Topic: Should I leave some empty space on a hard drive?

[JasonSobel]

I am slowly going though my entire collection of SHN/FLAC music, and copying everything onto hard drives.  I figured I'd start with Phish, because that's about 50% of my collection.  I say "slowly" because I have ~1500 data CD's + ~650 data DVD's, which is a time consuming process to copy onto hard drives.

However, I now have my first TB drive just about filled.  and I ordered a 2nd TB drive (which was delivered today), so that I can mirror the first drive.  Once everything is mirrored onto the 2nd hard drive, I'll buy another TB and start filling that one (and mirror that once it's full).

Anyway, of the 931GB of space on the hard drive, only 40.7GB is left.  Is there anything wrong with totally maxing it out?  Should I leave some blank space?  If so, how much?  10GB?  20GB?

If it makes any difference, once the drive is full, I'm not going to be moving or deleting or adding files, just using the hard drive for playback and to copy files from the drive onto other drives.  So it'll be essentially "read only" once it's full.

Thanks.

[Gordon]

I would leave just enough to defrag properly.  I think that would be about 15-20 gigs.

edit:  just saw it will "read only".  I would still leave a few gigs empty though.

[Jeremy Lykins]

Why would you need to leave extra space?  And why would you need gigabytes of extra space?  I realize that memory is cheap so why not do it, but what's the reason?

[phanophish]

If the data is not going to be regularly moved around on the drive it will not become fragmented.  My only thought would be having a bit of extra space to add  shows for a give artist as you fill in a give collection or tape additional shows.  Might not be an issue if you are using a application that manages it's own library and you don't mind spreading a given artist's collection over several drives.

[JasonSobel]

If the data is not going to be regularly moved around on the drive it will not become fragmented.  My only thought would be having a bit of extra space to add  shows for a give artist as you fill in a give collection or tape additional shows.  Might not be an issue if you are using a application that manages it's own library and you don't mind spreading a given artist's collection over several drives.

well, at this point, I probably have ~2TB of just Phish.  so it will definitely be spread out over several drives.  But everything is well documented and cataloged, so that isn't an issue.  and I will not be moving data around or adding shows to this particular drive down the road, so not issues there either.

But thanks for the advice everyone.  I'll probably end up leaving ~20-30 GB free on this drive, and then start filling up another TB

[pistolpete71]

...just my $0.02 - I think defrag prefers 10-15% free space to work properly (or about 100-150 free gig per Terabyte), but as previously mentioned by phanophish, you probably won't be needing to defrag at all.

I personally wouldn't recommend "topping-off" the hard drive anymore than you already have. From what I think I know about how data is written, I don't believe it necessarily starts from the "beginning" on the drive and then writes to the end (like a CDR would write), but sorts skips around to wherever is convenient for it to write at that point in time. The more data you try an pack on there, the more the drive needs to search for any remaining open space ...and on the flip side, more time will be required to retrieve the same data on playback. This may lead to longer search/seek times and possibly shorten the expected life span on your HD.

[Gutbucket]

I would advise otherwise for a working drive and especially for a drive with an OS on it, but don't worry about leaving space if the drive is only for read access or backup storage and the data won't change.  In this case data is basically written once (in multiple sessions) and isn't moved or changed so file fragmentation is not a concern.  I keep many storage drives nearly maxed out with just a few GB or two left.

[OFOTD]

I would advise otherwise for a working drive and especially for a drive with an OS on it, but don't worry about leaving space if the drive is only for read access or backup storage and the data won't change.  In this case data is basically written once (in multiple sessions) and isn't moved or changed so file fragmentation is not a concern.  I keep many storage drives nearly maxed out with just a few GB or two left.

Same advice i'd give.   Absolutely no reason to worry about defrag at all on a non-OS drive especially one that will just be read from.

With a terabyte i'd say leave a few megs for files such as thumbs.db or any other database system file otherwise fill the thing up.   I'd venture to guess that those folks that are telling you to leave gigs are just guessing and nothing more.

[EarlyMorningRain]

I'd venture to guess that those folks that are telling you to leave gigs are just guessing and nothing more.

I personally wouldn't recommend "topping-off" the hard drive anymore than you already have. From what I think I know about how data is written, I don't believe it necessarily starts from the "beginning" on the drive and then writes to the end (like a CDR would write), but sorts skips around to wherever is convenient for it to write at that point in time. The more data you try an pack on there, the more the drive needs to search for any remaining open space ...and on the flip side, more time will be required to retrieve the same data on playback. This may lead to longer search/seek times and possibly shorten the expected life span on your HD.

Although I'm siding with this argument (very well said!)......

[stevetoney]

Maybe a dumb question, but would there be any reason to believe that...say...a few years down the road bad sectors could develop on a drive and restoration of the bad sectors would require 20 or 30 gigs of free space on the drive, which if the free gigs weren't there, would shut you out from being able to restore the data in the bad sectors?

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

With how cheap HD's are today, I see no reason that you shouldn't leave a little space on a HD.

This gives you the ability to defrag a drive once it is organized, and also allow for bad sectors to develop.

Chances are you will be fine filling a drive up all the way...to leave 100GB on a 1 TB drive effectively costs $10. $10 is worth it for me, even if it doesn't do a thing.

[fleish]

You should be fine filling it almost to the top. As a matter of practice I'd always leave a little space left, but that's really more of a personal preference rather than a technical requirement.

One question I had after reading your OP, why do you wait until the drive is full before you mirror it?

[EarlyMorningRain]

Maybe a dumb question, but would there be any reason to believe that...say...a few years down the road bad sectors could develop on a drive and restoration of the bad sectors would require 20 or 30 gigs of free space on the drive, which if the free gigs weren't there, would shut you out from being able to restore the data in the bad sectors?

This is a very GOOD question actually, however if you have a drive that requires upwards to 20-30 gigs of free space (for the purpose of fixing bad sectors), I'd say that drive is pretty much toast......

[Church-Audio]

If the data is not going to be regularly moved around on the drive it will not become fragmented.  My only thought would be having a bit of extra space to add  shows for a give artist as you fill in a give collection or tape additional shows.  Might not be an issue if you are using a application that manages it's own library and you don't mind spreading a given artist's collection over several drives.

well, at this point, I probably have ~2TB of just Phish.  so it will definitely be spread out over several drives.  But everything is well documented and cataloged, so that isn't an issue.  and I will not be moving data around or adding shows to this particular drive down the road, so not issues there either.

But thanks for the advice everyone.  I'll probably end up leaving ~20-30 GB free on this drive, and then start filling up another TB

I would leave some space if only because windows has a hard time accurately measuring just how much space is left on a drive. I think 5 gigs is plenty if you have lots of memory on your computer and this is not a operating system drive.

[OFOTD]

Not calling bullshit or anything but i'd love to see some corroborating facts to some of the opinions here about leaving x amount of space.   Defrag?  Why would you need to defrag a data drive that has little or no change to the files.   FLAC's and SHN's are static files and are not appended so there wouldn't be fragmentation in the first place.

Never had Windows ever miscalculate available free space ever.  Bad sectors?   Its not like if you have a GB of bad sectors that you'll need more than a GB to repair it and if you have a GB of bad sectors your drive probably already died anyways.

Seriously let's put fact first and guesstimates second.


ETA:  To make sure we're on the same page there is a difference between a drive for storage (like the OP) and a drive that contains the OS.  I am referring to the former and not an OS drive.