What's the minimum space I shoud leave on my OS drive?


  1. Takeshi18
    Posts : 37
    Windows 10 X64
       New #1

    What's the minimum space I shoud leave on my OS drive?


    What's the minimum space I shoud leave on my OS drive?
    My OS drive is 48 GB, currently 14 GB is free space, page file is 8 GB, Hibernation is 6 GB
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  3. Layback Bear
    Posts : 983
    Windows 7/64 Professional
       New #2

    Welcome to our forum Takeshi18

    I use no less than 120 gb for my 'C' partition where the operating system and programs are installed.

    Windows 7 and 10 need at least 10 to 15% free space to work properly.

    Jack
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  4. dalchina
    Posts : 42,998
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       New #3

    And remember to allow for the creation of Windows.old - about the same as your Windows folder- when upgrading (each major apporx 6 monthly build).
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  6. TairikuOkami
    Posts : 5,452
    Windows 11 Home
       New #4

    Windows will not let you install, if it the partition is less than 30GB. Windows upgrade/MCT will fail, if the partition is less than 50GB or so, it does not matter how much free space you have, it is stupid by design, tested myself, I went from 50GB to 41GB.

    I have 41GB partition, 13GB used and 27GB free, of course that depends on your settings, installed software, etc.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails What's the minimum space I shoud leave on my OS drive?-capture_12142017_011536.jpg  
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  7. zbook
    Posts : 41,474
    windows 10 professional version 1607 build 14393.969 64 bit
       New #5

    For the free space these are some of the entries that may appear in the event viewer if the free space is insufficient:

    Code:
    Event ID:  1018  The dump file at location:  C:\windows\memory.dump was deleted because the disk volume had less than 25 GB free space

Event ID:  49  Configuring the Page file for crash dump failed. Make sure there is a page file on the boot partition and that is large enough to contain all physical memory.


Event ID:  25  The shadow copies of volume C: were deleted because the shadow copy storage could not grow in time.  Consider reducing the IO load on the system or choose a shadow copy storage volume that is not being shadow copied.
    Kernel dump storage and clean up behavior in Windows 7 WER Services
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  8. cereberus
    Posts : 15,491
    Windows10
       New #6

    TairikuOkami said:
    Windows will not let you install, if it the partition is less than 30GB. Windows upgrade/MCT will fail, if the partition is less than 50GB or so, it does not matter how much free space you have, it is stupid by design, tested myself, I went from 50GB to 41GB.

    I have 41GB partition, 13GB used and 27GB free, of course that depends on your settings, installed software, etc.
    Completely wrong. All you need to do is plug in a usb drive as temporary storage during update. It is even clever enough to put Windows.old on usb drive. Of course usb drive needs to be big enough.

    I have installed it in a 16 GB device before now. You do need about 4GB minimum spare on drive to do upgrades.
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  9. Mooly
    Posts : 1,871
    W10 pro x64 20H2 Build 19042.610
       New #7

    I don't know the minimum size that Windows will refuse to install into, but I deliberately (as I think cereberus will remember) do set an initial size of just 20Gb for the initial install and then expand afterwards, currently to 70Gb as that covers all my needs.

    Traditional drives need some free space in order to run defrag routines and so on (as mentioned earlier), SSD maybe similar in order to consolidate files etc.
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  10. Layback Bear
    Posts : 983
    Windows 7/64 Professional
       New #8

    You could just install Windows 10 and let it make it's own partitions.
    Then after everything is working as it should partition the drive as you please.

    Jack
      My Computers
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