Windows 7 = over 30GB?!

[blake0812]

Just installed a clean version of Windows 7 on my SSD (60gb or about 55GB in reality), after updates I have around 15GB left on my storage, is this normal?

 

[JackMDS]

Run this free portable App and see exactly what is stored on the HD.

Log here Choose Tree Size and pull down the Menu if you want a portable zipped only.

https://www.jam-software.de/custome...guage=EN&PHPSESSID=k43fm2jpa9mq629c4nijo0nik1

Such a size can be real if you did in-place upgrade (I.e., upgraded on top of full install over Win7/8.1).

Clean C : Windows can be just under 20GB and recovery folder another 10GB.

So.. whatever you have over 30GB can be stuff from previous installation.

 

[blake0812]

Run this free portable App and see exactly what is stored on the HD.

Log here Choose Tree Size and pull down the Menu if you want a portable zipped only.

https://www.jam-software.de/custome...guage=EN&PHPSESSID=k43fm2jpa9mq629c4nijo0nik1

Such a size can be real if you did in-place upgrade (I.e., upgraded on top of full install over Win7/8.1).

Clean C : Windows can be just under 20GB and recovery folder another 10GB.

So.. whatever you have over 30GB can be stuff from previous installation.

Yeah but I deleted the previous installation using the custom installation option. Stuff could still be there even if it's deleted?

 

[bbhaag]

You sure the windows.old file isn't still hanging around somewhere on the drive? Also I've seen the hibernation file eat a lot space too. Might be worth looking into.

 

[JackMDS]

Yeah but I deleted the previous installation using the custom installation option. Stuff could still be there even if it's deleted?

Yeah, but it takes No more than 3 min. to download the Free Tree-Size, run it to see what exctly you have on the Drive.

Example - https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/screenshots/EN/Tree.png

 

[Nashemon]

It's normal from my experience. I installed W7 and updates on an 80GB SSD once before. Had about 15GB left. Enough for about 2 games to be installed. I couldn't even install all the Android SDK stuff I needed on it. I wouldn't recommend less than a 120GB SDD.

 

[MTDEW]

If you don't need hibernation, disabling it will help save space on a small SSD.

 

[imagoon]

Windows 7 can be shrunk to less than 8 GB, 5.5GB is what I have gotten virtual desktop down to before. Use the disk clean up manager to clean up junk and remove features you don't need with tools like dism.

 

[ninaholic37]

Windows 7 can be shrunk to less than 8 GB, 5.5GB is what I have gotten virtual desktop down to before. Use the disk clean up manager to clean up junk and remove features you don't need with tools like dism.

Not bad. My Windows XP+SP3+Updates is down to 1.7GB after deleting restore points and turning off the pagefile (1GB RAM is enough ). My Tahr Puppy distro is less than 300MB with all OS and kernel updates though.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Yeah, but it takes No more than 3 min. to download the Free Tree-Size, run it to see what exctly you have on the Drive.

Example - https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/screenshots/EN/Tree.png

Also, WinDirStat. It's fully free, IIRC: https://windirstat.info/

 

[Red Squirrel]

It's crazy how much windows has gotten such a pig over the years. My Linux install is only a couple gigs and that's counting all the programs and everything, and misc data that might be on my desktop and what not.

 

[ninaholic37]

Sounds like they eventually managed to get Windows 8.1.1 down to about 4GB using WIMBoot, but that seems like more of a special case/hack for 16GB tablets rather than an actual "Windows Lite Version". I don't think it decompresses everything to RAM though... this might be why people are complaining that their Windows 8.x tablets are slow as **** and not because of hardware specs. :hmm:

 

[Ketchup]

blake0812, 30 GB is a lot for just a Windows install. Did you add some features or install some other things?

I just did a fresh vm install and after updates I was at 15.5 GB (no system restore). After a cleanup (including system files) I was down to about 14 (including a 3 GB page file).

 

[JackMDS]

I just did a fresh vm install and after updates I was at 15.5 GB (no system restore). After a cleanup (including system files) I was down to about 14 (including a 3 GB page file).

Yeah around 15GB is what is taken when clean install means formatting the Drive and install from scratch just th OS using boot DVD/Flash Drive and No recovery partition.

That said, I am Not sure that is what the OP did.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Just installed a clean version of Windows 7 on my SSD (60gb or about 55GB in reality), after updates I have around 15GB left on my storage, is this normal?

No. I clean-install Win7 SP1-U 64-bit HP on a 30GB SSD, with 4GB RAM, and have about 3-5GB free left over. (Around 8-9GB free, once I do "powercfg - h off" to disable hibernation, and remove hiberfil.sys.)

 

[Lorne]

Run Diskcleanup in admin mode.

After the install you could compress the drive just once and then turn it off.

 

[JackMDS]

I have a Laptop that runs on 24GB miniSSD.

Win 7 Premium x86 15GB + Office 2010 + Corel x3 + Nero + many small portable Utils = 21GB and 3GB free.

There are things that One needs to be aware about. Some Internet related programs can end up taking very big amount of space that preclude them to be use for such arrangement. For example Chrome and Thunderbolt after short period of usage can easily get to few GB space hogging as well as some other similar Apps.

 

[embalmer]

I just reinstalled Windows 7 Ultimate, iso updated with simplix updater (mentioned in this thread) and my install footprint is @ 18.4GB. That's with pagefile and all, plus a bunch of other installed programs.

The updater has been updated for March, and will no longer create an iso that will fit on a standard 4.7GB DVD-R, unless you leave out IE11 & its updates. (At least for the Ultimate edition)

 

[SparkyJJO]

Windows by default likes to create a pagefile the size of your system RAM, so in my case it was eating 16GB of drive space. Well isn't that just a stupid thing, since the more RAM you have the less pagefile you should need, right? Make sure it didn't do something silly like that to you. Also as mentioned the hibernation file can be quite large, if you don't need hibernation then turn it off.

Some programs in the past would act really weird without any pagefile at all for some reason, so I didn't totally disable the pagefile but I shrunk it way down.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I continue to have such an existence with Windows 7 Professional on my SSD. No swap/hibernation, ran disk cleanup in admin mode, etc, and installed tinytree which reports the same bloated condition explorer does. The winsxs folder is still commanding 10GB or more making the total M$ consumption more than LM+OSX combined.

 

[Ketchup]

Just for others looking at this thread, winsxs is not commanding space, it's just that the NTFS file system doesn't know how else to allocate the hard links in this folder.

BarkingGhostar, I know that we have discussed this before.

 

[blankslate]

I'd also look at this optional patch.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/26...6-reclaims-wasted-space-on-your-c--drive.html

it allows you to use the Disk Cleanup tool to delete update/patch files that are left behind after some updates. I usually wait a week or two after patch Tuesday before using it.

I saved in total a about 1-2 gigs of space with that as I recall.

My total space used by the Windows folder is about 17.8 on my SSD and I did a fresh install. It just seems to me like there's less of a chance of an issue by just starting with a clean slate with an SSD upgrade.


....

 

[lxskllr]

Windows by default likes to create a pagefile the size of your system RAM, so in my case it was eating 16GB of drive space. Well isn't that just a stupid thing, since the more RAM you have the less pagefile you should need, right?

For full debugging on BSOD, I think you need a pagefile as big as your ram to contain the ram contents. Probably isn't that useful for most people.

 

[SparkyJJO]

AFAIK it dumps the RAM to a dump file, not the page file.

 

[JackMDS]

This page has few option too.

http://www.howtogeek.com/174705/how-to-reduce-the-size-of-your-winsxs-folder-on-windows-7-or-8/