System restore points.

It's likely the Windows/winsxs folder.  It's used by windows side-by-side for dll versioning and grows overtime as you run programs.  There is nothing you can really do to safely make it smaller.
 
Depending on how your partitions are laid out you may be able to grow your boot partition.  Or you may just have to make it larger the next time you format.

I would use the current drive for data, get a small fast drive for OS. On my two systems page is on non-OS 2-drive array of WD VRs.
SP1 is going to probably want all of 9GB during the update process.

Thank you David!
 
After using some of your suggestions, I can already see the capacity increasing.  Hopefully I don't have resize my partitions though.
 
BR for you!

GParted makes the process pretty easy too. You probably just need to move and resize the partitions.
 
Thanks for the BR!
 
 

david12857 

 I always make the boot partition at least 80-100Gb.

 
+1.  What's the point of trying to cram a Windows install into the smallest possible partition? 

rjohnson11

It's advantageous for those who use SSD(s) as their primary boot partition

It's a pain in the rear is what it is.  If you can't afford a big enough SSD to run Windows without micromanaging it, perhaps you should reconsider the whole SSD scene and wait until you can afford it.  Trying to cram Windows into a 40GB partition always was a pain, still is a pain, and always will be a pain.
 
Edit:  The above rant is just my opinion as someone who has had to hassle with disk space many times over the years.  Feel free to disagree.

Sleinous
Don't forget to head over to system files button in disk cleanup, and clean out your old windows.old folder if you have already done a fresh install of windows 7 (tick previous windows installations), I believe all the temporary windows update files can also be ticked in that advanced disk cleanup window.

 
Thanks for the reminder on that one. I noticed today that I was missing 1GB of space on my SSD today since last night, and I hadn't installed a single thing. Then I noticed the system files button was missing from disk cleanup. I had no re-enable UAC notification settings to get the button to come back.

richj44

rjohnson11

It's advantageous for those who use SSD(s) as their primary boot partition

It's a pain in the rear is what it is.  If you can't afford a big enough SSD to run Windows without micromanaging it, perhaps you should reconsider the whole SSD scene and wait until you can afford it.  Trying to cram Windows into a 40GB partition always was a pain, still is a pain, and always will be a pain.

Edit:  The above rant is just my opinion as someone who has had to hassle with disk space many times over the years.  Feel free to disagree.

Ditto.
The Microsoft winsxs and the installer folders just seem to grow and use up more space the longer you use it.
Here is a printout from WinDirStat (highly recommended to figure out where all your disk space went) on my rig and note that over 1/2 of my 96GB SSD is already being hogged up by Windows

    51.2 GB C:\
    30.6 GB C:\Windows
    10.3 GB C:\Windows\winsxs
     9.6 GB C:\Windows\Installer
     2.9 GB C:\Windows\assembly
     2.5 GB C:\Windows\System32
     1.3 GB C:\Windows\SysWOW64
     1.1 GB C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET
   etc...
 

david12857

daviangel Ditto.
The Microsoft winsxs and the installer folders just seem to grow and use up more space the longer you use it.
Here is a printout from WinDirStat (highly recommended to figure out where all your disk space went) on my rig and note that over 1/2 of my 96GB SSD is already being hogged up by Windows

  51.2 GB C:\
  30.6 GB C:\Windows
  10.3 GB C:\Windows\winsxs
   9.6 GB C:\Windows\Installer
   2.9 GB C:\Windows\assembly
   2.5 GB C:\Windows\System32
   1.3 GB C:\Windows\SysWOW64
   1.1 GB C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET
etc...

I'm glad I read your post. I installed a new 120GB SSD yesterday and was going to get my usage when I noticed hiberfile.sys was stealing 9.0GB and I need to disable Virtual Memory. My Windows directory is only 16.4GB. This is new install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. SP1 and all security updates have been installed.



EDIT: Here's one of my older systems. Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (RTM) has been installed since 9/2/2009. It has SP1 and all Windows Updates installed too.




I found 11GB of junk on there too.

Yeah if you don't need hibernation that's one of the first things you want to disable on an SSD since it takes up as much space as you have memory. On my rig it eats up 12GB alone!
And yeah it's ironic that before Win7 I used to have to reinstall Windows due to registry corruption or some other problem after about a year os so but it's actually pretty rock solid stable and I didn't have to reinstall due to any of that this time but I ended up doing a clean reinstall not long ago since there is no other way to get rid of the junk that piles up on installer/winsxs directory safely
Other than a clean install.