How Full Is Full?

[EnderW]

What percentage of a drive can be full before you start seeing performance decrease? Is it OK to fill it all up?

I'm talking about a storage only drive.

 

[gwai lo]

from my experience it also depends on cache..

 

[Elledan]

I usually stick with about 10% free, though I'm not certain whether this only applies to NTFS.

 

[liquidtrance123]

well i just got back from a few calls today @ work where they had 5.43MB left on their C: drive
and you can't really defrag correctly unless you have at least 15% free, so i would say a safe estimate is you'd probably start to see a performance decrease around at least 20%

 

[animeguru]

Most drives I've seen recommend ~10% free at all times, but you'll probably start to see some performance decrease before that. Where you'll see it pretty much depends on the drive.

 

[uvi]

i dont think using a percentage is the best idea, but rather a specific amount of size. You dont need 10% free space on a 300gig drive, thats like 30 gigs just sitting there for nothing. You probably want about 1 gig free on any drive at all times.

 

[Stugots]

in my experience anything under 2gb free it starts to slow down things.