7 replies to this topic

[Rikushimo]

Hi.

One of my drives (my secondary drive, not the windows drive) is nearly full and windows indicates it's free space status as red. Will this slow down my computer? Or need I not worry because it isn't the drive my OS is installed on?


-Thanks

[Viral]

It won't slow down your computer, you only need to worry about the amount of space you have left in it.

[slamscaper]

If it's a mechanical drive, you should try to free up a little more space on it. The thing is, Windows cannot defrag the drive without at least 15% free space.

[Revorocks]

I find things tend to slow down a bit when your C drive gets full, probably because it gets very fragmented (not a problem for SSD's, but it is for HDD's)
On any other drive it's not a problem, it's just red to let you know its getting full.

Edited by Revorocks, 20 February 2012 - 10:17 AM.

[doctor killer]

quick suggestion: locate old data that is just backed up and/or not often used and run a compression tool such as WinRar (RAR archive) or 7z (LZMA2 archive): these tools have a compression ratio 2-3 times better than regular zip. (obviously, the archive will be saved at the same time than your data you you will need to save the archive somewhere else than on your drive that is full...)

* note: run over night...

Edited by doctor killer, 23 February 2012 - 12:19 AM.

[britrb]

You could just get a cheapo HDD and either back your stuff up externally then free up the space, or you could jam another HDD into your PC, and move some stuff over to it.

Brian

[Saijan Prince]

It is not a desirable condition, windows, or more accurately the NTFS file system (nice try file system.....cause it WAS a nice try) does not like running into the red, and starts to perform erraticly and can cause the master file table to become fragmented, as well as the page file, which can significantly hinder performance.

not such a huge issue if the drive is not the system drive (C:) but if it is you need to clear some space.

Edited by Saijan Prince, 23 February 2012 - 09:42 PM.

[Sarge]

use a program called spacesniffer, tells you where everything is on your hdd and tells you how big each file is. you can aslo delete everything you need to from the program and its free.