Sorry it was late when i made the first post :(
I was doing a separate install from my normal full anaconda install. I am on windows 7 64bit.
I downloaded the Miniconda installer and installed to a separate folder outside of my base anaconda install.
then i used the conda command(making sure i was using the conda from the Miniconda folder) to install the other packages.
so
C:\Users\me\Minconda2> conda install scipy matplotlib pandas seaborn sympy scikit-learn scikit-image
the resulting Miniconda2 folder size was 1.9 Gb, about 100 Mb larger than my regular Anaconda2 folder.
within my Anaconda2 and Miniconda2 driectory is a folder called pkgs. it looks like this is where conda downloads packages to install from? so there are a bunch of bz2 files and then what seems to be the uncompressed versions of these.
I am thinking since regular anaconda comes with all the packages already the pkgs folder should be pretty empty, however if using conda install with miniconda every package you install is cached in the pkgs folder.
is it safe to clear this out?
My main goal is to create a portable anaconda install that wont kill the space on my student drive. I could use a usb drive but things load from the drive faster than a usb key.