How much will a "full" HD affect overall computer speed?

Caveman

Platinum Member
Nov 18, 1999
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I've got 9.5 Gigs left on a 40 Gig Seagate Barracuda IV HD... What is considered "full"? Based on what I remember from reading in the past, the performance on an "average HD" will rapidly degrade as the available space on the drive nears 20% or less?

Also, even though the HD degrades when it nears it's max capacity, will application and games slow much? I'd guess these things wouldn't really be affected since they really don't depend much on the HD... Right?
 

chocoruacal

Golden Member
Nov 12, 2002
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Originally posted by: Caveman

Also, even though the HD degrades when it nears it's max capacity, will application and games slow much? I'd guess these things wouldn't really be affected since they really don't depend much on the HD... Right?

Games...no. Applications...define applications. Photoshop might seem sluggish. Surfing for porn, MS Office, won't be affected.
 

bluntman

Senior member
Aug 18, 2000
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I agree with Sid59, of course if you have a static sized swap file, and one that is large enough (generally 2 to 2.5 x your amount of RAM), you'll be fine.
 

Budman

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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A full or nearly full hd really does slow down,you just have to look at a HD tach bench to see how slow it becomes at the end of the bench.
 

txxxx

Golden Member
Feb 13, 2003
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Defrag - hopefully the one your using will have a look at your prefetch items in XP and re-order those apps to the start (highest STR) of the drive and cluster it nicely so no large seeks.

Although large data files stored towards end of the drive will have a little impact, but thats dependant on whether your PC can make use of 25mb/s+
 

sniperruff

Lifer
Apr 17, 2002
11,644
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Originally posted by: Sid59
think it only matters when it's using the hdd for sway/virtual memory.

that, and your HD will possibly become 70% fragmented with no way of completely defragment it ever again, until you have some significant free space