How much space to leave on hard drive? Conflicting answers...

[Oinkusboinkus]

I have a question about hard drives.

The place I brought my PC to get fixed gave me some really cryptic information, and something that I had never heard of before.

They remarked that when looking at my PC, they noticed that my 1 TB hard drive had about 700 Gigs on it, leaving about 235 or so Gigs free.

They told me that generally it's bad for a computer to have a hard drive that is MORE THAN HALF FULL. They said that if you have a 1 TB drive, you should never have more than 500 Gigs on it, or if a 2 TB drive, you should never have more than 1 TB on it.

They said that when you have it more than half full, you are reading from the outer portion of the drive, and that also in general more than half full can lead to crashes and shutdowns, and can prevent Windows from loading properly.

Now, I am fully aware that you need to keep a certain percentage of a drive free so the system can function, a small cushion. You don't want it be TOTALLY full. And of course, you want keep your drive defragmented and well maintained, that's all basic knowledge.

But no more than HALF? I had never heard of such a thing! I've read you need to keep at least about 10% or 15% percent of a drive free perhaps, but NEVER heard 50% before!

What's the real deal here?

 

[jay_nar2012]

5-10% is more reasonable, that 50% theory is BS, the fuller the drive gets the slower it will go but a full drive will still let windows load, just slower, anyway some of the hard drive space is taken by the windows by default (paging file...).

 

[nikorr]

Few GB is still OK, but 100MB is not, that will drastically reduce the performance.

All that goes for the HDD. SSD is fine even if less than 1MB is free.

I should know : )

 

[jay_nar2012]

Few GB is still OK, but 100MB is not, that will drastically reduce the performance.

All that goes for the HDD. SSD is fine even if less than 1MB is free.

I should know : )

http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/1395/20120805074618.png

Isn't 1 hard drive enough

 

[nikorr]

But less space u have more fragmented your drive become.

U cannot effectively defrag anymore.

So, best is to make your HDD partitioned, leave 50GB for the system and leave it on the front of the disk, that way your performance is top.

 

[Oinkusboinkus]

Jay,

Thanks for the quick response!

I suspected as much about the percentage you need to keep free.

Why do these tech places have to come out with this paranoid BS? It's ridiculous. You go in these places, and it's like dealing with an auto repair garage. You go in with a hard drive issue, and they find six other things they claim is wrong, then they have to talk you with all these system theories and make you feel like you've been abusing your PC the whole time! I almost got the sense that these guys just liked hearing themselves talk.

Buyer beware, know exactly what you want done, make it clear to them you know how PC's work and you're not about to be scammed.

Unbelievable.

Thanks again.

 

[nikorr]

Isn't 1 hard drive enough

No, I have 8 other sitting next to me : )

Working hard and swapping them as needed.

Need more sata ports. 99% of the time, the DVD drive is unplugged too.

 

[jay_nar2012]

No, I have 8 other sitting next to me : )

Working hard and swapping them as needed.

Need more sata ports. 99% of the time, the DVD drive is unplugged too.

:lol:
8?, never had more than one in a computer......

 

[nikorr]

Jay,

Thanks for the quick response!

I suspected as much about the percentage you need to keep free.

Why do these tech places have to come out with this paranoid BS? It's ridiculous. You go in these places, and it's like dealing with an auto repair garage. You go in with a hard drive issue, and they find six other things they claim is wrong, then they have to talk you with all these system theories and make you feel like you've been abusing your PC the whole time! I almost got the sense that these guys just liked hearing themselves talk.

Buyer beware, know exactly what you want done, make it clear to them you know how PC's work and you're not about to be scammed.

Unbelievable.

Thanks again.

Well, if u read that on the site that make the HDD's, they will say that, its logical. Best performance it when its almost empty : )

But any significant slow down is if the drive has less than 2-3GB left. They wanna make $$$ on you. So, if they see that u don't understand much about it, some people will take you for the ride.

Happen to me too, they tried, but I understand a bit about it. Its best if u will build your own PC and than u don't have to listen to them.

That way u will learn about that too. They wanna tell u how u will get warranty and all the accessories and who know what else. Mostly its junk.

 

[nikorr]

:lol:
8?, never had more than one in a computer......

I have a lot of photos and video to edit yet.

You didn't see the amount of DVD's I have yet : )

Well, its my job as a photographer to do my work at home, as I work for myself.

 

[Oinkusboinkus]

But less space u have more fragmented your drive become.

U cannot effectively defrag anymore.

So, best is to make your HDD partitioned, leave 50GB for the system and leave it on the front of the disk, that way your performance is top.

Ok, I certainly understand that principle. Makes sense that it would be harder to defragment the more information you have stored on a drive.

BUT, in my case, this shop is telling me that I'm abusing my 1 TB hard drive because I have 700 out of 950 Gigs filled on it? I've got 250 Gigs free and they are telling me that a hard drive isn't even designed for that and that I'm not using it correctly!

Certainly having 200-250 Gigs on a hard drive, it can still be defragmented and can still function normally yes?

This just seems so silly to me.

I'm waiting for this place to tell me next that you can't have more than two USB devices plugged in at any one time LOL. I won't be shocked if get some JFK theories the day I pick it up...

 

[jay_nar2012]

Jay,

Thanks for the quick response!

I suspected as much about the percentage you need to keep free.

Why do these tech places have to come out with this paranoid BS? It's ridiculous. You go in these places, and it's like dealing with an auto repair garage. You go in with a hard drive issue, and they find six other things they claim is wrong, then they have to talk you with all these system theories and make you feel like you've been abusing your PC the whole time! I almost got the sense that these guys just liked hearing themselves talk.

Buyer beware, know exactly what you want done, make it clear to them you know how PC's work and you're not about to be scammed.

Unbelievable.

Thanks again.

I think most of the time they make theorys of the top of their heads (a CPU's life is 3 yrs max for example).
Not sure but that theory is 101% BS, if that was true then people would buy a lot of hard drives, and thats probably what they want you to do.

 

[jay_nar2012]

Ok, I certainly understand that principle. Makes sense that it would be harder to defragment the more information you have stored on a drive.

BUT, in my case, this shop is telling me that I'm abusing my 1 TB hard drive because I have 700 out of 950 Gigs filled on it? I've got 250 Gigs free and they are telling me that a hard drive isn't even designed for that and that I'm not using it correctly!

Certainly having 200-250 Gigs on a hard drive, it can still be defragmented and can still function normally yes?

This just seems so silly to me.

I'm waiting for this place to tell me next that you can't have more than two USB devices plugged in at any one time LOL. I won't be shocked if get some JFK theories the day I pick it up...

Yes, it would just take a long long time, sorting out those fragmented files.
And it would still do the same thing...

 

[nikorr]

You can build yourself faster and bloat free system for some 35% less.

All it takes, to build first one and lots of people come here for advice what parts to get

and where is the best place to get them : )

And where to troubleshoot, if u have a problem, for free.

 

[nikorr]

Ok, I certainly understand that principle. Makes sense that it would be harder to defragment the more information you have stored on a drive.

BUT, in my case, this shop is telling me that I'm abusing my 1 TB hard drive because I have 700 out of 950 Gigs filled on it? I've got 250 Gigs free and they are telling me that a hard drive isn't even designed for that and that I'm not using it correctly!

Certainly having 200-250 Gigs on a hard drive, it can still be defragmented and can still function normally yes?

This just seems so silly to me.

I'm waiting for this place to tell me next that you can't have more than two USB devices plugged in at any one time LOL. I won't be shocked if get some JFK theories the day I pick it up...

If they are telling u that, make a complain on that person. The HDD will go dead one day, if u will use it hard way or not. So, u wanna get most out of it. That is easy to understand. I run them full. If the HDD is almost full, it works harder, but its made to work hard.

"it can still be defragmented and can still function normally"

Yes, I would even partition that. But it would take some time : )

 

[nikorr]

Whats your system?

Post your specs...

CPU:
RAM: with link please.
Motherboard:
GPU:
PSU:
HDD: /SSD
OS type + version

 

[nikorr]

This is what I normally do.


SSD - W7 + all the programs + page file

HDD - partition 1 @60GB - photos, project and other files up to 5MB + Document folder

HDD - partition 2 @100GB - music, and other files up to 30MB/per file.
HDD - partition 3 @ whats left for files 30MB> videos and other files

To have a partitions, is to separate the system from the Doc. files,

so in the case of corruption on the system drive, u don't loose the files,

so that's the main reason to partition.

If u separate the small files from large ones, the fragmentation is small and it is easy to keep it de-fragmented.


Move Your Libraries off of the system drive...
http://www.tweakhound.com/windows7/tweaking/5.html

 

[Oinkusboinkus]

...oops, meant to say in my response above, "Certainly having 200-250 Gigs FREE on a hard drive"....

 

[Oinkusboinkus]

Best answer selected by oinkusboinkus.

 

[aaab]

Few GB is still OK, but 100MB is not, that will drastically reduce the performance.

All that goes for the HDD. SSD is fine even if less than 1MB is free.

I should know : )

http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/1395/20120805074618.png

LOL! This looks exactly like my computer... except all my HDD's are in the red (except windows one)

 

[nikorr]

Mine got into low 580KB and it was performing great, I didn't even know,

I found out that every download I started was canceled, due to low space ; ))

I needed some 5MB file and I could't get it. The fault was, that Handbrake hibernated the PC after the job was done and it created 15GB hiberfil.sys file.

 

[Oinkusboinkus]

This is what I normally do.


SSD - W7 + all the programs + page file

HDD - partition 1 @60GB - photos, project and other files up to 5MB + Document folder

HDD - partition 2 @100GB - music, and other files up to 30MB/per file.
HDD - partition 3 @ whats left for files 30MB> videos and other files

To have a partitions, is to separate the system from the Doc. files,

so in the case of corruption on the system drive, u don't loose the files,

so that's the main reason to partition.

If u separate the small files from large ones, the fragmentation is small and it is easy to keep it de-fragmented.


Move Your Libraries off of the system drive...
http://www.tweakhound.com/windows7/tweaking/5.html

I certainly appreciate what you are saying. However, I've never really been savvy enough to partition drives. I'm more the type of PC user who just buys more than enough storage space, and I just use the hard drive, and keep it organized and defragmented. I never fill hard drives to capacity. I usually typically, after installing numerous games, keeping all my personal data on it, downloads, etc, etc.....fill it to about 75% capacity where it tends to plateau off and remain there. When I'm gaming, I use gaming booster programs that shut down processes that are not needed during play, then turn them back on afterwards.

I've never had a hard drive crash or not load Windows because the majority of the drive was full. Startup errors at times YES, but of the sort that can happen no matter how little or much you have on the drive.

If anything, I do notice that it can take significantly longer during startup to load everything the more you have on a hard drive....but when I say "significantly longer", we're talking like an extra minute or minute and a half of loading time before the desktop is "released" to you for initial usage. We're not talking about huge amounts of time.

 

[jay_nar2012]

This thread is proof that his theory is wrong, show him this so that he stops telling other people wrong info and making them worry for no reason.

 

[nikorr]

I certainly appreciate what you are saying. However, I've never really been savvy enough to partition drives. I'm more the type of PC user who just buys more than enough storage space, and I just use the hard drive, and keep it organized and defragmented. I never fill hard drives to capacity. I usually typically, after installing numerous games, keeping all my personal data on it, downloads, etc, etc.....fill it to about 75% capacity where it tends to plateau off and remain there. When I'm gaming, I use gaming booster programs that shut down processes that are not needed during play, then turn them back on afterwards.

I've never had a hard drive crash or not load Windows because the majority of the drive was full. Startup errors at times YES, but of the sort that can happen no matter how little or much you have on the drive.

If anything, I do notice that it can take significantly longer during startup to load everything the more you have on a hard drive....but when I say "significantly longer", we're talking like an extra minute or minute and a half of loading time before the desktop is "released" to you for initial usage. We're not talking about huge amounts of time.

Do u have a back up?

 

[Oinkusboinkus]

Do u have a back up?

I do actually. Well, I should say that I always keep my data backed up.

Going back the past four years or so, I have always made it a habit of keeping an external drive of equal size to my internal drive.

Essentially I keep it as a data mirror in a way. Whenever I save a file to my internal drive, I save it to the same folder on my external drive. That way I've always got an up to date backup of all my information that is a mirror of what is on my internal drive. It's also useful to save all my downloads in the same way, because it serves as a chronological record of the programs and updates I've done, and I can go back and just reinstall what I need without having to search for or remember what I downloaded.

So yes, I always use a backup drive. However, I don't have a backup OS installed anwhere. That would be where having multiple internal drives would be useful, am I correct?

In other words, if you had two drives or more with Windows installed on them, you could still effectively start up your system even if one of the other drives failed.

I believe a friend of mine did that, he had two drives, one with Windows XP, the other with Windows 98. He could boot up from either drive he wished to.

Is that how that works?