Minimum Partition Size for a WinXP Install?
 

Hi All,

Does anyone know the minimum amount of space I can create a partition for a installation of Windows XP?

Any help is appreciated.

MS says 1.5GB: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/p...n/sysreqs.mspx

I've done it on 2GB a couple of years ago, because all I needed was AV and a browser - I'm not even sure that would work now because of the size of the security updates. If you want anything useful, I wouldn't even think of going below 4GB...

Good luck!

A freshly installed XP Pro took up about 3 GB on a virtual machine here. Some of it is the pagefile, the size of which will vary depending on your installed RAM size.

The swap file (aka page file) can be moved to a different partition if you want; it just prevents you from getting a memory dump on BSoD. The other thing that takes up space (and that I don't think you can move) is a hibernate file, which is useful for a laptop. That will be the size of the amount of RAM you have.

As ProvRIGuy notes the need for temp space for updates and the like almost necessitates 4GB+ to have a system that works at all efficiently. If you do go smaller but have a second drive available for the %temp% and %tmp% locations (plus the swap file as noted above), and you routinely clean out the hotfix uninstalls you should be OK.

Of course, Office 2007 SP1 is rumored to be a ~1GB install (though I think they finally slimmed it down to ~500MB), and it was going to require something like 7GB of free space to perform the install. Not a huge issue today for an XP insall, but something to consider. No one knows what XP SP3 is really going to look like or what the free space requirements are going to be to apply it when it comes out later this year.

I have XP install on a 2GB CF card. It can't load a large web page due to limited swap file. So I am thinking to try a 4GB CF card next. The machine is a Thinkpad A30p with about 256MB of RAM. I found this CF to 2.5 inch ATA adapter in a small shop in Akihabara near Suihirocho for a few bucks.

My last desktop PC at home is running on a 10GB hard drive. Yes, it was cheap, something like $15. It is only used for downloading and writing CDs and DVDs.

I am asking because a relative just bought a MacBook Air with the SSD drive (64gb). He will need to install BootCamp with XP in order to view the security cameras at his home and office. (For some reason this software will only run in BootCamp and will not run in VMWare or Parallels.) Since the only thing it will be doing is running one program I am hoping to install the smallest XP possible plus this program. Even web browsing will not be done on this install. I dont know what a page file is... :o

Page file is virtual memory that is actually on the hard drive to make more RAM appear visible to Windows. It should be 1.5x the physical RAM. If you're just using it for the video camera monitoring I would assume that you can get away with a 512 MB (or maybe even 384) RAM install of Windows on a 4 GB partition and be fine. You can maybe go a little smaller, but I wouldn't risk it as service packs and the like require the additional disk space to install.

Valid points about the need to leave disk space for fix pack installs as well as temp files and swap file. Fwiw, I have had a Win2003 Server running in 2GB partition for several years with no problems (tight but acceptable); so 2GB is plenty for XP with reasonable administration (ignoring swap file size and application requirements).

I once built an emergency partition (WXP, no SP) in 512MB, said no to anything and everything, no swap, no network, etc. Just there to be able to recover the system if need be. I am now on newer hardware (and SP2) and use a 1Gb emergency partition.

4 GB is what you want for regular XP, although as mentioned there are "simplifed" versions of XP out there that will go as low as 1 GB or less. I've seen one called TinyXP that runs great on an old t20? laptop.

That said - it's not really kosher to get these versions - pretty sure they are illegal. There are tools to create your own version of "lite" xp or Vista. One that I remember is call Nlite. A little google work will get you more information. Basically, they allow you to remove standard components of windows that you don't use, like internet explorer (if you want) etc.

I put XP Pro on my MacBook Pro using VMware Fusion. I gave it a 10GB allowance. Big enough to have a little breathing room for most anything I would decide to put on, small enough not to be too much of a burden on my 80GB HD.

The cool thing about VMware, though, is that while you tell it the max size, it will not take up that entire size right away. The Virtual Machine file for this install is not quite 4GB. That's all the space it takes on the disk for now, though it's allowed to ultimately take up 10GB if it gets that big. Seems pretty nifty, so unfortunate that whatever the setup is won't run in VMware or Parallels. (I can't really imagine why; if he's getting a MacBook Air, there aren't too many ways it can connect to things hardware-wise! I would think the camera info would come in via the network, and that should all work fine on VMware.)

Anyway, given that size and that I have installed rather little, even allowing for the fact that some of that might be VMware's overhead, I would make the partition at least 5GB to be safe.

I dont know why it does not work either but it has something to do with graphics processing. I forget the exact issue but its know to be a limitation with both Parallels and VMware.