Hey guys, I am going to be purchasing a new 27 inch iMac within the next month. It has a 1TB hard drive. I am going to put Windows 7 Ultimate on it using bootcamp. I want to put some sort of CAD program on my computer (probably Solidworks). How much hard drive space do I need to partition for the Windows partition to run a Cad effectively with a few other programs?

 

I have a 500gb in my Macbook. I run XP Pro and had a partition of 32gb going, but realized I needed more and repartitioned to 80gb. I'm perfectly happy with it.

I run all media/downloads etc off an external drive to either OS.

 

I have 50gb for bootcamp with Windows 7, but if you are going to work with heavy software I wouldn't have less than 100gb.

 

Ya I was thinking about doing 500/500, but I think I want more space on the Mac Partition.

 

unless you're editing photo's/holding gobs of date, nothing over 160gb is necessary.

 

It really depends on how much you think you'll be using windows. I use windows for one thing only, to make bank wires online which requires internet explorer. Other than that, all my pics, music, docs etc are on mac (I think I allocated 15GBs) if you want more stuff on your windows side, id go with 50 just to be safe.

I'd also recommend using VMWare fusion VS bootcamp, you can run windows right along side OSX without having to reboot, switch sides, worry about what's where, etc. You can file share and keep things where you want them much easier and in one click of a button, you have Windows 7 just in another window on your mac.

 

Damn, I'm such a Mac Noobie still. This VMWare fusion VS bootcamp looks slick. I guess that'll be my weekend project to discover how all this works........ Or I could go for a drive since its spring. I'll maybe leave this bootcamp til the rains fall or something like that.

 

The only reason I run bootcamp ov VMware is because I like to use my mac for games, and need all the processing power to be focused on one OS and not split between the two.

If you're just doing word processing/accounting/forms etc. VMware/Parallels is what you're after.