Install OS on seperate partition? How big Vista 64

Please forgive me. As I'm getting older I am more and more out of the loop.

I'm used to installing my OS on a smaller partition I use as C and use D for programs and E for misc storage of everything else. At least that is how I've done it in the past.

I've never used Vista before and am coming back in windows. How big will I need my partition in Vista 64bit?

If there are better ways now if anyone can critique me that would be great. I'm always up for learning.

 

i would say partition it for about 20GB this should be enough space i think for all the updates and other things that windows requires...im not entirely sure...but i would guess that could be right. if you have too little space you get the annoying system tray pop up alllll the time saying "you have not got enough space on the hard drive" it is sooo annoying

 

It kind of depends on what you will be installing in addition to the OS - I mean what kind of programs.

Also, since you are installing Vista x64 I assume you have plenty of RAM. So if you have 4Gb of RAM, you will need space for the hibernation file (4Gb) and for the pagefile (recommended setting would be around 6Gb). Thats about 10Gb for just these two files. The Vista x64 install is around 20Gb. Vista 64 requires more space than a simple Vista 32, because in Vista 64 there is a seperate environment that runs 32 bit programs.

So that's about 30Gb, plus your programs. I myself use a 50-60Gb partition for the OS + programs, and whatever space if left on the HDD is turned into a "D:" drive, where I keep data, files, etc.

By the way, for more info on paging file size, please do read Mark Russinovich's wonderful article: http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx

 

thank you for the information. I think at 60 GB partition seems reasonable.

 

30GB should be more than enough IF you install
most software (except Antivirus type of things) in some other drive.