Does anyone know how large a hard drive you need for a Windows XP Media Center system?

windows takes up about 5 or so gigs. You can get a 160 gig hard drive for around 50 dollars on newegg. The more harddrive space you have the more files you will be able to store. i would recommend this drive for a media system so that you dont have to worry about space.

I use XP MCE for everything but watching and recording TV. (Actually got it because it looked cool and was cheaper than Pro ) One thing I do use it for is Video editing, and boy do you need space. My 320 Gig is already 1/2 full with video, which is about 1 GB every 4 minutes uncompressed. I am thinking of buying a 500 gig when I need it which won't be too long. This is all regular 480p footage from a sony miniDV camcorder.

As for my answer-go with at least 500 GB, especially if you will be working with HDTV.

Thank you for the input. Is the AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processor adequate? I have a 298GB hard drive but I am thinking about a larger one.

300gb will hold quite a bit if you compress it a bit. divx is great for greatly reducing file size but with little quality loss