Topic: An audio data drive is full when...

[lerond]

Hi folks!

Filled up another drive last night, plopped in a new one in it's stead and thought I'd check if there's any sort of consensus about when a drive is "full."
Searching the web, I find anecdotal suggestions that a drive should be considered full once there is only 8-20% free space remaining, but most of the discussion centers on boot drives (where the system will be reading/writing frequently) rather than data archive drives.

Anyone care to share a reasoned opinion?

My $0.02 is that while a drive used for archiving may not need any free space, it's hard to predict whether or not I might want to make minor changes to "archived" file sets -- things like updating info files, adding photos, and so on -- so my current practice is to keep about 1 GB free, as that would allow me to make lots of such changes without having to worry about the issue.

And fwiw, I try and buy disks in matched pairs so as to make it that much easier to keep a full backup.

[Liquid Drum]

I wonder the same thing. On my 250gb WD External I have 24gb free at the moment. I'm wondering how much of that I can use without fucking up the drive?? Its used for archive only so I would guess maybe 5gig (just in case I need to edit files)??

[taper420]

As far as storage goes I usually fill it up all the way. Boot drives are different due to the need for virtual memory. I've never had problems, but I'm no expert.