Reduce Win7 Ultimate RAM requirements and disk usage

[nitrous]

Hello. I am running Windows 7 RTM build x64 Ultimate on my PC and I am concerned about the memory usage and disk space requirements. At the moment, with almost no programs running on startup, the OS consumes at least 900MB of RAM. Is there any way to reduce its memory requirements to like 400-500MB?
Second question - disk usage. First when I installed the OS on my drive, I decided to give it 25GB disk space, thinking that it will be more than enough (I was running XP on 15GB partition), however it was a mistake - at least 50GB is required. I've turned off hibernation, moved pagefile to another drive, enabled NTFS compression on system drive and installed all huge apps on another partition. However the OS still consumes 20GB of the 25GB partition. Is there any way to reduce the size of Windows\WinSxS folder and the disk space requirements?
Thanks

 

[severedsolo]

900MB is about right... this is why the minimum requirement is 1GB, same with the hard drive space... those numbers are there for a reason

 

[nitrous]

Yeah, but how would you run this OS on old computer with 1GB of RAM for example? I have 4 gigs, however it's weird... It's like I'm running 32bit OS.

 

[Pichu]

For your RAM, it is normal for a 64 bit operating system to consume approximately 700 to 1000 megabytes of ram on idle. Do not worry, because this RAM is being used to improve your system performance. 64 bit operating systems are smoother and faster because of this.

As for your hard drive, go to your start menu and type in SYSTEM. Click on system. On the left hand menu, click on "advanced system settings". Go to the system protection tab. Click on the drive that you lack space in. Then click on configure. Press delete. Now, all of your system restore points are deleted. SYstem restore points take a lot of disk space so you should get at least 7 gigs back. Without any restore points, the os should take only around 13 gigabytes of space.

After doing this with system protection, you might want to create a system image to restore your computer should there be any problem. All you need to do is go to backup and restore on your control panel and click on create system image, not on your os drive of course =).

BTW, if you are truely concerned about the ram usage, I would suggest you use a 32 bit os because they idle around 300-500 megs of ram. However, the performance won't be as good and the os is slower and laggier (in my experience^^)

Edit: I wouldn't suggest that you move the pagefile around. That could be very dangerous.

 

[nitrous]

Okay, I see about RAM usage.

System Restore is turned off - there are no restore points to delete.
Why I shouldn't move pagefile?

 

[Pichu]

Pagefile is where the operating system writes important data to. If you move the pagefile without careful consideration, there could be an error, that would results in a blue screen.

Now, to save you some more space, why don't you first go to your os partition and find the disk usage of your program files folder? Also, do the same with your windows files folder. report back your results.

 

[unifex]

Hi nitrous,

may I ask, why are you concerned about the memory usage? Are you experiencing any performance issues? Or you just find it strange that the OS consumes that much memory?

By the way, your memory usage seems totally normal. And with 4 gb of RAM you've got plenty left. As for your question, how does one run Windows 7 on 1 gb of RAM? I see no reason to do so.

The hard drives these days are cheap. I see no reason to break them up into small partitions less that 100 gb. For comparison, on my C:\ drive, which is dedicated to the OS and installed software - i.e. no user files there (with the purpose of not having to back up anything in case I need to re-install) - right now about 45 gb are in use.

If by some reason you want to minimize hard drive usage, then you need to cut down on Windows components installed or maybe look into light versions, there is a big discussion on that here in the forums.

 

[Pichu]

You should follow unifex's suggestion perhaps, partition your disk so that your os partition is bigger...
WHy don't you post a screenshot of your disk management? Perhaps, we can help you organize your partitions and make your windows 7 experience better =).

 

[nitrous]

Pichu, I'm changing the pagefile location from System properties - Performance options - Virtual Memory. It's working pretty well, I have no issues with it. Here's disk usage statistics: http://i46.tinypic.com/2rqzwc2.png

unifex, there are no performance issues at the moment, however I'm working with Adobe After Effecs and the more RAM I have free, the faster it will work (think about RAM preview), so every megabyte RAM is welcome
I know that hard drives are cheap, however I don't have money atm to buy one

 

[nitrous]

You should follow unifex's suggestion perhaps, partition your disk so that your os partition is bigger...
WHy don't you post a screenshot of your disk management? Perhaps, we can help you organize your partitions and make your windows 7 experience better =).

http://i50.tinypic.com/f1k21x.png
there you go
I'm thinking of merging both C:\ and D:\ into single partition, where I can store all files, however I am a little concerned, because the hard drive is 3-4 years old and I am afraid that I can lose some data.

 

[CarlTR6]

Nitrous, don't worry about the RAM usage. Windows Seven uses memory very efficiently; it is not at all like XP. As someone posted in another thread, unused RAM is wasted RAM. I am running Ultimate (32 bit) on an older computer with 2.5 Gb of RAM. I have no problems whatsoever, rarely does Seven use the page file. The majority of the time, my RAM usage is less that 50%.

Seven also manages services very effectively and efficiently. Unlike XP and Vista, if a service is not needed, Seven stops the service. Most of the services are set to manual by default.

As far a disk space goes, Ultimate does contain somethings that a home user will likely never use. You might look through the list and uninstall the components that you will not use.

 

[unifex]

Have you thought of ReadyBoost?

You seem to have plenty of hard drive space. Also I think that if you are concerned about a possible hard drive failure, then you should be storing important data on a different physical drive, not just different partition. Because if your drive breaks down, it won't be just one partition.

What kind of drive is it? For example I have a 10 year old PC that runs great, never replaced the hard drives there. It rung Win2K though .

 

[Pichu]

don't worry, merging partitions is relatively safe. If you don't use the windows disk management console to do it, you can use many third party freewares that im sure the people on this forum can suggest for you. =)

 

[nitrous]

CarlTR6, I see. Well, I guess that memory usage is not that big and important. I've removed components that I will never use, however they are only small portion of the useless stuff of Windows 7 at all. It is so full of useless apps which can't be removed, which makes me sick.

Unifex, never thought about it. What does it do exactly?
Well, system drive is the newest, the other two are even older. The most important data is backed up on a DVDs, however it's real PITA to re-download and redo all of the stuff on the new hard drive, in case old one fails. The drives are: Disk 0: Seagate ST3320620AS (SATA2, 320GB), Disk 1: Seagate ST3120026AS (SATA1, 120GB), Disk 2: Maxtor 6B300S0 (SATA1, 300GB). As you can see, they're all pretty old. Maxtor one had 5-6 bad sectors, fixed it few months ago.

Pichu, I'm thinking of using PowerQuest Partition Magic if I merge them, years ago it was the best disk management application, never failed me.

 

[unifex]

You can use this tutorial

How to Setup and Use ReadyBoost in Windows 7

Well, like I said, I've had pretty good experience with hard drives, many of them are working for more than a decade. I've had one hard drive die in my older laptop, but still it worked fine for about 9 years.

This does not guarantee you'll be that lucky, but if you are really worried, then the only thing to do is to replace the drives. If this is not what you plan to do, than basically the only thing you can do is to back up everything on a regular basis. However, if you are using DVD-RW (or DVD+RW), keep in mind that these can fail too.

 

[Wishmaster]

If you want to move the PF off the OS drive to help performance, putting it on a partition on the same Physical drive will only hurt overall performance.

For moving the PF to show any benefit, you need to move it to a partition on a Different Physical Drive.

The reason is:
If you have a Drive with 2 partitions for example,
Partition 1 for OS and Partition 2 where the PF is -->
Everytime the OS does need to access the PF, the HD heads need to move to the other end of the drive, find the info, then go all the back to the front of the drive where the OS is. This is a lot of uneeded travel.

If its on a seperate drive, not only is the likelyhood that particular drive isnt very busy, but the main OS drive can continue doing what its doing while the other drive accesses the PF.

The best way, is put it on the HD thats accessed the least. Provided its as fast as the OS drive.



If space is tight for the OS, one other thing you can consider is deleting the Hyberfile IF you do NOT use Hibernate.

 

[nitrous]

unifex, thanks, but I don't have spare memory cards for ReadyBoost. Otherwise I'm backing everything up.

Wishmaster, you have a point. I'll move the pagefile to different drive, or put it back in C:\ . Also hiberfil.sys is removed and Hibernation is disabled.