How big is Windows 11 after installation?

Windows 11 requires a hard drive with at least 64 GB of space in order to be installed. But how much storage space does it really need to be free to download and install Windows 11? And how much storage space does the operating system actually take up after installation? We’ll show you here.

Size as an upgrade from Windows 10

We first updated a new Windows 10 with all updates and then performed the disk cleanup to purify the hard drive as much as possible. Windows Explorer then indicated a storage space usage of 19.7 GB.

After we installed Windows 11 as an upgrade (Insider Preview Version 21H2 Build 22000.51), around 20 GB more was used. After doing the disk cleanup and with it also deleted old Windows installation files, we saw the end result: Windows 11 took up around 19.7 GB of storage space as an upgrade.

You can find out whether Windows 11 is running on your computer in the Video:

Size as a new installation

We also set up the leaked Windows 11 version (Dev OS Build 21996.1) as a new installation. After the disk cleanup, Windows Explorer showed us that Windows 11 around 17.4 GB occupied. For Microsoft’s latest operating system, that’s amazingly slim.

Conclusion – how much space should be free for the upgrade?

Windows 11 took up around 20 GB as an upgrade. The new operating system does not seem to install much ballast. As a new installation, Windows 11 only took up 18 GB. For a current operating system from 2021, this is very good for Microsoft.

Based on our experience, we appreciate that you should have at least 25 GB of free space in order to be able to download and install the upgrade from Windows 11 smoothly.

Note, however, that on the one hand we worked with a Windows 10 reinstallation (including all updates) and then ran the disk cleanup. If your system is older and has already installed several programs and games, upgrading from Windows 11 may also require more storage space.

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