What is the size of your C:\Windows folder? That would be OS. For my Ultimate I've got 9.5 GB there. What software is installed on your PC? What is the size of the Program Files? And finally what is the size of the C:\Users folder - very often there is lots of junk there, although this should not be the case on a brand new PC.
If you plan on using the built in system image and DVD, at least 50% chance it will not work. Use this instead.
When I tried system image on DVD, as also a few posters, I was forced to shut down by pulling the plug. Not good.
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Well, your C:\Windows size is similar to mine. What you can try is to see whether there are any Windows components you do not need - such as some games for example, or whatever else you are not using.
Also, see if all the installed programs are necessary for you, or at least for the your current purposes.
Finally, half a GB in C:\Users is a bit too much for a new PC, you can certainly cut down there.
I would also take a look at what Rich has suggested.
Delete the Temp Files.
Hiberfile & Pagefile are the 2 that eat up the most space.
PF with be 1.5x whatever amount of RAM you have.
Others may disagree but what I do:
I decrease the size of my PF. I have 8GB of RAM, so that much is just not needed IMO. I finally settled at 2GB for my PF.
You can possibly reduce a little, or move it to another drive, but disabling it would be a bad idea.
Also, the Hyberfile you can delete, if you do NOT use Hibernate.
There are a couple of things you can do:
1. Eliminate the hibernation file with powercfg.exe -h off in elevated cmd. That will save you several GBs.
2. Create a seperate data partition and move all user files.
3. Reduce the page file to 200MB (which is minimum). But I would do that only for the imaging. Later you should set it back to default.
My Win7 is about 17GB (with #1 and #2 implemented), but I have a ton of programs installed. My winsxs is over 4GBs alone. If you abandon the restore points, you should do frequent imaging. Else you have no safety net at all.
If you want to have an image backup then might I suggest using an external USB HDD. The performance is far better than that of any optical drive.
I've seen default installations of Windows 7 x64 (regardless of version) take up 15+ GB of HD space, so it's entirely possible that it's just the OS. As "streamlined" as Windows 7 is compared to Vista, it doesn't take up any less space on the hard drive.
I don't see a very big difference in the space used by Windows 7 as opposed to what's used by Vista, considering this install of W 7 is only about 8 hours old and I have almost nothing installed on W 7 yet.
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