How much spare space does Windows 7 need?

[WebMattR]

Once again, I was asking more how much is needed in excess on everything else. Everything including hiberfil (which I have disabled then deleted anyway), pagefile (which I have minimized), etc.

Why'd you minimize the pagefile? You're gonna get the best performance by just leaving pagefile as/is.

Heck, the largest single installation is larger than that. And that's no data files, no hiberfile and essentially no pagefile.

Perhaps I'm misreading this. Are you saying that the install for W7 is larger than 32 gigs? In my experience it's usually around 10gb. Maybe 16 counting pagefile and hibernation file.

You may not have noticed the "Systems Specs" link in the lower left corner of every post.

No, I just didn't bother to look. The one time I don't, figures it's actually filled out.

 

[gregglee]

Why'd you minimize the pagefile? You're gonna get the best performance by just leaving pagefile as/is.

There are many opinions, but one fairly common one is that with lots of RAM, pagefile need be only enough to hold a minidump. Windows allows no less than 16 mb. Some recommend no pagefile for better performance of specific apps. That's why I tried it. Slight help. And no problems.

Perhaps I'm misreading this. Are you saying that the install for Windows 7 is larger than 32 gigs? In my experience it's usually around 10gb. Maybe 16 counting pagefile and hibernation file..

In bytes to avoid the 1024 vs. 1000 confusion.
Total 40,008,912,896
first level below C:\
Windows 16,738,590,913
program files (x86) 8,213,612,037
program files 1,552,810,952
program data 1,304,358,018
users (which is all actually application files) 6,745,117,949
"unknown" (shows in windirstat which applies this label, but doesn't in windows explorer.) 4,995,729,578
MSO cache 329,381,770
NVIDIA 138,802,654
recycle bin (empty) 2,821,956
pagefile.sys 16,777,216
aaw7boot.log 18,588
wizard.txt 34
no data.
application caches have generally been relocated to other drives or it would be larger.
numbers kept changing slightly during cut and paste so may not add exactly

edit: running windirstat "as administrator" shows that the "unknown" is in fact system volume information. However running windows explorer "as administrator" still lists svi size as zero.