How much disc space is really needed?

[Maurice]

Hi,

everywhere I look it says Vista needs a partition with about
20-40 GB of free space. Is this true? Why does it need so
incredibly much space?

I started to install Vista (Business) on a 6 GB partition and the
installer warned me that the recomended size would be 9 GB. So I
restarted the setup to install on a 9 GB partition.

Then the setup went fine uncomplaining but now the running system
crashes occasionally with a blue screen (which I can't read
because it reboots after a few seconds).

Is this because the partition is too small?

It would be quite annoying If I had to rearrange my partitions to
free 40 GB.

Thank you.

 

[Dustin Harper]

I think that 15 is required and >20 is recommended.

Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

 

[Maurice]

I think that 15 is required and >20 is recommended.

thats probably true. I just found this:

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/help/cb3952de-4f7f-48cd-8dec-f9dd0f5738721033.mspx

I guess I have to try a bigger partition and see if the crashes
still occur.

 

[Zim Babwe]

Vista has so much bloated code, the more space the better. The programmers
over at MS are over worked, and they don't practice good programming
standards. Go figure.

 

[Maurice]

...

I guess I have to try a bigger partition and see if the crashes
still occur.

They do.
(now using 23 GB)

So its obviously another problem and maybe 9 GB are really
sufficient.

 

[Guest]

Folks -
as someone who has been running RTM for almost 2 months now and has
installed it on almost a dozen machines ....

A clean install of Vista Ultimate - should take between 11 and 13 GB of space.
After you have done your clean install, you can do "cleanup" on your system
disk, remove restore points, etc. and get it down to about 9GB (before you
drop anything else on)

John

 

[JW]

However, I believe that you also have to have another 15 available during
the installation process which is released after the installation completes.

 

[Sharon F]

everywhere I look it says Vista needs a partition with about
20-40 GB of free space. Is this true? Why does it need so
incredibly much space?

Vista installs differently than other versions of Windows. The install is
done via an "image" - similar to what OEMs have been doing in recent years.
The image is deleted after setup completes but it takes up quite a bit of
space during setup process. If there is available space on other
drives/partitions for the temporary copy of the image, setup will use that
instead.

My Vista RTM install is one month old. My Windows folder is just over 8 GB
(8.09). Keep in mind that this does not included anything created by setup
under Program Files.

 

[Maurice]

Vista installs differently than other versions of Windows. The install is
done via an "image" - similar to what OEMs have been doing in recent years.
The image is deleted after setup completes but it takes up quite a bit of
space during setup process. If there is available space on other
drives/partitions for the temporary copy of the image, setup will use that
instead.

Good to know, I had free space on other partitions. But I wonder
why they do it like that.

My Vista RTM install is one month old. My Windows folder is just over 8 GB
(8.09). Keep in mind that this does not included anything created by setup
under Program Files.

RTM? My business edition doesn't take that much. Without its
pagefile the whole installation is using about 6 GB. But I
haven't used it by now.

 

[Sharon F]

Good to know, I had free space on other partitions. But I wonder
why they do it like that.

No idea why. While some (not all but some) changes in Vista seem to be
*only* for the sake of change, maybe they actually had a reason for this
one.

RTM? My business edition doesn't take that much. Without its
pagefile the whole installation is using about 6 GB. But I
haven't used it by now.

RTM=Release to Manufacturers or "final version"
Using Ultimate