The requirements for Windows XP Service Pack 2

This article describes the hard disk space that is required when you install Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) on a computer that is already running Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition or that is already running Microsoft Windows XP Professional.


The following table lists the hard disk space requirements for Windows XP SP2.

	Hard disk space that is required if you install Windows XP SP2 from a shared folder on the network	Hard disk space that is required if you install Windows XP SP2 from the Windows XP SP2 CD
Service pack	495 megabytes (MB) for the service pack	495 megabytes (MB) for the service pack and an additional 500 MB for the service pack files that are stored in the %Windir%\Servicepackfiles folder
Working space	260 MB	260 MB
Files that remove Windows XP SP2	200 MB	200 MB
Total hard disk space required if the System Restore feature is enabled	895 MB 1060 MB peak usage during installation	1455 MB 1560 MB peak usage during installation
Total hard disk space required if the System Restore feature is not enabled	395 MB 770 MB peak usage during installation	681 MB 1100 MB peak usage during installation

In this table, the "Working space" entry is 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 XP SP2" entry is 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.