How much disk drive space does Windows 7 take?

If Windows 7 appeals to you as it does to a great number of people, you may wonder how much disk drive space you need to carve out to create a partition for this particular operating system.

The official guidelines recommend to allow at least 16 GB of disk drive space for Windows 7 32 bit and 20 GB for Windows 7 64 bit. Let it be stressed that these are the minimal values, as the system files expand over time. After a few years of intensive use, updates, backup data, cache files etc. may take up even as much as extra 20 GB of memory space!

To compare, Windows 95 required 40 MB of space to be installed. Windows 98 needed about 4-5 times this much: from 175 MB for a new installation to 205 MB for upgrading from Windows 95.

Did you know?

Do you want to free some space on your disk drive? It’s a good idea to perfom a cleanup to get rid of cache files and put the fragmented files back together.

If that is not enough and you are in desperate need of cutting back on memory space quickly, you can disable system options such as hibernation (which takes about 1 GB!) or system recovery. However, it’s recommended to restore any functions which are crucial for the system to function correctly as soon as possible.

How much disk drive space does your operating system take?