How full can my hard drive get...

Okay, I am about to set up my new HP computer which has Vista Premium
64 bit and a 750 gig hard drive.

With all the mp3's, lossless audio and avi's I have on various
external hard drives, 750 gigs isn't really "that big" anymore!

So:
How full can I make my 750gig hard drive, before it causes sluggishness or
other problems, using Vista Premium 64bit?

Note: I am thinking of shrinking the C partition into various
partitions:
about 20gigs for a cd/dvd ripping area
about 100gigs for Vista and programs and desktop working area" (C
drive)
about 400 gigs for mp3's
and the rest for .avi movie files


Is this a reasonable plan?

And is it okay to shrink it and divide it after I'm already up and
running with Vista, internet, etc.?


Thanks for the info!

When it Will start to get sluggish depeds on ur system spizing your stuff coulld make your life easier.

Doh! I posted this in the 7 forum instead of the Vista forum. I had 2 open windows and got confused...

But what does "spizing your stuff" mean?

Ehh, unless you are an audiophile with high end gear, convert those lossless files to a quality mp3 codec such as lame on high settings. If encoded correctly, you will not be able to tell the difference on most gear. It could save you tons of storage space.

Hello pdsnickles,

Welcome to the Seven Forums.

The more stuff you have on your hard drive the slower things will work. When/if it becomes noticeable depends on the hardware. Other than that, a lot depends on how you use your computer. The C drive will need some free space so that defrag can function properly. 15% I've read. Also keep in mind that the C drive will normally have the pagefile and restore points stored on it. It's a pain to have to delete (turn off) these features to get enough room for defrag to function. Fragmentation occurs from constantly adding and removing files. If you usually only save avi and mp3 files and seldom delete anything, fragmentation shouldn't be a huge problem there. If you are going to use the 20GB partition to rip and then move those files elsewhere that won't be a problem there at all. All in all it seems reasonable to me, but I don't know how much you add, remove or rearrange things over time. When my drive started getting full/sluggish, I bought an external HDD and moved little used items there. With plenty of room to save an Image of the C: drive just in case I needed it.

Gary

torrentg said:

Ehh, unless you are an audiophile with high end gear, convert those lossless files to a quality mp3 codec such as lame on high settings. If encoded correctly, you will not be able to tell the difference on most gear. It could save you tons of storage space.

Click to expand...

Thanks but yeah, I'm an audiophile. On some music you cannot really tell the difference and on some you can. Some day hard drive space will be so easy to come by, it will be easy to keep the lossless files.

garysgold said:

Hello pdsnickles,

Welcome to the Seven Forums.

The more stuff you have on your hard drive the slower things will work. When/if it becomes noticeable depends on the hardware. Other than that, a lot depends on how you use your computer. The C drive will need some free space so that defrag can function properly. 15% I've read. Also keep in mind that the C drive will normally have the pagefile and restore points stored on it. It's a pain to have to delete (turn off) these features to get enough room for defrag to function. Fragmentation occurs from constantly adding and removing files. If you usually only save avi and mp3 files and seldom delete anything, fragmentation shouldn't be a huge problem there. If you are going to use the 20GB partition to rip and then move those files elsewhere that won't be a problem there at all. All in all it seems reasonable to me, but I don't know how much you add, remove or rearrange things over time. When my drive started getting full/sluggish, I bought an external HDD and moved little used items there. With plenty of room to save an Image of the C: drive just in case I needed it.

Gary

Click to expand...

Thanks Gary.
I do a lot of downloading so what I want is to create a space for downloading, processing (combining rar's or ape's or whatever) then moving those files once I've previewed them.

So someone told me creating a separate partition for that such as a 20-30-40 gig area for downloading and ripping files might be a good idea, so it doesn't fragment my c drive.

Then, I'd either delete or move those files to a partition used for archiving them, plus copying them to an external drive for backing them up.

You mentioned backing up an image of the c drive. What's a good (preferably cheap) program for making an image for backup? and let's say I have a 100 gig area for my c drive, programs and such, how much space would the image typically take up on my external drive(s)? Can you compress the image? Thanks.

Hi,

Normal compression is about 45% of the used space - this is great

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

Personally I go with this scheme:

OS installed into a 20GB partition (extending that to 30GB for win7 now that im using it instead of xp64), the rest in a single storage partition. I install games, CD images, Virtual Machines into a directory on my storage partition, and also use it for all backups and storage files (which FYI I copy the backup files to another system via gigabit)

With this setup I have filled my D: (storage partition) to 100% and gone "oops" without noticing much of any performance degradation... I watch my C: quite closely and don't let it get above 75% full... I also use JKDefrag64 with task scheduler every night while I sleep to keep the partitions fully defragmented.

If you have a budget, you might also want to consider getting another drive just for your mp3s.

Jaqie said:

Personally I go with this scheme:

OS installed into a 20GB partition (extending that to 30GB for win7 now that im using it instead of xp64), the rest in a single storage partition. I install games, CD images, Virtual Machines into a directory on my storage partition, and also use it for all backups and storage files (which FYI I copy the backup files to another system via gigabit)

With this setup I have filled my D: (storage partition) to 100% and gone "oops" without noticing much of any performance degradation... I watch my C: quite closely and don't let it get above 75% full... I also use JKDefrag64 with task scheduler every night while I sleep to keep the partitions fully defragmented.

Click to expand...

20 gigs seems like a very small space to give your OS elbow room, no?
Some have told me to give it more like 50-100gigs, but I'm no expert I'm just parroting what I've been told.

This is the defragger you use?
JkDefrag v3.36

It says on the above page:
"[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]The "Prefetch\Layout.ini" file is not yet supported. This means that JkDefrag will undo the boot optimization of the built-in XP and Vista defragger. [/FONT]

What does that mean - that it disables Vista's boot defragger? I'm not sure what it means by "undo boot optimization". I assume it's the same on 7...?

And that begs the question, doesn't Vista have a built in defragger? If so, what is wrong with it/ why is jkdefrag better? Just curious. On my XP system I've been using Perfect Disk but it is expensive and I prefer to find a cheap or free alternative.

pdsnickles said:

20 gigs seems like a very small space to give your OS elbow room, no?
Some have told me to give it more like 50-100gigs, but I'm no expert I'm just parroting what I've been told.

Click to expand...

O.O HUH!?



As I said large programs get installed to the D: (such as games, and VM images) and everything else to the OS partition... and Ive zero problems with space used... as you can see in win7 I need to (and want to) disable the hibernation file, but haven't bothered to yet.

This is the defragger you use?
JkDefrag v3.36

Click to expand...

Yes.

It says on the above page:
"[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]The "Prefetch\Layout.ini" file is not yet supported. This means that JkDefrag will undo the boot optimization of the built-in XP and Vista defragger. [/FONT]

What does that mean - that it disables Vista's boot defragger? I'm not sure what it means by "undo boot optimization". I assume it's the same on 7...?

And that begs the question, doesn't Vista have a built in defragger? If so, what is wrong with it/ why is jkdefrag better? Just curious. On my XP system I've been using Perfect Disk but it is expensive and I prefer to find a cheap or free alternative.

Click to expand...

Basically it means that the system won't boot as fast if you use jkdefrag to defrag your hard drives... doesn't matter to me, I stay in a single session of windows for weeks at a time, only rebooting when I need to change a BIOS setting, change hardware, or such - and the occasional patch.

JKDefrag is very simple to use, and much more efficient then the built in windows defrag utility. start it, it defragments all local drives... that simple.

Jaqie said:

I stay in a single session of windows for weeks at a time, only rebooting when I need to change a BIOS setting, change hardware, or such - and the occasional patch.

Click to expand...

Hi Jaqie

I believe people really need to rethink this policy these days.
First, it's completely unnecessary with today's hardware reliability, and it's a rather large power draw that is quite non-eco friendly in a world that seriously needs to lower wasteful habits.
We don't leave our lights on all night, and there's a growing movement of users out there that are trying to get this old habit killed off.

It's an ancient habit that was borne from poor hardware reliability in the early-early days, but with todays hardware it's completely unwarranted. I don't want this to come off as anything other than just trying to get people to rethink this "On at all tmes, for as long as humanly possible" stuff, and start to think more environmentally friendly.

@pdsnickles - if you DO use a different defrag utility other than the built in windows one, make SURE to disable the windows defrag. Different utilities use different algorithms to do this task, so running two will just make them both work overtime trying to undue what the other did.

Chappy said:

Hi Jaqie
I believe people really need to rethink this policy these days.
First, it's completely unnecessary with today's hardware reliability, and it's a rather large power draw that is quite non-eco friendly in a world that seriously needs to lower wasteful habits.
We don't leave our lights on all night, and there's a growing movement of users out there that are trying to get this old habit killed off.

It's an ancient habit that was borne from poor hardware reliability in the early-early days, but with todays hardware it's completely unwarranted. I don't want this to come off as anything other than just trying to get people to rethink this "On at all tmes, for as long as humanly possible" stuff, and start to think more environmentally friendly.

Click to expand...

You are assuming one helluva lot here.
First, I actually converted to LCDs entirely, and turn off the devices I do not use when I do not use them. Second, I checked the power draw of my system when it is idling - it is quite low... for several reasons... one of which is DES on my system, another is the processor I chose - it has a TDP of 65 watts but because of how TDPs are calculated this one never even gets close to that, it's more of a 35 watt CPU. Third, I purchased a lenovo S10 because it is so energy efficient compared to my old "chatting" computer. This is all of great cost to me as I live on a fixed $700 a month income which must pay for rent, food, medicine, utilities, and everything else. Also I use a single hard drive in my system instead of many, which is where a good deal of the power goes... And then the fact that I am using a BFG GeForce 7900GS for video which is quite low on power consumption compared to most gamer video cards out there nowadays.
And then you are entirely discounting the possibility of me needing my system to do tasks while I sleep, which I do.
And yet another factor most people do not even realize is that during the winter heat produced is an asset, not a detriment... I would have to run my heater more if my computer was off. I also have fluorescent lights in my room and our entire house - and am considering the cost of purchasing LED lights for my room.

And then this whole thing is literally nothing compared to the energy cost of most people's cars. I have not owned a car since 1996. I go out a whole two times a month in a vehicle, to buy food, carpooling with my housemate. How many miles do you put on your car, and how much of that could be cut out, especially if you used public transit? (this is, of course, assuming you don't already).

What about heating and air conditioning? Climate control is THE BIGGEST energy use in the world, FAR outstripping ALL computer use. The house I live in has no central heating or air conditioning. We heat just the rooms we stay in, our bedrooms. When we go to the bathroom we bake or freeze if its summer or winter, the same when we make food in the kitchen. Can you say the same? I even put my own microwave and fridge in my bedroom partially to use the waste heat provided as heat for my room.

And then there's food and other waste. How much trash do you throw out? How much FOOD do you waste? I waste practically no food, I am extremely careful to make (and purchase) just the right portions of food for my needs. On the very rare occasion I burn something I cook, or I make something I cannot palete, I give it to the household pets and it is not wasted.

Electricity is very cheap and easy to make and distribute, this is why electric (and eventually hydrogen) vehicles are so wanted, it is extremely cheap, easy, efficient, and green to produce power in a central location and distribute it then it is to make it in small individual locations. Harping on someone over electricity use is self-righteous to put it lightly.

What was that old saying? How can you help your friend remove a feather from their eye when there is a plank in yours?

Hey Nickles, this is what I do for my storage needs. They'll be a little different since I have a couple of computers in my home and use remote desktop to work with them all.

First off, I have a "server" machine. It's just running Win7 though, not Windows Server. It's called a server cause it handles all the file, print, optical drive burning, virtualization, and internet sharing (large downloads, etc) stuff. It's the workhorse in the house.

I have 2 internal drives on it. The OS drive is 40 gigs (IDE) and houses Win7 and all applications including things like WinRAR, ImgBurn (which I recently tried out and really love!), Virtual Clone Drive, and a whole host of other stuff. It almost never gets fragmented and usually never more than half full. Since all the system stuff happens on this drive, I almost never see system slow down.

The second drive is 130 gigs (IDE). All the file fragmentation heavy stuff happens there. Large downloads (like P2P) and such are the only things directed to this drive. All RARing and such happens on this drive. This drive will get fragmented at 50% or more within a day (such is the nature of P2P downloads). Luckily since the only thing using it regularly is the P2P program, that rarely matters since it just looks for the next empty spot more than accessing existing files/data.

When P2P has finished downloading a file, it then gets moved to 1 of the 2 external drives I have - a 750 gig and a 1 terabyte drive. The 1 TB hosts just movie (LARGE) files of 700+ megabytes. The 750 hosts anything else I want to archive like small videos (300 to 500 megs), game patches (1 meg to 1 gig), personal documents, etc. I split the 2 externals up like this cause the 1 TB is full with about only 20 gigs free. The 750 only has about 100 gigs free at the moment too, though I've been on a DVD-burning archive stint for the past few days. It also only had about 20 gigs free a couple of days ago.

Now, remember, the above computer is the "server". I never actually sit at it and just remote in. So, with all these drives as full as they are and such, the PC also has to deal with providing remote desktop service to another PC, and yet it still runs like a champ. It may not be super fast, but it has almost never bothered me with how slow it is (and I'm a very impatient person). Its processor is only an Intel Celeron running at 1.4 ghz with only 1.5 gigs of ram. Its built in video card is so old, it won't do Windows Aero. This computer is OLD! It has 4 harddrives all at least 50% full. It's usually running at least 3 to 4 processor intensive applications at any given time.

Then there's my "main" workstation. It's a gaming rig. It has a 150 gig (SATA 1) Raptor drive and a 320 gig (SATA 1) storage drive. The Raptor has Windows and a few games on it. That's it. That's all that's allowed. I rarely hit more than 40 gigs installed total since I usually uninstall a game when I'm done with it and usually focus on one game at a time. (Wish I could find a nice 40 gig solid state drive.) The 320 drive ... died this week. I moved a couple of weeks ago, and I guess something happened to it. Though it had been making a few odd noises previously. The optical drive in this computer isn't used that much either since I tend to install from the shared virtual optical drive on the server.

All of my drives are paritioned to take up the whole drive. As you can image, my "My Computer" is already full of drives, so I try not to create more of them by partitioning. I was never a fan of partitioning a drive. I always hated how one partition would fill up before the other, and the other one still had like 75% free. And in the days when I started using computer, repartitioning a drive meant you lost everything on the partition. Ah, the old days of fDisk. Now, with Win7 (and Vista) allowing dynamic paritioning in the OS, it is something to rethink I guess.

You also mentioned wanting more storage yourself. That 1 TB drive I have is on sale at Best Buy for $120 at the moment. It's the Western Digital MyBook. All my drives are Western Digital. I've had dozens of them, and the one that died this week was the first one I've ever had a problem with. I'm going to go dig out the receipt this weekend and call WD for a warranty replacement though.

Chappy

+1

pdsnickles said:

Thanks but yeah, I'm an audiophile. On some music you cannot really tell the difference and on some you can. Some day hard drive space will be so easy to come by, it will be easy to keep the lossless files.

Click to expand...

I'm afraid that you MOST definitely can tell the difference between lossy MP3 compression (even EXTREME) and an uncompressed format like WAV or FLAC.

If you stream your music into a high quality amplifier and decent speakers (not typical Computer Boom Boxes or those horrible little white ipod type bud earphones) you'll tell the difference IMMEDIATELY.

FLAC will compress reasonably and it's LOSSLESS. This also means that if you need to copy some music and convert to another format such as OGG etc. you won't LOSE amy more in the conversion.

Once you start converting an already compressed lossy format such as mp3 into another lossy format you'll find very soon that "elevator" music has a better sound (not CONTENT please note).

A Big problem with MP3's of any compression is the large number of "Artifacts" created -- these won't normally be heard on a typical IPOD type device with Bud earphones but played on ANY self respecting piece of audio gear will be immediately apparent.

Pleanty of discussion of this sort of stuff over at
Hydrogenaudio Forums - Portal

You can get HUGE hard disks these days for peanuts -- rather than compromise the quality of your music -- just get an external (or internal) 1 or 2 TB disk. They are really cheap.

Later on when you want to do other things with your music you'll certainly wished you hadn't compressed it -- treat the original music like old photo negatives. Editing MP3's is like "a copy of a copy" which will degrade very rapidly.

Cheers
jimbo

FreakyFerret said:

Hey Nickles, this is what I do for my storage needs. They'll be a little different since I have a couple of computers in my home and use remote desktop to work with them all.[edited by me]

You also mentioned wanting more storage yourself. That 1 TB drive I have is on sale at Best Buy for $120 at the moment. It's the Western Digital MyBook. All my drives are Western Digital. I've had dozens of them, and the one that died this week was the first one I've ever had a problem with. I'm going to go dig out the receipt this weekend and call WD for a warranty replacement though.

Click to expand...

I'm glad WD has worked so well for you. But I tell you I will never buy another WD after my Passport Essential died after 9 months. I barely used it, kept it mostly for backup of my backups (thank goodness!). But I never moved it around, kept it in a cool location, and yet the other day I went to use it and it was just GONE. Also, I found their tech support to be lousy. I have had a little better luck with Seagate but I had one of those die, too, after only 13 months (just out of warranty). I am now trying a new Hitachi and hope I have good luck with it!

Hey Nickles,

I used to work retail repair and we sold drive by all manufacturers: Western Digital, Seagate, Hitatchi, Maxtor, Toshiba branded, and several off-name brands. We almost never saw a broken WD. I think twice in the years I worked there. Don't recall ever seeing a Hitatchi one. Not one. We'd see a broken Seagate about once a week though. Maxtor about once a month. I'd never buy one of those personally. But, I've heard from other people they have nothing but good experiences with them. I can only go on the thousands of systems I've repaired.

Maxtor and Seagate make Steve Gibson a ton of $$$ lol.