External hard drive question

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I have always been told that the hard drive on your computer should not be more than half full. Since I still run windows xp, with a 40 gig hd, I keep the info on it at 20 gb or below. But does this apply to external hard drives. I have a couple of 110 gig, external drives for storage, and they have 65 or 70 gig on each of them. Am I looking for trouble, or does it not apply to external drives.

Thanks
Glenn
#programming #drive #external #hard #question
  • Don't know where you heard that. You shouldn't have any problems until you start getting over @ 90% full.

    One of my external HD's stays at about 90% full from just MP3's. Never had any issues at all with it.
  • I dont think this is correct. If your primary partition is more than 90% full, it may cause some problems like slow performance. But If your other drives only contains movies, mp3s..etc. It wont be a problem.Extra space is needed only for software installations as they need some more space when executing.
  • You don't want any hard drive, whether internal or external, to be too full. However, 50% full is pretty conservative. If you keep your hard drives less than 80% full you shouldn't have any problems. There are 2 important things to consider:

    1. Make sure all of the hard drives are backed up. I like Acronis software for that.

    2. If you have a choice of USB 2.0 or eSATA connections, choose eSATA. It is MUCH faster.
  • I think that might have been recommended because of how Windows file systems like to fragment files as much as possible and then add a few more fragments for good measure. With lots of free space it stands a better chance of defragging them successfully, especially if you have a lot of huge files.
  • Maybe you need a bigger hard drive? 40GB is very small. I have a 500GB hd and an external HD of 500GB for backups too.
  • I dont think there will be any problem with your disk , unless its 90% + full , so dont worry about it
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    External hard drive question

    I have always been told that the hard drive on your computer should not be more than half full. Since I still run windows xp, with a 40 gig hd, I keep the info on it at 20 gb or below. But does this apply to external hard drives. I have a couple of 110 gig, external drives for storage, and they have 65 or 70 gig on each of them. Am I looking for trouble, or does it not apply to external drives. Thanks