[bundee1]

How much space should you leave on your HD so as not to affect its performance. My 250GB HD has 233GB of usable space and Ive filled 228GB so far. I just bought 5 cds(most based on recs from the music forum) and I want to rip them.

 

[blessingx]

Really depends on what apps you're running and what disc cache they'll need (Photoshop anyone), but normal use and properly defragged I would think even a couple gigs is enough.

 

[bundee1]

That hard drive is a strictly Apple Lossless drive. Defragging it doesnt help much because everything is in pretty much the order I originally ripped it in. I will defrag it now though. Thanks!

 

[Sinbios]

20%. More if it's a system drive/partition.

 

[blessingx]

Well it may somewhat depend on the Apple Lossless drive partition type (HFS+/NTFS/FAT), drive size (20% of a 1G drive isn't much.

) and speed, but for simply audio files I'm sure you can take it far lower than 20%, no? I've seen no performance hit on a nearly maxed out external Firewire drive filled with ALAC/AAC/MP3 files (HFS+). Hell even the system disc on my PC laptop (60GB) regularly goes below 20% and as long on its defragged and chkdsk'ed (unfortunately necessary on Windows) monthly I don't seem to have a problem. In fact with such drive size differences and possible large amount of static data, except for indexing, how could the necessary amount be a percent?

 

[eastein]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bundee1 My 250GB HD has 233GB of usable space and Ive filled 228GB so far.

sounds like it's time to buy a new HD anyways. tigerdirect.com has a 300GB drive for $99.

 

[bundee1]

I can only use SATA drives in my PC. My boot drive is 160GB of which only
20GB are used. Anyone want to walk me through how to partition the drive so I can use that space for music? I want to get an external HD, maybe 160GB - 250 GB.

 

[DaKi][er]

if the swapfile is on the drive, then leaving 1gig free would be recomended and down to 100-200mb if you really push it (as the swapfile will reserve what it needs, just wont be able to expand much more than it has) otherwise i see no reason you cant max it out

you got 5gig free, there is heaps more you could fit still

 

[Shift]

If you're using Windows, you won't be able to defragment unless you have 15% of free space. If you use a program that requires its own scratch disk, such as Photoshop, make sure you factor that in as well. Otherwise, you'll have a huge performance hit when using such programs.

My Seagate is extremely quite when less than 50% full, but at 80% I am able to hear the ticks occasionally.