How much disk space is required on the default drive for doing software development on Windows 11?

Falanga, Rod, DOH 1,080 Reputation points
2026-06-24T17:51:09.7466667+00:00

My employer has allocated a new VM for me, for doing software development. On my previous desktop PC, which only had one drive, I had consumed 298 GB of storage. (That SSD was a 1 TB drive, so there wasn't any problem with it consuming almost 300 GB of storage.) However, when they configured the VM they gave it only 100 GB of storage on the C: drive. The VM has 32 GB of RAM. After installing some software I've gotten it down to a little over 20 GB of free storage. But now when I make any change, it doesn't save it. I'm thinking that there's not enough disk space for the swap file to work properly. I need to install the following:

  • Git
  • Posh-Git
  • PowerShell 7
  • Windows Terminal
  • Visual Studio Installer
  • Visual Studio 2026 Enterprise edition (with several items, whose proper name I don't remember, but not C++)
  • Some Visual Studio Extensions
  • The SDKs for .NET 8, 9, and 10
  • WinMerge
  • GitHub Desktop
  • GitHub CLI
  • TortoiseGit
  • Google Chrome
  • SQL Server Management Studio
  • LINQPad 9
  • Python
  • Microsoft Edit
  • Slack
  • PowerToys
  • Microsoft 365 for Business
  • Windows Subsystem for Linux
  • Ubuntu
  • Chocolatey (so I can get gittfs, which is the only way I've been able to get gittfs)

I might be able to get by without TortoiseGit, but I like to have alternative Git clients to show users who aren't comfortable using the command line, to use Git.

In any case, I believe it is clear that 100 GB of disk storage isn't sufficient for the primary drive. Is there some algorithm which I can use to estimate how much disk space I'll need on the primary drive?

Developer technologies | Visual Studio | Setup
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Answer accepted by question author

Amit Gupta 85 Reputation points
2026-06-24T17:55:49.09+00:00

Best practice

If you have a 1 TB SSD, a good layout is:

C: (Windows + Applications): 400–500 GB

D: (Projects, repositories, VMs, datasets): Remaining space

This keeps the operating system responsive while allowing large projects and virtual machines to reside on a separate partition.

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Nancy Vo (WICLOUD CORPORATION) 6,595 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
2026-06-25T02:48:43.46+00:00

Hello @Falanga, Rod, DOH ,

Thanks for your question.

100 GB is nowhere near enough for a Windows 11 dev machine. With 32 GB of RAM, Windows wants roughly 32 GB for virtual memory. Since you only have 20 GB free, the OS is choking and won't save your changes. On top of that, heavy tools like Visual Studio, WSL, and the .NET SDKs stubbornly force themselves onto the C: drive.

512 GB is the realistic minimum for a dev machine. If you want to give you two separate drives, your C: drive alone still needs to be at least 256 GB.

I hope this addresses your question. If my explanation was also helpful to you, please consider following the guidance to provide feedback.

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Bruce (SqlWork.com) 84,251 Reputation points
2026-06-25T01:26:03.6+00:00

Probably 512gb is a minimum size for a dev pc. Many of the dev tools only install on c drive. If you have a 2 drive vm, where the data files are separate, I’d be sure the c drive had 256gb. As usually the drive is ssd, there is little benefit to breaking it multiple partitions

note: a 100gb would small for a phone.

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