At what % free do you start to worry?

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I like to keep things at 50% free or more. Does anyone else have rules about when it is time to add more storage?

 

[Rhonda the Sly]

I don't worry at all, actually. Right now I have Photoshop, a few Explorer windows, Maya, IE8 with a few tabs, FF3 with a few tabs, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Media Player Classic, Crysis, and Zune software running and I have 720MB cached and 0~6MB free. I won't start to worry until performance degrades.

And the resource monitor, of course. Need to know what's accessing what when!

 

[n7]

Only 50% ?!

So much wasted space.

When i am getting close to low, i get yet another HDD...

 

[Griswold]

Originally posted by: Rhonda the Sly
I don't worry at all, actually. Right now I have Photoshop, a few Explorer windows, Maya, IE8 with a few tabs, FF3 with a few tabs, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Media Player Classic, Crysis, and Zune software running and I have 720MB cached and 0~6MB free. I won't start to worry until performance degrades.

And the resource monitor, of course. Need to know what's accessing what when!

I think he's talking about HDD storage not RAM - but I see why one may think its about RAM - its the word storage that makes me think its about HDD space.

Anyway, why worry? If you need more space, buy another HDD...

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Well to me, worry = start thinking about getting more hard drive space. I'm at 44% on my WHS box, and I didn't think the space would go away that quickly.

 

[Rhonda the Sly]

Oops. Didn't notice him say 'storage.' 10~15% sounds about a good time to start worrying because you want your new drive to arrive before you run out of space on your current one(s). It really depends on how quickly you accumulate data. If you feel like you're going to run out soon, just grab a new drive.

 

[Pyrokinetic]

Actually, I think you should add or replace a hard drive if it gets 90% full. Windows Disk Defragmenter will have a hard time with a drive that is too close to max capacity.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Originally posted by: Pyrokinetic
Actually, I think you should add or replace a hard drive if it gets 90% full. Windows Disk Defragmenter will have a hard time with a drive that is too close to max capacity.

Exactly.

 

[faxon]

my A+ prep book, written by jean andrews, recommends upgrading once you reach about 75% full. anywhere past that and you actually start decreasing the lifespan of your drive, espescially when you dont defragment if often enough. i killed 4 drives by running them at 90+% full for over a year each. i was only like 14 at the time though, my step dad told me to just delete whatever i wasnt using. kinda sucked though, considering i was using EVERYTHING. i had an entire fucking hard drive dedicated to just EQ2 and expansions (35gb drive, 30gb install folder), another one dedicated to some other games, also a 35gb drive, and 2 120s. all IDE and all pretty slow, so overall functionality was limited to begin with. they were all 7200RPM but that didnt help their data throughput much lol. i currently have 2 other 120gb IDE drives i just havent phased out yet that im about to transition to an old machine a buddy has since he needs more storage space and im not really using them, a 500GB drive, 2 400GB drives (all seagate 7200.10 SATA2), and im going to get 2 150gb WD VRaptors around christmas probably. pop one in my machine here at home and another in the machine im using at a friends house since it is currently using one of his old SATA1 drives and it doesnt need a ton of storage since the comp is only being used for games.

 

[Nothinman]

Drives are so large these days that percentages don't work well, depending on the size of the volume I probably start to think about moving data or upgrading when I get below the 5G mark. That's just for data volumes, / on my home machine has 4.5G free but I'm not caring about that yet because the only thing that / holds is the system and when it gets really low I usually just have to clear out /var/cache/apt/archives.

my A+ prep book, written by jean andrews, recommends upgrading once you reach about 75% full. anywhere past that and you actually start decreasing the lifespan of your drive, espescially when you dont defragment if often enough.

That makes no sense at all. There might be a little extra seeking done by the drive as it gets more full but it won't decrease the lifespan by any significant amount.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
I like to keep things at 50% free or more. Does anyone else have rules about when it is time to add more storage?

10-20% free space left is ok. Less than 10% means start shopping for a new HDD for me.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: BlueAcolyte

Originally posted by: Pyrokinetic
Actually, I think you should add or replace a hard drive if it gets 90% full. Windows Disk Defragmenter will have a hard time with a drive that is too close to max capacity.

Exactly.

Yeap, that's where my 10% number comes from. Now, I care less about being less than 10% free space left if it's a low usage drive (e.g. pure storage drive with very little access). If my main Velociraptor 300GB drive got below 20% free space I would want to upgrade though since it is my OS drive, scratch space for several programs, and I need 20-30GB of free space at any given time for video encoding tasks.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
I like to keep things at 50% free or more.

I'd hate to waste 750GB+ of space on my new drives. :Q

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
I like to keep things at 50% free or more.

I'd hate to waste 750GB+ of space on my new drives. :Q

It's not a waste, as the space is still available to use. I guess I could have worded it better--50% is when I start thinking about adding more space, because I can burn though hard drive space quickly.

 

[taltamir]

I order more storage on the DAY I get an "out of space" error while performing an operation. (I delete some useless stuff to tide me until the new drives arrive).

This policy has saved me much money over the years.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I keep spare HDs handy, so if I run out of space I just plug one in.

 

[taltamir]

sell em, and when you need the storage drive by best buy, compusa, or frys, or whatever and buy a newer better one.