Hard Drive Free Space

[seekermeister]

I know that it is necessary to keep ~15% free space on the system drive for proper function, but what about a non-OS drive that is used only for storage? My video archive drive never seems to get fragged, so I doubt that I will need freespace for defragging...any other reason to need it?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I'd guess the worst case scenario is that whatever defragging is done on that storage drive would slow down. At some extreme point (99% occupied?), it might not defrag at all. So what?

I've run even OS partitions beyond 90% full and never noticed any issues.

Since I installed Win 7 13 months ago, I have never done a manual defrag and have never seen more than 5% fragmentation on any drive---storage or OS.

You could turn off defrag on that storage drive and I'll bet never notice the difference.

 

[seekermeister]

I hope that you are right, because I will probably fill it up...or almost. 15% of a 1TB drive is ~144GBs, and that is more space than I want to lose.