The system drive is often used for temporary system files, caches of various sorts, and is the default location of %ProgramFiles% unless modified at initial install time using unattend files. If you have significant disk space available, I recommend you do not create “system partitions”. We are working to improve that experience but significant drive space will still be required on the system drive for those reasons above.

Components shared with other applications like Office or services like IISįor Visual Studio 11 Ultimate Beta, about 45% of the entire installation is located on the other drive.

Packages shared with other products that have their own installation folders like SQL Server and Windows SDK.

NET Framework and Visual C/C++ which require installing into the system drive. While Visual Studio 11 does allow you to install the majority of features to another drive, VS11 still requires space on the system drive for the following reasons:

Users have asked why space is required on the system drive (typically the C: drive) when they choose to install Visual Studio 11 to another drive.

Install visual studio on another drive