Ways to minimize the size of Windows 7 OS Partition

Question

I'm reinstalling Windows 7 on a new 60 GB SSD and want to keep the OS footprint as small as possible. I'd like to minimize things like winsxs and driverstore, and I want to move user folders to another drive if it makes sense.

What do you recommend?

Answer 1

The only way to minimize the Windows installation is to minimize the number of system features and of installed applications. One cannot reduce the size of winsxs and driverstore once they are established, not without serious risks for stability.

What you can do is disable hibernation to avoid the large hiberfil.sys file. If you do not intend to uninstall Windows updates, you can also remove the NtUninstall folders after each Windows update (not recommended).

If you are installing Microsoft Office, you can select the Delete installation files check-box during the installation of Office to avoid having the Msocache Folder and save about 200 MB (not recommended). This might not be worth the saving, since it will then require the Office CD to apply Windows Update to Office.

You can get into serious troubles if you try to move the entire Users folder, although theoretically this is possible. It would be better to move out specific sub-folders and replace them by symlinks. But even that is not really necessary, since most applications can use as default folders any folder that you specify. For example, Office can store by default its documents elsewhere than in My Documents.

Storing documents, images and videos elsewhere than in the system drive is entirely enough in your case, since 60 GB is fine for Windows 7 and all installed applications (except when installing multiple large video games).