Windows 7 clean install size

[CPressland]

So i'm about to install Windows 7 on my netbook, an eeePC 901, it has two hard drives, one 4GB, one 16GB.

I'm going to take a random guess that I wont be able to install it on my 4GB drive? How big is a clean install of Windows 7?

Thanks

Asphyxia8489

[_neutrino Veteran]

5.917Gb from personal experience.

[dcoaster]

I installed on a 10GB partition and after install, I had 3.2GB of free space. This included the hibernation and page files totaling 1.5GB.

[CPressland]

Ok, i'll install on the 16GB drive and move the pagefile to the 4GB drive.. anyone know if I can move the hibernation file to another drive?

[George P Global Moderator]

I think you can, if you change the path Windows uses for it. You might have to go through the registry though? I haven't actually messed with it, but it should be doable.

[CPressland]

Yeah, I might move the "users" folder to the 4GB drive too, it's a netbook so it's not like we store files on it or anything :) but Application Data folders and stuff will load slightly faster :)

[George P Global Moderator]

If it's all about using the SSD to speed up read times then yeah, I'd put the core OS/apps on an SSD then keep folders/files like the pagefile on a HDD since those are always either being writen or overwriten often. And as you know flash doesn't live as long if you keep writing to it.

They really should be more clear about how long SSDs will live with all the writes to the pagefile that windows does etc, plus other things now like the indexer and so on.

[LiqHead]

Windows (in general) should not ever be installed on a netbook... sorry.

[CPressland]

Windows (in general) should not ever be installed on a netbook... sorry.

And I agree, but one of the things Microsoft said about Windows 7 was that it would be very scalable with Netbooks, I plan on testing this theory, it's not like I used the damned thing for anything else so I might as well.

Windows XP is on it at the moment and it's very fast, I would prefer to have Ubuntu on it but my family have some sort of "Anti Linux" thing going on at the moment /weird.

Like I said, it's only for testing and messing around with.

[hinz]

i installed build 7000 today on my 901 and it took around 10GB, (32gb drive for Win 7 and 4gb spare drive)

it runs lightning fast and boots to a loaded desktop in just around 25 to 30 secs (note i've not installed any apps yet)

[CPressland]

i installed build 7000 today on my 901 and it took around 10GB, (32gb drive for Win 7 and 4gb spare drive)

it runs lightning fast and boots to a loaded desktop in just around 25 to 30 secs (note i've not installed any apps yet)

Nice one mate, thats what I wanted to read :)

Any driver issues?

[hinz]

didn't detect ethernet, wlan bluetooth, aero however worked out the box.

just wanted to test to see if it would work today, planning on building a customised image with drivers, apps etc over the next day or two (using WAIK)

[George P Global Moderator]

Win7 can run on todays netbooks just fine as long as you don't have any big driver issues. And I expect the final will run even better than the beta.

MS is NOT going to let the new and growing netbook market get away from them. All the massive resorce tweaks they did to 7 over Vista are mostly a resault of the growing netbook market which they're not doing so great in at the moment.

[CPressland]

didn't detect ethernet, wlan bluetooth, aero however worked out the box.

just wanted to test to see if it would work today, planning on building a customised image with drivers, apps etc over the next day or two (using WAIK)

Well any drivers you find can you link me to them please as ASUS obviously dont offer them.

Thankyou

[hinz]

atm i've just used the standard asus xp drivers but i've only installed the wireless and ethenet which both work fine.

for the acpi stuff see http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=51245 should work on win7 however i've yet to try it

edit: you'll find that alot of the original drivers for the 901 on the asus website have vista drivers when u unpack the zip files which should work with win7

Edited December 29, 2008 by hinz

[CPressland]

edit: you'll find that alot of the original drivers for the 901 on the asus website have vista drivers when u unpack the zip files which should work with win7

Brilliant, now for the very long download process (am capped to 15KB/s at the moment)

Thanks for everyones help, it's now installed and fairly functional :)

[WelshBluebird]

Windows (in general) should not ever be installed on a netbook... sorry.

Why not?

The latest build runs very nicely on my aspire one. Only two issues I'm having. One, a bug where Windows Live Mesh makes aero turn black, and one to do with the wifi drivers. Other than that, its as good as anything else on here.

[jimsey]

there is a version of windows 7 is being designed for netbooks to be released mid 2009.

in the meantime i've installed windows 7 basic on a virtual machine, and it takes up about 3.7gb with pagefile and system restore turned off.

but it still requires 5.5gb hdd for install so cant be installed directly onto the eee 4gb ssd drive yet.

if vegetunk does lite win7, and remove all the useless speech stuff, drivers and other things the EEE doesn't need, he should easily get the install below 3gb and setup requirement below 4gb.

[atleeit]

Windows 7 has already been design for laptops, you are using it man :D

People have already made a cut down version of Windows 7. 1GB something.

[George P Global Moderator]

If you have a netbook with a 16GB SSD or w/e, Win7 Ultimate will fit as is. If MS wants to target a specific netbook version all they'd be doing is taking out stuff like Media Center, and turning off other media related bits.

Since a netbook is targeting the "net" you're not really using it for media related tasks, though you can if needs be I suppose.

But forget watching a video/movie on that small screen, that's a big NO from me.