Installing Windows 7 on a 16GB SSD?

[htcz]

Hey

Windows 7 asks for at least 16GB of space but as we all know it doesnt nearing take that amount at all (even after updates).

Any way to bypass this?

Thank you

[HSoft]

You really don't want to. When you take into account patches, service packs etc. (as well as a swap drive but you can move that) I would say a minimum OS partition should be 40Gb.

[ESC@PE]

Hey

Windows 7 asks for at least 16GB of space but as we all know it doesnt nearing take that amount at all (even after updates).

Any way to bypass this?

Thank you

Well did you try it out yet? If its returning errors to you on the install then it wont be possible.

The only thing I can think of is installing Win 7 Starter Edition or maybe the version thats formatted for kiosks and things of that nature. That'd be my only guess...

[Jose_49]

You really don't want to. When you take into account patches, service packs etc. (as well as a swap drive but you can move that) I would say a minimum OS partition should be 40Gb.

Yup. But if it's for minimal use or testing, you can give it 30 GB as well.

[htcz]

Well did you try it out yet? If its returning errors to you on the install then it wont be possible.

The only thing I can think of is installing Win 7 Starter Edition or maybe the version thats formatted for kiosks and things of that nature. That'd be my only guess...

Did not try it (but it should work as system requirements ask for at least 16GB but other reports say it doesnt)

Im asking people with experience or/and know a way to bypass that system requirement.....

[Detection]

This might work

http://www.rt7lite.com/

[Excelsis]

You really don't want to. When you take into account patches, service packs etc. (as well as a swap drive but you can move that) I would say a minimum OS partition should be 40Gb.

I've been running my Windows partition at 25GB for a long time now, including for Win7 and I haven't had any issues. Currently I'm sitting at 15.2GB used.

I don't do anything to make space, really, just put the swap file at 2GB and disable hibernation. And I don't use huge programs (no Office and the like).

16GB might be a bit too low though.

[htcz]

This might work

http://www.rt7lite.com/

Didnt read anything there that said I could skip sys requirments...

[Detection]

Didnt read anything there that said I could skip sys requirments...

You can tell it to ignore the RAM requirements, and you can remove unwanted parts of the install to make it smaller too, this is the program that made the famous 700MB CD ISOs of Windows 7

Similar to nLite and vLite for XP and Vista's 100MB and 700MB ISOs

Why not just try it? 16GB is within minimum requirements

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

I had 7 on my CR48 before it got destroyed on the provided 16GB SSD....even took it on a trip for a week that way....fully updated and all, but that was it. No extra anything installed, and it DID fit, but BARELY...so from personal experience, I'd say 16GB is not enough, especially when it comes down to small things....like getting somewhere halfway across the country, before really letting it sink in that, dog gone it, I really need to look at and edit this excel sheet....but wait, oh crap! I didn't have the HDD space for Office and I didn't bring any portable solution with me! (which in my case, was solved with team viewer, but still, someone else may not have thought to leave team viewer running on their desktop with the Office program they use) 16GB will work, although barely. (from my experience)

[htcz]

I had 7 on my CR48 before it got destroyed on the provided 16GB SSD....even took it on a trip for a week that way....fully updated and all, but that was it. No extra anything installed, and it DID fit, but BARELY...so from personal experience, I'd say 16GB is not enough, especially when it comes down to small things....like getting somewhere halfway across the country, before really letting it sink in that, dog gone it, I really need to look at and edit this excel sheet....but wait, oh crap! I didn't have the HDD space for Office and I didn't bring any portable solution with me! (which in my case, was solved with team viewer, but still, someone else may not have thought to leave team viewer running on their desktop with the Office program they use) 16GB will work, although barely. (from my experience)

Great post. Thank you.

This is going to pose a problem indeed......32GB is too expensive and out of the budget.

Thanks to everyone who have been helpful, as there are some very rude people that posted in this thread :)

[helpifIcan]

Thanks to everyone who have been helpful, as there are some very rude people that posted in this thread :)

Unfortunately that does sometimes happen on a public forum, just ignor them.

[g0dzilla]

IMO, 16GB is just not a sustainable capacity as it will eventually get full...

You could probably scrape by for a little while but from what I remember, Windows works well/optimally with at least 15% free space on the OS partition.

SSD drives are a LOT cheaper nowadays and the cheapest one that I could find in my local shop here in Sydney Australia is $60AUD for a Patriot SSD drive (Newegg for you in the States may be similar too):

http://www.msy.com.au/product.jsp?productId=7695

[htcz]

Thought this was my thread :p

SSDs are sadly still out of a low budget PC. Hope it gets better.

[spikey_richie]

My WinSXS is almost 7gb by itself, let alone the rest of the Windows dir, Users dir (except the libraries which are moved to another disk). Anything less than 30gb will soon get filled up.

[Xilo]

Don't bother. I got a 40GB SSD just for windows and programs and even that's too small.

[+BudMan MVC]

"My WinSXS is almost 7gb by itself,"

Lets not start this again.. I highly doubt it's 7GB, since its mostly hardlinks. This has been gone over many many times.

--

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2008/11/19/disk-space.aspx

In practice, nearly every file in the WinSxS directory is a ?hard link? to the physical files elsewhere on the system?meaning that the files are not actually in this directory. For instance in the WinSxS there might be a file called advapi32.dll that takes up >700K however what?s being reported is a hard link to the actual file that lives in the Windows\System32, and it will be counted twice (or more) when simply looking at the individual directories from Windows Explorer.

While it?s true that WinSxS does consume some disk space by simply existing, and there are a number of metadata files, folders, manifests, and catalogs in it, it?s significantly smaller than reported. The actual amount of storage consumed varies, but on a typical system it is about 400MB. While that is not small, we think the robustness provided for servicing is a reasonable tradeoff.

--

Not sure where they got that 400MB number from, not sure its really that small -- but if you look into the past threads about it.. It going to be closer to that 400MB number than your 7GB number that is for sure ;)

[capr]

I dont' know about bypassing the requirement. but a little outside the box thinking may solve the problem. Try installing 7 on a VM that's at least 16GB. Then do a full system backup. Restore from that backup on your hard drive.

I remember reading guides on how to take a VM image of windows and put it on an actual drive and make it bootable.... this seems like a really round about way of doing things but might work.

another suggestion is to install windows on a different disk. clone it and dispatch to this disk. as long as they are in the same system, you shouldn't have any driver issues.

[+BudMan MVC]

Are you talking 32bit or 64? Min requirements for 32 is 16GB, for 64 its 20GB

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/system-requirements

I reread this thread twice, so you have not actually tried to install this? Or you have and your getting errors?

Simple google shows that people are running w7 on 16GB SSDs -- so I don't see what issue you should have?

[The Laughing Man]

I've had a laptop run Win7x64, on a 16SSD before with no issues. Just do what some folks here said, Slim up the install if you can and afterwards disable hibernation. Check out the "Windows Features" application (type windows features in the start menu) and check off any unwanted applications.

[Mando]

ive got Win7 ultimate x64 plus anything that runs with W7 on a 60Gb ssd (inc swap file, AV etc) with 32Gbish free, wouldnt like to try and trim that down any further tbh (I got system restore off)