How many GB does Windows 11 take up?

[kiddingguy]

On a comparison sheet I saw:

 

Storage 64GB or more (W11) vs 16GB for 32-bit / 20GB for 64-bit (W10)

 

Is Windows 11 (Pro) really is that much larger (almost 3x) in installation size on the SDD/HDD?

(and how about an in-place upgrade from W10 to W11?; what's the Windows file size folder?

[Sulphy]

So, i think those are suggested minimum requirements. My base install of Win11 Pro is around 16GB. 

[Ixion]

Likewise, my fairly clean install is just shy of 16Gb as well.

[kiddingguy]

Windows 10 Pro takes up - via WinDirStat - 20.2 GB on my drive.

3.7 GB of 'Installer' files, and 4.8 GB in the System32\DriverStore folder.

[Fleet Command]

Well, thanks for asking, I had the same question too.

 

It seems to me that someone in Microsoft told a junior copy-writer to write "sixteen gigabytes, but add four to be safe." The junior person heard, "sixty gigabytes, but add four to be safe."

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

It is probably about having enough disk space so that Windows plus some common applications can be installed, and still have room for swap space, system restore points, some amount of data, backups of files, and so forth.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

[spikey_richie]

After a greenfields vanilla install, you're looking at around 12GB. After years of windows updates, and a bloated WinSXS directory, nearer 60GB.

 

I found a really nice tool to scrub the installer cache which also gets bloated https://www.homedev.com.au/Free/PatchCleaner

 

You can move the patch installers to another drive for safe keeping, or just purge them.

[TheGhostPhantom]

  On 06/09/2021 at 14:15, kiddingguy said:

On a comparison sheet I saw:

 

Storage 64GB or more (W11) vs 16GB for 32-bit / 20GB for 64-bit (W10)

 

Is Windows 11 (Pro) really is that much larger (almost 3x) in installation size on the SDD/HDD?

(and how about an in-place upgrade from W10 to W11?; what's the Windows file size folder?

Expand  

You have to understand the system requirements are primarily for OEM devices.  Microsoft is attempting to avoid, OEM partners, selling devices without enough storage.  While you can install Windows 10 on a tiny 64 GB SSD it won't be big enough to actually update it.  

 

Blame it on the OEM partners back when Vista was being sold on "Vista Compatiable Devices", which were such low quality, users actually blamed Microsoft for the performance problems on those devices.   Vista was a great deal of things but a bad performer wasn't one of those things.

 

[Fleet Command]

  On 08/09/2021 at 07:48, goretsky said:

It is probably about having enough disk space so that Windows plus some common applications can be installed, and still have room for swap space, system restore points, some amount of data, backups of files, and so forth.

Expand  

With all due respect, Microsoft's goofiness has reached a point that any assumption of "having a good explanation" is foolhardy. To wit:

• Microsoft employees incorrectly use the word "inbox" to mean "bundled", "built-in", "in-built", etc. Funny, their word of choice two decades ago was "out-of-the-box" or "OOBE".
• They use the phrases "boot partition" and "system partition" in reverse! They've doing it since Windows NT 3.1.
• One of their program managers, Olia Gavrysh, once said you can only install one version of .NET Framework at the time! Oh, that wasn't her only mistake. She goes through an entire mad tirade, saying how you can develop desktop apps for macOS with .NET Core! (As of .NET 5, you can't. The Desktop Runtime is not available for Mac.)

An idiot wrote that requirement. No need to assume anything more complicated and come up with funny explanations.

 

[kiddingguy]

  On 08/09/2021 at 08:39, TheGhostPhantom said:

You have to understand the system requirements are primarily for OEM devices.  Microsoft is attempting to avoid, OEM partners, selling devices without enough storage.  While you can install Windows 10 on a tiny 64 GB SSD it won't be big enough to actually update it.  

 

Blame it on the OEM partners back when Vista was being sold on "Vista Compatiable Devices", which were such low quality, users actually blamed Microsoft for the performance problems on those devices.   Vista was a great deal of things but a bad performer wasn't one of those things.

 

Expand  

I have a Windows-partition (C-drive) of about 200 GB (almost 50% full), so this should be fine I guess....

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

Microsoft is a very big company, and like any other company, they have their own jargon, terms, abbreviations and other idiosyncrasies, all of which change over time.  While they may not use vocabulary that you are familiar with, or use it in a away you are familiar with, they are, generally-speaking, consistent, at least across their internal groups and times. 

 

Is it annoying to see Microsoft coin a term like Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM), which has the same commonly-used abbreviation for a program like Malwarebytes Antimalware (MBAM)?  Sure, but it is hardly the end of the world.  If you work in any large industry, you will probably come across similar things at some point.

 

Also, because they are such a large company, people are going to say things that are technically incorrect at some point; it's simply beyond the scale for one person so know everything there is to know about every product.

One thing that I have noted in my interactions with Microsoft is that they do tend to put some thought in to what they do most of the time.  That does not mean they come to the right conclusion, of course.  There are a lot of hard problems out there to solve, but to simply conclude that something happened because of "(a)n idiot wrote that requirement" is rather unlikely.  I know of several instances where answers were driven by data in the past, so a more reasonable answer is that the requirement was determined from some analysis of the telemetry they receive from their customers. 

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

  

  On 08/09/2021 at 09:07, Fleet Command said:

With all due respect, Microsoft's goofiness has reached a point that any assumption of "having a good explanation" is foolhardy. To wit:

• Microsoft employees incorrectly use the word "inbox" to mean "bundled", "built-in", "in-built", etc. Funny, their word of choice two decades ago was "out-of-the-box" or "OOBE".
• They use the phrases "boot partition" and "system partition" in reverse! They've doing it since Windows NT 3.1.
• One of their program managers, Olia Gavrysh, once said you can only install one version of .NET Framework at the time! Oh, that wasn't her only mistake. She goes through an entire mad tirade, saying how you can develop desktop apps for macOS with .NET Core! (As of .NET 5, you can't. The Desktop Runtime is not available for Mac.)

An idiot wrote that requirement. No need to assume anything more complicated and come up with funny explanations.

 

Expand  

 

[Fleet Command]

@goretskyAfter reading your message, it appears that you've come up with three contradictory excuses for Microsoft's blatant incompetence.

 

  Quote

"Microsoft is a very big company, and like any other company, they have their own jargon, terms, abbreviations."

Expand  

Are you saying that 64 GB, in Microsoft jargon, means 16 GB? 😂 They can use their jargon all they within their own walls. When speaking to us, they must speak our language.

 

  Quote

"Because they are such a large company, people are going to say things that are technically incorrect at some point."

Expand  

Slight mistakes are understandable. Huge mistakes, like the one that Olia Gavrysh committed, is grounds for termination of employment. That woman made no end of troubles for me. My manager, who knew zilch about computers watched that video and started a review of my work with the disposition to fire me. I kept telling them that she is wrong, but believing that the high and mighty Microsoft is wrong is more difficult than believing that I, an unknown nobody, is wrong. (They didn't fire me in the end because I had a Microsoft certificate and he didn't; and there was no evidence of damage as a result of misjudgment on my part.)

 

  Quote

One thing that I have noted in my interactions with Microsoft is that they do tend to put some thought in to what they do most of the time. That does not mean they come to the right conclusion, of course.

Expand  

There is a word for people who put some thought in what they do, but ultimately do it wrong: Incompetent. Microsoft has put a lot thought into the following, but with significant failure:

• Internet Explorer
• Windows 8
• Windows Vista
• Microsoft Bob
• iLoo
• Clippy
• OneNote for Windows 10
• Microsoft Photos app
• Universal Windows Platform (UWP)
• Buying the most popular smartphone-maker in the world (Nokia), ruining it, and writing it off
• Including Kinect with Xbox One, at the cost of hefty price tag
• Windows 10 version 1809, nickname: The Fall Destroyers Update!
• Hiring the brightest developers in the world just for the sake of firing them (stack ranking)

Now, your turn: We are here because we're seeing a distinct discrepancy in the system requirements that Microsoft has announced. They say 64 GB, but were seeing 20 GB. (Only  31% of the announced value.) If you know its reason for a fact and can prove it, I'm all ears. If not, I am not interested in hearing your beliefs, suspicions, guesses, or dewy-eyed fanaticism.

[George P Global Moderator]

I think 64GB as a minimum for hardware partners,  the OS clean install should be around the same size, if not a little different, as Windows 10.   Honestly no ones going to install or use a 64GB system drive.  Not unless you're ONLY going to install the OS on C and everything else on a larger 2nd drive?   I've done that in the past once or twice but no real reason to do so now.

 

I'm surprised they haven't pushed the min requirements up to 128GB.  Personally I wouldn't go under 256GB.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

 No, you simply misread and misunderstood my message.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

 

  On 09/09/2021 at 10:18, Fleet Command said:

@goretskyAfter reading your message, it appears that you've come up with three contradictory excuses for Microsoft's blatant incompetence.

 

Are you saying that 64 GB, in Microsoft jargon, means 16 GB? 😂 They can use their jargon all they within their own walls. When speaking to us, they must speak our language.

 

Slight mistakes are understandable. Huge mistakes, like the one that Olia Gavrysh committed, is grounds for termination of employment. That woman made no end of troubles for me. My manager, who knew zilch about computers watched that video and started a review of my work with the disposition to fire me. I kept telling them that she is wrong, but believing that the high and mighty Microsoft is wrong is more difficult than believing that I, an unknown nobody, is wrong. (They didn't fire me in the end because I had a Microsoft certificate and he didn't; and there was no evidence of damage as a result of misjudgment on my part.)

 

There is a word for people who put some thought in what they do, but ultimately do it wrong: Incompetent. Microsoft has put a lot thought into the following, but with significant failure:

• Internet Explorer
• Windows 8
• Windows Vista
• Microsoft Bob
• iLoo
• Clippy
• OneNote for Windows 10
• Microsoft Photos app
• Universal Windows Platform (UWP)
• Buying the most popular smartphone-maker in the world (Nokia), ruining it, and writing it off
• Including Kinect with Xbox One, at the cost of hefty price tag
• Windows 10 version 1809, nickname: The Fall Destroyers Update!
• Hiring the brightest developers in the world just for the sake of firing them (stack ranking)

Now, your turn: We are here because we're seeing a distinct discrepancy in the system requirements that Microsoft has announced. They say 64 GB, but were seeing 20 GB. (Only  31% of the announced value.) If you know its reason for a fact and can prove it, I'm all ears. If not, I am not interested in hearing your beliefs, suspicions, guesses, or dewy-eyed fanaticism.

Expand  

 

[theefool]

Back when people would install windows on 32 or 64 GB ssd's. I was like why?  That is crazy.  Try at least 256 GB.  But, that was back when SSD's were quite pricey. 

 

I personally, didn't have any issues during that time, but I had more storage. 

[Fleet Command]

@theefoolSSD is more expensive these days because of a certain space-hungry cryptomining scheme called Chia.

 

I hate cryptocurrency. It has never improved our lives in a positive way.

[theefool]

  On 12/09/2021 at 08:59, Fleet Command said:

@theefoolSSD is more expensive these days because of a certain space-hungry cryptomining scheme called Chia.

 

I hate cryptocurrency. It has never improved our lives in a positive way.

Expand  

True, but, similar prices with more storage. 

 

Not a fan of cryptocurrency either.  Was big at folding@home for a few years.  Was on majorgeeks and reddit teams. 

[bledd]

  On 08/09/2021 at 07:48, goretsky said:

Hello,

It is probably about having enough disk space so that Windows plus some common applications can be installed, and still have room for swap space, system restore points, some amount of data, backups of files, and so forth.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

Expand  

Yup.

 

Managing Windows 10 on 64GB is hard enough as it is.  Realistic minimum should be 128GB. 

 

So many crappy netbooks out there with 32GB and no way of keeping Windows up to date.

[Fleet Command]

So far, I've reached two contradictory conclusions:

 

• The list of requirements originally belonged to Windows 10X and was meant for OEMs, i.e., Microsoft is telling the OEMs that their devices must have, at minimum, a 64 GB storage device. Note the absence of the ordinary "minimum" and "recommended" classification that was present in all previous versions of Windows.
• The list of requirements is taking into consideration the space needs of Delivery Optimization (16 GB but Microsoft says 32 GB), Windows Subsystem for Linux (16 GB), and Windows Subsystem for Android. Or maybe, it is the opposite; i.e., instead of taking them into consideration and breaking them down, Microsoft is saying, "oh, this could get complex. We're lazy and so are the users. Let's simplify it. What's the minimum storage size out there? 64 GB? Fine. Make it the minimum." After all, this how software developers stated their apps' minimum RAM requirements for years: They reported as not how much RAM their apps occupy, but how much you must have installed on your motherboard.

 

Bear in mind that Windows 11 is the product of a company so handicapped that couldn't fully migrate Control Panel to Settings in 9 years and cannot develop a new taskbar that docks to the top, left, or right side of the screen.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

  On 08/09/2021 at 07:48, goretsky said:

Hello,

It is probably about having enough disk space so that Windows plus some common applications can be installed, and still have room for swap space, system restore points, some amount of data, backups of files, and so forth.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

Expand  

this

 

16gb is not enough for a minimum anymore even if Windows itself fits, it's no longer enough space for build upgrades from WU ect.

Take all those cheap Windows 8 tablets the OEMs released back in the day; most of them only had 16gb storage and in order to upgrade to any newer build (especially once 10 started pushing them via WU) you always have to have a USB drive plugged in to upgrade as I don't believe it would use SD card storage for the WU

[Fleet Command]

  On 23/09/2021 at 13:32, Brandon H said:

16gb is not enough for a minimum anymore even if Windows itself fits, it's no longer enough space for build upgrades from WU ect.

Take all those cheap Windows 8 tablets the OEMs released back in the day; most of them only had 16gb storage and in order to upgrade to any newer build (especially once 10 started pushing them via WU) you always have to have a USB drive plugged in to upgrade as I don't believe it would use SD card storage for the WU

Expand  

Someone who works at Microsoft knows none of these.

 

And I don't remember any "cheap Windows 8 tablets" with "16gb storage" at all. In fact, 16 GB hard disk drives weren't produced at that time.

[adrynalyne]

  On 24/09/2021 at 00:09, Fleet Command said:

Someone who works at Microsoft knows none of these.

 

And I don't remember any "cheap Windows 8 tablets" with "16gb storage" at all. In fact, 16 GB hard disk drives weren't produced at that time.

Expand  

They were all over the place and they didn't use hard disk drives.

 

https://laptoping.com/specs/product/nextbook-nxw8qc16g-inexpensive-8-16gb-windows-tablet/

One example.

[Fleet Command]

  On 24/09/2021 at 00:39, adrynalyne said:

They were all over the place and they didn't use hard disk drives.

 

https://laptoping.com/specs/product/nextbook-nxw8qc16g-inexpensive-8-16gb-windows-tablet/

One example.

Expand  

Well, knock me out with a feather! It doesn't even have an HDD. How did they manage to get Microsoft's license? Windows 8's license required having 10GB free space once OOBE completes.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

  On 24/09/2021 at 00:09, Fleet Command said:

Someone who works at Microsoft knows none of these.

 

And I don't remember any "cheap Windows 8 tablets" with "16gb storage" at all. In fact, 16 GB hard disk drives weren't produced at that time.

Expand  

maybe they were 32GB but even that's not enough IMO for a minimum standard.

I have one of the 1st gen Dell Venu 8 Pro's that came with Windows 8. was a pain in the but to continue upgrading it as I'd always need a flash drive because the eMMC drive wasn't big enough for upgrades. this essentially required me to get Dell's proprietary USB+Power OTG adapter since there was only the one microUSB port on it as expected of a tablet.