Article ID: 892807 - Last Review: October 30, 2006 - Revision: 2.2

The hard disk space requirements for Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

This article describes the hard disk space that is required when you install Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) on a computer that is already running Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

The following table lists the hard disk space requirements for Windows Server 2003 SP1:

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	If you install Windows Server 2003 SP1 from a shared folder on the network	If you install Windows Server 2003 SP1 from the Windows Server 2003 SP1 CD
Service pack	140 megabytes (MB)	140 MB
Stored service pack files	20 MB (files are stored in the %windir%\Servicepackfiles\Servicepackcache folder)	650 MB (files are stored in the %windir%\Servicepackfiles folder)
Working space	350 MB	475 MB
Files that remove Windows Server 2003 SP1	270 MB	270 MB
Total hard disk space required	430 MB	825 MB
Peak usage during installation	780 MB	1,340 MB

In this table, the "Working space" entry represents the hard disk space that is required for files that are used only during the installation process. The working space requirement is temporary and does not contribute to the total hard disk space requirement.

In this table, the "Files that remove Windows Server 2003 SP1" entry represents the hard disk space that is used for storing the files and the settings that are changed during the installation of the service pack. You can automatically back up the files during the installation of the service pack. These files are required if you want to remove the service pack later.

You must also have 30 MB of free hard disk space on the first primary system partition. The first primary system partition is the disk volume that contains the hardware-specific files that are required to start Windows. For example, the primary system partition contains the Ntldr file, the Boot.ini file, and the Ntdetect.com file.