thansk for the continued interest and comments in this thread. I ended up with ~10GB left on the drive and called it "full", mirrored the drive on another TB external, and will today begin filling up a third TB (to be mirrored when full).
One question I had after reading your OP, why do you wait until the drive is full before you mirror it?
no real good reason. However, everything on these drives is also on data CDs/DVDs, so it's all replaceable (just time consuming). but I'm willing to risk the drive not crashing on mw within the first 6 months of it's life while I'm filling it up. If I lose that bet and the drive crashes before it's full and before I get a chance to mirror it, then it's just back to the CDs/DVDs. And as cheap as hard drives are right now, money is tight right now. By purchasing the 2nd TB to mirror the first TB drive now instead of 6-7 months ago, I definitely saved some money.
Topic: Should I leave some empty space on a hard drive? (Read 4872 times)