Windows 7 - When does Win7 begin to use red when showing hdd's in Computer?

Greetings,

My OS is Windows 7 Ultimate. When I go to Start, Computer, to view my internal and external hdd's I see that my WD 1 TB is in the red even though there is 76,3 GB of free space; My Book 2TB is in the red even though there is 23,3 GB of free space. To me that is a LOT of free space on each of these two external hdd's.

My question is, with so much available free space of each hdd why are they pictured in the red? I could understand if I had only a few gig's of free space but 76 and 23 GB?

My guest is that Windows uses a red color whenever a certain percentage of the hdd is used but I am not sure.

One drive is about 93% full. The other about 99%.

I'd guess you are right about red being based on a percentage, but I'm not sure either.

Those "occupied" percentages are noticeably higher than I see recommended as a maximum. For one thing, it will likely slow down your defragmentation.

I'd guess you can ignore the red and keep on going until the bitter end.

When a drive is 90% full the Low Disk Space Warning and the red bar kicks in. So if you have a 2TB drive but have 200GB free, the red bar will show.

The sooner you add more capacity the better, IMHO. A small investment now will be as nothing when the system grinds to a halt.

Of course you could transfer old data - that might free-up some space and then disk defrag only when there is more space free.
HDD drives are cheap enough these days . . . but watch the SATA-enabling issue mentioned elsewhere (search "AHCI"), something that few folk have come across YET.

FWIW, your most valuable (data) files should be on separate drives, ideally kept in separate locations, although this is often very difficult.

2T are cheaper than 2x 1T and easier to fit.

I thank you all for your help. I use external hdd's mainly to store dvd films. I do have an old but very useful WD 250GB hdd but that is just for documents. On the WD 2TB external hdd I have two images of my "C" drive stored; one image is of my main pc using Windows 7 Ulitmate x64 as its OS, and the other image is from my backup computer which uses Vista7 Ultimate x64.

I haven't defragged either of these external hdd's for some time now. The reason is that it takes forever to defrag large volume drives, and, since they only house films I don't really see the point of it. Maybe I will get an extra gig or two by defragging but that is not enough for a film.

My thinking is that when these two external hdd's are a bit more filled I will buy a new one. It will probably be a WD 3TB My Book Essential. Currently they sell for around 160 euros. I am in no hurry. When the price is right I will buy. I still have 146GB on my second internal 1TB hdd and its all to be used for films.

File this under FWIW:

STAC4000100 | Seagate

By the time you're ready to buy the prices will be lower and other companies will probably follow suit.

And if memory serves me, I think all Microsoft operating systems have required at least 10% free space to install programs and 15% to run a defrag. So the red "warning" bar is probably based on those parameters.

marsmimar,

How much real available space do you think I would have on a new 3TB hhd?

As you know blu-rays really eat up a lot of space on a hdd. Usually I wait awhile before buying a blu-ray because the prices are really ridiculous if you buy a NTSC (U.S. Import) here in Europe. I stopped buying films in the PAL format long ago. Films in the PAL format are cropped really bad.

If my math is correct a 3TB hard drive would have about 2.794TB of usable space. That Seagate 4TB drive would have about 3.638TB.

Thanks for the calculations. According to what you have written a Seagate 4TB hdd would be the way for me to go.

BTW, is that drive an internal or external one? I normally buy WD and know little of Seagate.

It's an external and has only one review.

For whatever reason, there are no internal 4 GB drives currently available at Newegg.