How much HDD space should I give Windows on Boot Camp?

[MacAndy74]

I just don't want to waste too much of my 1TB storage; that my iMac 24" will have - for Windows Boot Camp.

I guess I'll run Vista 32-bit and plan to install three to five games, maybe Unreal Tournament III, Bioshock.. Bioshock 2 when it's released.

So it's basically a Windows Boot Camp for gaming and I plan to uninstall games after I've finished with them.

Thanks for any advice

 

[flopticalcube]

I just don't want to waste too much of my 1TB storage; that my iMac 24" will have - for Windows Boot Camp.

I guess I'll run Vista 32-bit and plan to install three to five games, maybe Unreal Tournament III, Bioshock.. Bioshock 2 when it's released.

So it's basically a Windows Boot Camp for gaming and I plan to uninstall games after I've finished with them.

Thanks for any advice

80-100GB.

 

[sushi]

80-100GB.

That seems a bit large to me.

OP, you can always use WinClone to make an image, delete your Bootcamp partition, recreate it smaller, then use WinClone to clone back the image.

So it's okay to start big as you can always shrink it later after you see how much you actually need.

 

[MacDawg]

Seems large to me too, but I don't know how much space the games take up since I am not a gamer

Perhaps the extra space is needed for performance in games

My Boot Camp partition is only 35 GB, but I only have Vista, MS Office and a few other minor things loaded

Woof, Woof - Dawg

 

[flopticalcube]

That seems a bit large to me.

OP, you can always use WinClone to make an image, delete your Bootcamp partition, recreate it smaller, then use WinClone to clone back the image.

So it's okay to start big as you can always shrink it later after you see how much you actually need.

I find 10GB per game to be comfortable. Add 20GB for the OS and your at 70GB. So 10-30GB for extra margin.

 

[gr8tfly]

11GB for XP SP3 and "RealFlight G3", with room to spare.

 

[MacAndy74]

80-100GB.

@flopticalcube ! I was thinking maybe ≤ 200GB. But really, 100GB seems more realistic.

 

[MacAndy74]

@sushi Winclone looks amazingly useful thanks for your advice!

 

[MacAndy74]

I was also thinking about using the ATi driver for the 4850 GPU (iMac 2009) and DarkAdapted for brightness control. So, it makes sense to me but will it work?

 

[sushi]

I find 10GB per game to be comfortable. Add 20GB for the OS and your at 70GB. So 10-30GB for extra margin.

Personally, I like it when Windows has at least 25% - 30% free space. Less than that, and it seems not to work as well.

On a side note, with the Mac OS I like at least 10% free as well.

Of course having more free space won't hurt and may help the OS. You can never have too much HD space or RAM.

@sushi Winclone looks amazingly useful thanks for your advice!

You're welcome!

I tend to want the smallest sized partition that I can get for Windows be it XP or Vista. I am sure the same will hold true with Windows7.

WinClone makes it so easy to adjust the partition size. It works very well and provides a nice way to back up/clone your Windows installation. What I find funny, is that WinClone works better for me than Ghost.