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How large is your vista footprint?

F

fongyuen

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 9, 2007
390
2
i recently installed vista 64 on my mbp and even though i used vlite to strip out the languages, media center, and a couple of other things resulting in a 2gb install disk, after installation, vista still took up a whopping 15gb.

then i tried turning off system restore, deactivating hibernate, and using ccleaner, i still was not able to get it down under 10gb.

just wondering what's the smallest footprint everyone's been able to get with vista and how did you do it. i plan to use vista primarily for playing games only. ok, thanks.
 
i think the os itself is about 14gb, so i put a 25gb partition, i dont think thats too big at all.
 
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fongyuen said:
i recently installed vista 64 on my mbp and even though i used vlite to strip out the languages, media center, and a couple of other things resulting in a 2gb install disk, after installation, vista still took up a whopping 15gb.

then i tried turning off system restore, deactivating hibernate, and using ccleaner, i still was not able to get it down under 10gb.

just wondering what's the smallest footprint everyone's been able to get with vista and how did you do it. i plan to use vista primarily for playing games only. ok, thanks.
Click to expand...

I don't see what the problem is? I've got a 320gb drive in my mbp and you are worried about 14gb? In comparison to the size of drives now I wouldn't worry too much about it. I've got about 100gb for vista 64 bit and i just use vista for games. The way I look at it, if you bought a last gen mbp with a 7200 rpm drive you got a 200gb drive, now you've got that much room AFTER a bootcamp vista partition.

How often do you play games? How many do you want installed at once? I put 100 because I can't make it bigger in the future if I decide and I want all the games installed and ready to go if I feel like playing one. Right now I've got half life 2, episode 1, episode 2, lost coast, team fortress 2, fortress forever and crysis installed and have lots of room left.

Just remember for better performance it's good to have lots of empty space on top of what you have installed. If you're worried about running out of space, get a 1tb external drive (you can even get time capsule to use it wirelessly) or put a 500gb in your machine. Hope I helped, I'm not home or I could give you actual #'s on space used.
 
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cuestakid said:
may i ask what version of vista you are using?
Click to expand...

I have no idea which one of us you are talking to but I'm using vista 64 bit ultimate. I've got the 2.53ghz with 4gb ram
 
yeah mines about 15gb. If I was you I wouldnt be that worried about 15gb, its nothing these days. I've got 10gb in porn alone
 
My Vista 32 is pretty big. I did a 50 gig partition on my new MBP. I don't feel like rebooting to check but I only have one game installed right now (Fallout 3) and I am left with about 22 gigs free. I kinda wish I had just gone XP and saved some space. Oh well, I have a gaming PC so I just wanted to boot camp in order to have a couple of games I can take with me.
 
running vista ultimate 64
i stripped it with vlite to fit my demands
allso deacivated a whole lot of services, this comp seriously boots fast.

my vista is about 4gigs on HD.
 
toebs said:
running vista ultimate 64
i stripped it with vlite to fit my demands
allso deacivated a whole lot of services, this comp seriously boots fast.

my vista is about 4gigs on HD.
Click to expand...

yeah, that's what i'm talking about, i think i need to retry vlite and cut out more stuff.

i'm using vista 64 ultimate. i only allotted 52 gb to my vista partition cause i wanted to keep more space for osx.

i'm only asking because while 15gb is really not that big nowadays, i just don't like the idea of unneeded files/programs/services taking up space that i could be using for something else, and i like to maximize free space :)
 
fongyuen said:
i recently installed vista 64 on my mbp and even though i used vlite to strip out the languages, media center, and a couple of other things resulting in a 2gb install disk, after installation, vista still took up a whopping 15gb.

then i tried turning off system restore, deactivating hibernate, and using ccleaner, i still was not able to get it down under 10gb.

just wondering what's the smallest footprint everyone's been able to get with vista and how did you do it. i plan to use vista primarily for playing games only. ok, thanks.
Click to expand...

Vista 64 Ultimate, I gave it about 80 GB (out of 250GB) which I only use for gaming. Haven't managed to even use half of that yet though (with several games installed).
 
fongyuen said:
yeah, that's what i'm talking about, i think i need to retry vlite and cut out more stuff.

i'm using vista 64 ultimate. i only allotted 52 gb to my vista partition cause i wanted to keep more space for osx.

i'm only asking because while 15gb is really not that big nowadays, i just don't like the idea of unneeded files/programs/services taking up space that i could be using for something else, and i like to maximize free space :)
Click to expand...

Yeah while i have enough space for the time being (if you ever do?) i just can't see why vista should take up 15gb of space.

I can recommend vLite its really easy to use, and theres good explanation in programme to each of the services and files.
This way you (hopefully) won't end up deleting files you actually need.

As for services, i dont know how much they matter, but my vista is really speedy in boot and all.

I disabled about 2/3 of the original services that start with vista.

Heres a link that might help

http://www.speedyvista.com/services.php

Allso for further tweaking take a look at RMClock cpu utility (this is temperature and battery. I can get 3-3.5H of battery on my MBP late 2008 in vista ultimate 64b.)
 
toebs said:
Yeah while i have enough space for the time being (if you ever do?) i just can't see why vista should take up 15gb of space.[/url]
Click to expand...

Analyzing the folder structure may give you the answer :)

The page file alone can amount to quite a bit. 4.28GB here.
 
Infrared said:
Analyzing the folder structure may give you the answer :)

The page file alone can amount to quite a bit. 4.28GB here.
Click to expand...

I am aware that there can be a big pagefile, and that should ofcourse be taken into consideration (if you don't disable it)

Did you know, that if you have enough RAM, tests shows that disabling page file actually boosts battery time quite some? Something to think about huh? ;)
 
toebs said:
I am aware that there can be a big pagefile, and that should ofcourse be taken into consideration (if you don't disable it)

Did you know, that if you have enough RAM, tests shows that disabling page file actually boosts battery time quite some? Something to think about huh? ;)
Click to expand...

Is that because pages are not written from the standby list(s)?
 
I'd like to know how large my Vista footprint is. I'm running Vista Ultimate 32-bit on a 72.7 GB partition, and I have 35.5 GB free. However, I have other software installed on the partition too. How do I know how much is the space taken up by Vista?

Also, what is yout Windows experience score? My Macbook (2.4 GHz Aluminium, 4GB RAM) gets 5.3.
 

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well, i made another copy of vista using vlite, stripping out many drivers, services, apps, that i didn't need, but adding the macpro 64 vista drivers and SP1. disabled hibernate and turned off page filing (some guy told me he did it and didn't have any problems), and i ended up with a 5gb vista footprint. :)
 
toebs said:
Actually i believe the powersavings come from less harddrive activity.
Im not sure thou
Click to expand...

That's what I meant :)

Modified pages of memory get put into a standby list. Periodically pages
from the standby list are written to the page file. This is to give faster
access to free memory pages should there be a need for them. A standby
list page that has been written out is available for another use if needed
because the data is safely on the disk.

So pageouts occur in advance and before they're needed. This is a bit like
superfetch in reverse, a sort of anticipatory paging. The cost is that the
need for these pages may never materialize and the disk activity is wasted.
 
fongyuen said:
well, i made another copy of vista using vlite, stripping out many drivers, services, apps, that i didn't need, but adding the macpro 64 vista drivers and SP1. disabled hibernate and turned off page filing (some guy told me he did it and didn't have any problems)
Click to expand...

You won't have any problems until the day you need access to lots
of memory. At that point you may lose data, your apps may crash,
and other nasty things may happen. Good luck ;)
 
Infrared said:
You won't have any problems until the day you need access to lots
of memory. At that point you may lose data, your apps may crash,
and other nasty things may happen. Good luck ;)
Click to expand...

haha, i know. well, fingers crossed. the guy said that even when gaming he didn't have any problems. :p
 
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