Windows Server 2012 folders size chart

I am planning to deploy some new Windows Server 2012 and here it comes the question regarding HDD size. If I look at what Microsoft says, 32 gigs should be the bare minimum for the system partition, but, as usual, I want to take a closer look to what the reality is, so I plugged Treesize on the C: drive (which is on a 40 GB disk) of a freshly installed Datacenter Edition and got the following results:

• Drive Size: 39.66 GB
• Bytes per Cluster: 4096 Bytes
• Filesystem: (NTFS)

Full Path	Size	Files
c:\Windows	11 414,3  MB	70 465
c:\*.*	3 584,4  MB	3
c:\Users	58,3  MB	269
c:\Program Files	28,3  MB	244
c:\Program Files (x86)	23,5  MB	125
c:\ProgramData	12,4  MB	96
c:\System Volume Information	0,0  MB	2
c:\$Recycle.Bin	0,0  MB	1
c:\Documents and Settings	0,0  MB	0
c:\PerfLogs	0,0  MB	0

What we see is that a clean installation of Windows Server 2012 Datacenter edition takes almost 15 GB. The Windows folder account for 11 GB, plus the pagefile (4GB). In total there are a little bit more than 71k files on the partition after the initial installation.

The biggest folder under c:\Windows is, as you could expect, WinSxS, which takes more than 6 GB, followed by System32 (2 GB), Assembly (2GB) and SysWOW64 (1GB).

WinSxs breakdown under Windows Server 2012

As an additional data, these are the extensions that eat most of our disk space:

• .dll is the winner, with 13k files and more than 6 GB
• .sys, with 1000 files a little less than 4 GB
• .exe with 2000 files and 500 MB

 Also, the biggest file on disk is 'imageres.dll', with a size of 64 MB (not that big I must say). This file contains all Windows 2012 system icons, the login screen background image and the startup sound in wav format (5080.wav).

That's all for my first encounter with Windows Server 2012. I will delve as soon as possible into ReFS, and data deduplication, which is what I am most interested in, and will probably post something on it as soon as I have tested it.

Meanwhile, do not hesitate to share your disk space usage on Windows 2012. It would be interesting to compare how usage differs with different roles installed.

Addendum: for personal reference I post here below a HEX dump of the MBR of my Windows 2012 Master Boot Record (MBR).

LBN 0   [C 0, H 0, S 1]

0x0000   33 c0 8e d0 bc 00 7c 8e-c0 8e d8 be 00 7c bf 00   3└Äð╝.|Ä└ÄÏ¥.|┐.
0x0010   06 b9 00 02 fc f3 a4 50-68 1c 06 cb fb b9 04 00   .╣..³¾ñPh∟.╦¹╣..
0x0020   bd be 07 80 7e 00 00 7c-0b 0f 85 0e 01 83 c5 10   ¢¥.Ç~..|..à..â┼►
0x0030   e2 f1 cd 18 88 56 00 55-c6 46 11 05 c6 46 10 00   Ô±═↑êV.UãF◄.ãF►.
0x0040   b4 41 bb aa 55 cd 13 5d-72 0f 81 fb 55 aa 75 09   ┤A╗¬U═‼]r.ü¹U¬u.
0x0050   f7 c1 01 00 74 03 fe 46-10 66 60 80 7e 10 00 74   ¸┴..t.■F►f`Ç~►.t
0x0060   26 66 68 00 00 00 00 66-ff 76 08 68 00 00 68 00   &fh....f v.h..h.
0x0070   7c 68 01 00 68 10 00 b4-42 8a 56 00 8b f4 cd 13   |h..h►.┤BèV.ï¶═‼
0x0080   9f 83 c4 10 9e eb 14 b8-01 02 bb 00 7c 8a 56 00   ƒâ─►×Ù¶©..╗.|èV.
0x0090   8a 76 01 8a 4e 02 8a 6e-03 cd 13 66 61 73 1c fe   èv.èN.èn.═‼fas∟■
0x00a0   4e 11 75 0c 80 7e 00 80-0f 84 8a 00 b2 80 eb 84   N◄u.Ç~.Ç.äè.▓ÇÙä
0x00b0   55 32 e4 8a 56 00 cd 13-5d eb 9e 81 3e fe 7d 55   U2õèV.═‼]Ù×ü>■}U
0x00c0   aa 75 6e ff 76 00 e8 8d-00 75 17 fa b0 d1 e6 64   ¬un v.Þì.u↨·░еd
0x00d0   e8 83 00 b0 df e6 60 e8-7c 00 b0 ff e6 64 e8 75   Þâ.░▀µ`Þ|.░ µdÞu
0x00e0   00 fb b8 00 bb cd 1a 66-23 c0 75 3b 66 81 fb 54   .¹©.╗═→f#└u;fü¹T
0x00f0   43 50 41 75 32 81 f9 02-01 72 2c 66 68 07 bb 00   CPAu2ü¨..r,fh.╗.
0x0100   00 66 68 00 02 00 00 66-68 08 00 00 00 66 53 66   .fh....fh....fSf
0x0110   53 66 55 66 68 00 00 00-00 66 68 00 7c 00 00 66   SfUfh....fh.|..f
0x0120   61 68 00 00 07 cd 1a 5a-32 f6 ea 00 7c 00 00 cd   ah...═→Z2÷Û.|..═
0x0130   18 a0 b7 07 eb 08 a0 b6-07 eb 03 a0 b5 07 32 e4   ↑áÀ.Ù.áÂ.Ù.áÁ.2õ
0x0140   05 00 07 8b f0 ac 3c 00-74 09 bb 07 00 b4 0e cd   ...ï­¼<.t.╗..┤.═
0x0150   10 eb f2 f4 eb fd 2b c9-e4 64 eb 00 24 02 e0 f8   ►Ù‗¶Ù²+╔õdÙ.$.Ó°
0x0160   24 02 c3 49 6e 76 61 6c-69 64 20 70 61 72 74 69   $.├Invalid parti
0x0170   74 69 6f 6e 20 74 61 62-6c 65 00 45 72 72 6f 72   tion table.Error
0x0180   20 6c 6f 61 64 69 6e 67-20 6f 70 65 72 61 74 69    loading operati
0x0190   6e 67 20 73 79 73 74 65-6d 00 4d 69 73 73 69 6e   ng system.Missin
0x01a0   67 20 6f 70 65 72 61 74-69 6e 67 20 73 79 73 74   g operating syst
0x01b0   65 6d 00 00 00 63 7b 9a-9b 01 24 32 00 00 80 20   em...c{Üø.$2..Ç
0x01c0   21 00 07 be 12 2c 00 08-00 00 00 f0 0a 00 00 be   !..¥↕,.....­...¥
0x01d0   13 2c 07 fe ff ff 00 f8-0a 00 00 00 f5 04 00 00   ‼,.■  .°....§...
0x01e0   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
0x01f0   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa   ..............U¬