How much space should I allot to Parallels

I'm using a retina MacBook Pro 16GB RAM 256 GB SSD and I have about 85GB of storage left. I've already removed all the videos to external hard drive, so it's going to be hard to get more space. (I really wish I bought the 512GB one instead for $300 more, but it's too late now.)

I want to use Parallels primarily for using Acrobat, because it doesn't work very well on the rMBP (Maverick).

I'm guessing when you first use Parallels you decide how much GB it can use?

Do you think I could allot maybe 7GB to 10GB and be able to use it pretty well?

 

Glad Parallels keeps a careful eye on the forums.

 

A typical Windows installation will require at least 16 GB, Parallels uses expanding disks, meaning the file that is used for the virtual disk expands on-demand, you just set the maximum size (32 GB by default) but it will only grow to that size if Windows uses all that space.

After installing Windows you will have already consumed around 8 GB. And then you have the page file in Windows which will occupy some GBs. Less than 16 GB won't get you nowhere.

I recommend turning off any snapshot features in Parallels, and hibernation in Windows, that will spare you some GBs. You might consider getting and external drive and offload some stuff to it.