Beginner Windows partition, how much ?

Graham

Graham

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Hi all techy people.
Now I done some searching about on the web and came up with all sorts of info/advice but I would like your input please.
What I have is a new built PC :) Now, do I new to bore you with specs, nah not really but anyway, I plan on putting Win10 pro 64 bit on and adding it to the mobo ASROCK FM2A88X + Killer to include it in the fast startup,
I hope I got the changes right in the mobo.
I have a new Samsung 256 GB 850 EVO Pro coming Wednesday and I would like to Partition the SSD to have just Win 10 on "C" and anything else on "D" blah blah blah
How much do I Partition ? Would 25 be enough, thinking to expect updates and whatever on there also.
Your input would be very grateful people.
 
25GB is far too small for the OS alone. After a few updates the original install size will grow quite quickly, not to mention growing temp file folders. Additionally, major updates - such as the "Anniversary" one essentially creates a massive "old" windows directory to enable roll backs. You are creating a whole lot of potential future pain if you go down this route.

I'd use the entire 256GB SSD drive for both the OS and program files, and then use an additional hard drive for storage of files / photos / media / etc., (and then add a robust backup discipline and drives to match).

One other consideration is wear levelling. I suspect filling up a small partition with the OS system alone is going to limit the potential for wear levelling - meaning it is likely you are going to kill your SSD faster than you otherwise would do. I maybe wrong - perhaps the wear levelling and TRIM algorithms are getting cleverer, and will write data across both partitions, but this seems counter intuitive to me.
 
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@Graham

I agree with @DeadpanDodo on this. I have a 500gb SSD running Win10 Pro 64 bit and with all the programs on it, except for PSE11 which is on another drive, the space it currently occupies is 77gb. So your 25gb partition is going to be way too small.
 
same here in fact I just have a 500gb SSD for everything.
I have a HP Microserver for storage which is backed up using Hubic.
 
DeadpanDodo said:
25GB is far too small for the OS alone. After a few updates the original install size will grow quite quickly, not to mention growing temp file folders. Additionally, major updates - such as the "Anniversary" one essentially creates a massive "old" windows directory to enable roll backs. You are creating a whole lot of potential future pain if you go down this route.

I'd use the entire 256GB SSD drive for both the OS and program files, and then use an additional hard drive for storage of files / photos / media / etc., (and then add a robust backup discipline and drives to match).

One other consideration is wear levelling. I suspect filling up a small partition with the OS system alone is going to limit the potential for wear levelling - meaning it is likely you are going to kill your SSD faster than you otherwise would do. I maybe wrong - perhaps the wear levelling and TRIM algorithms are getting cleverer, and will write data across both partitions, but this seems counter intuitive to me.
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David_H said:
@Graham

I agree with @DeadpanDodo on this. I have a 500gb SSD running Win10 Pro 64 bit and with all the programs on it, except for PSE11 which is on another drive, the space it currently occupies is 77gb. So your 25gb partition is going to be way too small.
Click to expand...

ancient_mariner said:
What he said. I have a 256 drive for OS nd 1TB drive for data. I would treat 128GB as a minimum size for OS & software.
Click to expand...
Thanks all for your comments, I didn't realise that Windows gets so big with all the extras.
There's so much to know, always learning.
Just hope this pc also lasts 9 years like my old Dell [emoji3]
All advice and information taken on board and I'll skip the partition job.
Thanks again.
 
I believe one can get away with 64GB, but that requires careful housekeeping once you have applications installed. This laptop had a 32GB SSD as cache memory when I bought it.
 
you don't really need to partition up drives any more like old times, NTFS as a file system is so much better
 
Moving "Program Files" off the Windows partition is a non trivial task that's not to be undertaken lightly. Better to use the entire SSD for Windows plus applications and consider a separate drive for data. Though lots of applications will default to storing things in C:\ProgramData (this one is not simple to override) and C:\Users\<user account name>.

Problems of cluster sizes on large drives that FAT file systems had are largely obviated with NTFS so the benefits of multiple partitions are reduced.
 
Mr Bump said:
you don't really need to partition up drives any more like old times, NTFS as a file system is so much better
Click to expand...
onomatopoeia said:
Moving "Program Files" off the Windows partition is a non trivial task that's not to be undertaken lightly. Better to use the entire SSD for Windows plus applications and consider a separate drive for data. Though lots of applications will default to storing things in C:\ProgramData (this one is not simple to override) and C:\Users\<user account name>.

Problems of cluster sizes on large drives that FAT file systems had are largely obviated with NTFS so the benefits of multiple partitions are reduced.
Click to expand...
Thanks Paul,Mark.
As above, all things taken on board.
Its nice to know I can post on here to get some good ol info.
 
Mine is a 250 gb SSD with win 10 and some progs ( office/money etc Adobe CC ) and I have 184 gb free.
This pc was buit by CCL who said don't bother partioning C drive
Data is on a 1Tb HDD
 
Min size of XP in a VirtualBox VM=1GB, Min size of Win7 in a VM about 15GB - haha! :LOL:

I have a massive amount of space on this 500GB SSD - C drive is 100GB, which can run a huge number of VMs,

Started to install my win10 ISO but then immediately wanted to download a HUGE amount of backup files.

I am on a capped download so back to good ol' Win7!

.
 
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