[SOLVED] Should I still leave some SSD space free without W10?

[Clueless1200]

Hi all,

I know most people say you should leave maybe 10-20% of an SSD free to make it last longer (or something). I've got a 512 GB NVMe drive for Windows 10 and apps, and a 1TB SSD with literally nothing but games on it. The NVMe isn't even close to being full, while at the moment I've only got 139 GB free left on the 1TB games drive. Should I still be leaving that space free even without an OS on it?

Thanks in advance.

 

[PC Tailor]

Best practice is yes, it's to do with how the drive physically operates to read and write data to it, not if the OS is on it or not.

This is effectively down to a simple idea that the more full the drive is = the slower it becomes.
The more data you have stored on it, the longer it can take to read or write data to it.

That and excessively reading/writing to your storage drive is technically wearing it more, as storage drives as a guidance will dictate that each drive has "so many read/writes" in it's lifespan.

Basically if you want to optimise the health and speed of the drive, keeping around 10%-15% minimum free is usually a safe bet.