Dual booting Windows 7 & 8..how much space for 8

I was thinking of dual booting Windows 7 and 8, and I was wondering how much space should I use for the Windows 8 partition. I have a 640 GB hard drive. Any thoughts are welcome..

Matt

 

The same space that you use for 7, at least 100 GB.

 

It all depends on what software you will be installing on it? If you'll install software that uses a lot of space, you'll need to leave more space. My Win 8 system now uses 20 GB of disk space so 40 GB should be enough if you don't plan to install much additional software.

 

Pretty much leaving it as a clean install.

 

If you can, just split the drive in half, 50/50. Otherwise, as mentioned, it depends on how many apps you're going to install. But if you're limited, then 60-100GB should be plenty...

 

40 GB will be enough for that.

 

I agree with 40 GB but it depends on where you are going to store your data files. If you put your video, music, pictures and documents in the OS partition then 40 GB won't be large enough. I have several 20 GB Win8 partitions (testing) that have 8 GB of free space so a basic install is around 12 GB.

 

In my experience, 40 GB is not enough. My "basic" Windows 8.1 installation (including Office) is 34 GB. There is no data in the partition. The "auxiliary files" (hibernation, etc.) alone take 6 GB.

A similar Windows 7 installation is 37 GB.

 

Robin,

I don't have any games installed but I do have Office and all the software I think I "need". There is no Hibernation file (that was 16 GB) and the pagefile is 1 GB. The pagefile was 3 GB when Win8 was first installed. When I installed Win8 on this computer I did use a 60 GB partition as I was uncertain how much space was needed. I've reduced the partition size to 40 GB as 60 GB was too large. The used space in the Win8.1 partition is 22 GB so there is stacks of free space.

I can image or restore my OS partition in 2 minutes. I'm interested in muti-booting so its important to keep my partition sizes under control. This 240 GB SSD has two Win8, a Win7, a WinXP, two Ubuntu, several WinPEs and DOS partitions. Only a third of the SSD is taken up by data.

I just looked at my son's computer. He likes games and has 100 GB of used space in his 220 GB Win8.1 partition. He doesn't have a Hibernation file either.

Edit... System Restore isn't used so that might be worth a few GB of less used space.

 

Would going towards 80 or 100 GB be better??

 

I'm getting ready to get this done...100 GB enough y'all think?

 

See above. The suggestions are 20 to 320 GB.

 

IMO too much but definitely enough.

 

I'm using 100gb for my 7 installs, so the same for 8.
Updates do add up, so after 3-4 years, you can end with extra 10-15gb of data for that alone.
I started with roughly 40gb (incl. 16gb pagefile), and now it's roughly 65gb, three years down.
Mrk

 

Mrk,

I hope this doesn't sound like a "mine is smaller than yours post". 18 months ago my Win8 partition had 25.6 GB of used space. Now it has 22.3 GB of used space, so it has 3 GB less data than 18 months ago. It's not due to having less software as I have installed a few more apps. Each major Win8 update, Win8.1 and Win8.11 reclaimed a few GB of used space and that is the explanation.

I could easily run my Win8.11 with a 30 GB partition. It is 40 GB at present but I have stacks of unallocated free space on this SSD so I'm not motivated to resize smaller. Obviously we manage our data in different ways.

 

I have similar experience. If you remove unnecessary update backup files you can also get additional few GB of free space.
I've also checked my virtual machines. Windows 8.1 u1 VDI file is 20 GB in size and only 10.8 GB is used (including 1 GB pagefile). I have all system updates and no 3rd party software installed (except Classic Shell).

 

Brian, I just haven't done any update cleaning, which could reclaim about 5-6gb.
I think on the safe side, about 100gb is enough for a long-run install + WU.
Mrk