How big a drive is required for a Windows or a Mac OS install w/BC?

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Level 2

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How big a drive is required for a Windows or a Mac OS install w/BC?

I'm putting a BootCamp Windows VM on aMac Pro using an Apricorn Velocity duo board with two 500GB SSDs on it. I have most of the information I need to get it to work, but is 500 GB big enough for a Virtual Machine boot drive? Or for the Mac Boot drive? If I Get Info on my current Mac boot drive, which has no user work files on it except a few desktop folders, it dresses out at about 600GB. What happens if I use the other 500GB SSD on the Apricorn card as a boot drive for the Mac? Will the installer distribute files elsewhere, or will I get a message telling me there isn't enough free space on the drive?

Mac Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), null

Posted on May 6, 2016 9:11 AM

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Answer 1

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Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

May 6, 2016 9:56 AM in response to Birck Cox

BootcampAssitant creates a "real" Windows partition, depending on the Wondows version and the apps you want to use, count at least 50GB for that partition.

Windows VM is a file in which Windows is running in OSX with a "virtualiser" app like, Virtualbox, VMware or ParallelsDesktop: the size of that file can be anywhere between 25GB and 50GB depending on what is in it (the virtualizer app takes only little space itself).

The main differences are

that the Bootcamp partition and the OSX partition do not run at the same time: you have to restart to swith. with a VM you run everything at the same time sharing the resources in the mac;

and the space taken by a VM comes free immediately when you delete the VM in Finder or in the VM app, while with a Bootcamp partition you have to remove the partition with BootcampAssitant.

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Answer 2

Birck Cox Author

Level 2

191 points

May 6, 2016 10:05 AM in response to Lexiepex

OK. It sounds as if the Windows install will work fine, but when I look at the stuff accompanying an OSX install, "Library " and "System" folders are 17 and 8GB respectively, while "Users" is 533GB and Applications is 66GB. Users alone exceeds the capacity of either SSD. Any idea what will happen?

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Answer 3

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

May 6, 2016 10:18 AM in response to Birck Cox

where did you find these figures??

My startupDrive->Library folder is between 6 and 7GB, my StartupDrive->System folder is between 8 and 8.5GB, my StartupDrive->Applications folder is about 15GB (after cleaning out what I do not need)... Together about 30GB....

And then about 30 MB for a Windows VM (with parallels Desktop).

And then a lot of space in Music, Movies, PhotoLibraries, Pictures, however

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Answer 4

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

May 6, 2016 10:22 AM in response to Birck Cox

About the disks you have: when you have a Bootcamp Windows partition it should be on a bootable drive!

your user Libraries, pictures, movies, music you can put on another drive, just point iTunes, or whatever apps you use, once to those Libraries.

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Answer 5

Birck Cox Author

Level 2

191 points

May 6, 2016 10:38 AM in response to Lexiepex

Ah. Those are the answers I was hoping for. I won't have enough applications in the Windows partition to create a problem; I don't know how Windows handles the windows equivalent of "Users" and all that entails, but if I can spread the Users files for the Mac install around a bit, there shouldn't be a bottleneck. Thanks for following this and supplying the information. PS- I mentioned Virtual Machine in connection with BootCamp, although I know BootCamp may not be a VM as such, because I have VMW fusion and plan to add it to Boot Camp once I have Boot Camp running reliably.

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Answer 6

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

May 6, 2016 11:06 AM in response to Birck Cox

my pleasure.

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