the Patch Tuesday updates.
I also create OS images, before I install programs that I'm not sure will perform the operations I require/expect.

I replaced Ubuntu 10 with Linux Mint 14 (on Monday) so I created new backup images of my primary HDD partitions yesterday. :)

PCG said:

Speaking of separating everything (OS/Apps and data), I'm curious to find out how whs and lehnerus2000 maintain their systems below 30GB (22GB in lehner's case).

I've been able to streamline my OS drive down to a current size of 33.25 GB. Are the two of you installing some programs on another drive or partition? Is that possible? Are there any general guidelines to follow if doing this?

I attached a snip of some (not all) programs that are currently installed on my C: drive that I might consider moving if this is possible/beneficial.

My W7 partition = ~22GB/40GB

I don't use Hibernation, so I have disabled the hiberfil.sys file (saving ~8GB).
My Page File has it's own partition (on a separate HDD).

I don't have any games installed on my physical machine.
I only have old games which are installed in an XP VM.

Most program installers allow you to specify a path, where the program will be installed (there are some exceptions, like Flash).
I never experienced any problems when I installed my programs on a separate partition.
IMO, if you have mainly XP programs you are probably better off using a separate partition.

When I reconfigured my system (last September) I decided to stop using a separate partition for my programs and I have experienced quite a few annoyances as a result.
I use a few programs that try to write ini files back to their install directories, which Windows 7 won't allow.

Moving programs is generally a PITA and can cause problems.
If you want to shift them, you should uninstall them and then reinstall them in the new location.

Some programs will just automatically install themselves to "C:\" in any case.

mjf said:

whs said:

Even if you uninstall the programs, they leave their .dlls behind. No uninstaller touches those.

Even revo Uninstaller - even then tha'ts only for 32 bit apps ? That seems crazy to me. So how do you do a cleanout I wonder?

Restore points have let me down more than once so I simply don't use them and rely on imaging.
I use all my installed applications. Admittedly some more than others.

1. Yes, you never can get rid of a .dll once it landed on your system. Reason is simple. dlls are subroutines that can be used by any program. Once a .dll is installed by program A, a later installed program B may use it. If you were to uninstall the .dll when you are uninstalling program A, then program B would not function correctly any more.

2. Right, restore points for system restore are wacky. But they can be useful for file recovery. This is not 100% safe because restore points can be deleted by many events, but if you know your way around the shadowstorage, you can pretty much keep them.

3. I am sure you use all your installed programs - I do too. But we all download programs at times to see what they are and then later we get rid of them - but the .dlls stay. That's why it is better to test/inspect programs in a virtual machine. If that virtual machine becomes fat cat, you just get rid of the whole thing and start a new virtual machine. For that, of course you need an extra product key. I used to do that when the Win8 free pre-versions were around.