The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Is it bad to fill up an External Hardrive All the Way?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by nadizo, Oct 3, 2011.

  1. nadizo

    nadizo Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    107
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I have a 2TB External Harddrive, I was wondering, is it bad to fill it up all the way? My friend told me it is bad because it works harder or some jibberish like that. But I dont really believe it.

    I have about 100GB left on my 2TB harddrive and I would like to use up at least another 75GB of it so im just curious if it makes a difference AT ALL? Or is that just a myth?
     
    nadizo, Oct 3, 2011
    #1
  2. tilleroftheearth

    tilleroftheearth Wisdom listens quietly...

    Reputations:
    5,398
    Messages:
    12,692
    Likes Received:
    2,717
    Trophy Points:
    631
    Of course it will work harder (75GB harder...). ;)




    As long as it is only used to store data, then this is in the 'myth' category.

    If it is used to access data directly (for example, a word file) then the program opening the file may write a temporary file to the drive and it will work harder.

    All my data drives are treated as my very last backup (even if I have 6x such drives of the exact same data)...... I will COPY any data to my temp drives to work with it, but I will never directly use the data as-is from my external/backup drive(s).

    Good luck.
     
    tilleroftheearth, Oct 3, 2011
    #2
  3. MidnightSun

    MidnightSun Emodicon

    Reputations:
    6,668
    Messages:
    8,224
    Likes Received:
    231
    Trophy Points:
    231
    There are noticeable performance detriments to filling up a primary (boot) hard drive close to max capacity, but for an external drive where you're likely bottlenecked by USB anyway, there should be no problems with filling it close to capacity.
     
    MidnightSun, Oct 3, 2011
    #3
  4. tijo

    tijo Sacred Blame

    Reputations:
    7,588
    Messages:
    10,023
    Likes Received:
    1,077
    Trophy Points:
    581
    Yeah, for a system drive, 80% capacity is pretty much the max before performance starts decreasing to something noticeable. For a data drive, however it doesn't really matter how much you fill it up, yeah it will be slower but as long as you're only reading data from it, i wouldn't worry too much. I would still leave a few hundred MBs free at the very least though.
     
    tijo, Oct 3, 2011
    #4
  5. nadizo

    nadizo Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    107
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Thank you for the help guys.

    what if i watch shows off the external harddrive?

    i burned all my movies and shows from discs into the external harddrive so i dont have to keep switching discs ...so im constantly using the external...is that really a bad thing??
     
    nadizo, Oct 3, 2011
    #5
  6. jlells01

    jlells01 Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    76
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    MidnightSun hit it on the proverbial head:

    You're capped at 480 Mbps regardless (assuming USB 2), but that's still more than enough to watch shows.
     
    jlells01, Oct 3, 2011
    #6
  7. nadizo

    nadizo Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    107
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    thank u for the help guys
     
    nadizo, Oct 3, 2011
    #7
  8. tuηay

    tuηay o TuNaY o

    Reputations:
    492
    Messages:
    3,711
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    105
    I have about a gigabyte left of my 1TB My passport external drive. Can't see any slowdowns, yet. Still moving to and from stuff from time to time. When this is full, this would be my second 1TB drive that is full. I leave about 100mb free space.
     
    tuηay, Oct 4, 2011
    #8