Windows 7 install takes up 70GB - is this normal

[shortmike]

I installed Vista and later added Windows 7 32 bit Home Premium in dual boot mode. Each one took 70 gb . I can not believe this is normal. Any advice ?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

It's not normal.

Post a screen shot of Windows Disk Management.

Did you use an ordinary retail installation disc purchased from a retailer like Best Buy or Newegg? Or did you use a burned disc? Or?

 

[dperecky]

just a guess:

If you installed into a partition that had a different Windows system on it before, look at the Windows.old folder.

 

[Pete4]

my win7 64 instal takes 36GB and that includes at least 6 GB of my own programs and data to give you some idea. Also as a general rule 32bit instal should take less space than 64.

 

[shadman7]

Amazing

 

[Vexxum]

You should delete windows.old in c drive folder to free the space

 

[dperecky]

Pagefile.sys Hiberfil.sys

oh... one more thing....

If you have a lot of RAM, it seems that Windows will automatically allocate the same size as your page-memory-swapping file: pagefile.sys. It is a hidden file.

Also, if you have hibernation enabled, you can control how big of a file this should be... (pretty sure). At any rate, Windows will allocate gigabytes for this as well.

For example, if you issue the top command in your C:\ root directory

C:\>dir *.sys/a:h
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 8782-E190
 Directory of C:\
05/18/2014  03:49 PM     6,353,817,600 hiberfil.sys
05/18/2014  03:49 PM     8,471,760,896 pagefile.sys
               2 File(s) 14,825,578,496 bytes

You will probably see something like the above.... 6Gig for Hibernation and 8Gig for the Page swap file.

 

[Indianatone]

Here is another space saver. Make sure you have SP1 installed and all the updates then run the system tools / disc clean up tool as admin (right click Run as Administrator) that will scan the hard drive and clear temp files, install files, updates, logs and assorted junk. You can save several GB by doing this.