Hard disk space requirements for Windows XP Service Pack 1 (326583)

INTRODUCTION

This article discusses the hard disk space that is required to install Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) on a computer that is running Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional, or Windows XP 64-Bit Edition. The working space that is described in the following table is required for files that are used only during the installation. This requirement is temporary and does not contribute to the total space requirements. The space that is required for the files that remove SP1 is used for the storage of the files and settings that are changed during the service pack installation. You can automatically back up these system files during installation. You must have these files if you want to remove the service pack later.

MORE INFORMATION

The following table lists the hard disk space requirements for installing Microsoft Windows XP SP1.

                                               Space required for
              Space required for installing    installing SP1 from the
              SP1 from a shared distribution   service pack CD-ROM or the
              folder on a network              Windows XP SP1 Web site
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Service pack  145 megabytes (MB)               145 MB (for the service 
only          for the service pack             pack) + 283 MB (for the service
                                               pack files contained in the
                                               %Windir%\Servicepackfiles
                                               folder)

Subtotal      145 MB                           428 MB

Working space  56 MB                            56 MB

Files that    233 MB                           233 MB
remove SP1

Total         378 MB                           661 MB
              434 MB peak during               717 MB peak during
              installation                     installation

Also, you must have 30 MB free space on the first primary system partition for installation. The first primary system partition is the disk volume that contains the hardware-specific files that you must have to start Windows. For example, the primary system partition contains the Ntldr, Boot.ini, and Ntdetect.com files.

For additional information about how to obtain Windows XP SP1, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

322389 How to obtain the latest Windows XP service pack