title says it all.. But im currious how much free space i really need on my main system HD?

But basically i have a 250 gig, that registers about 230.. I have vista 64 with 4 gigs mem and my HD has just aboutt 20 gigs HD space free..

My rule of thumb has always been 2 gigs for windows functions,, then Double memory, and a few gigs for bonus swaps.. That should get me to about 12 gigs or soo for max performace? Is that right? Or is it less/more?

Depends on your windows settings... if your swap file is set to auto, you should have free as much as possible.

Otherwise, I am working best with at least 10% (minimum 20 GB).

Windows and Office are taking a lot of space :)

On the partition where the OS is installed, i try to keep at least 10 GB free all the time, just in case i need to do some processing that requires a bunch of temporary files/caching/whatever

I usually never install any program in that partition except for the core ones, so basically windows, office, visual studio, some system utilities and that's all... the rest goes in separated partitions

you should have at least Descent: "Freespace"

heh.. that was pretty good.. :)




@antaniserse, good advice..

Can I derail this?

Is it bad to have 2, 1.5 TB externals Full (10GB free) 1 1 TB interal full(10GB free) and a second 1 TB currently at 186GB of 931GB free (split over 3 partitions)

/Obsessive Compulsive installer


FYI this is not a joke.

The reasons to have free space on your system disk are:

1. Windows uses it for temporary files. If Windows can't find free space, it will slow down. Browsers uses a lot of temporary files, too, and they will slow down if there isn't free space. You can solve this problem, to an extent, by moving your profile to a secondary disk. Windows 7 (and Vista) make this easy to do.

2. Installers may require a lot of temporary space, and they may insist on checking for it on your system disk. The GOG installers for The Witcher and TW2 are examples of these. They frustrate a lot of people who use small, crowded SSDs for their system disk.

3. Defragmenting doesn't work well unless the disk is at least 15% free. On mechanical disk drives, NTFS needs periodic defragmenting. The defragmenter will complain and end up doing an inferior job if the disk is more than 85% full. This doesn't matter with SSDs, which don't need HDD-style defragmenting.

So most people will want free space that is the greatest of:

* 5GB so Windows doesn't find a bad time to run out of space.
* Twice the size of the largest application you intend to install.
* 15% of the disk's formatted size, if you have a mechanical HDD.

20GB on a 250GB (230GB formatted) mechanical drive is not enough. You won't be able to defragment it properly. You should have at least 35GB free.

Personally, I try to keep my utilization under 80%, so I'd say try to keep at least 20% free.

Also, if you're going to be filling up that much it's a wise idea to make sure that the pagefile is set to a constant size as that can complicate things. I'm not sure that it's as important as it used to be, but performance often times would take a hit if you'd allow it to change.

I've got about 1.5 TB plus a backup so it equals somewhere around 3 TB. I could also install all my steam games like some of my friends, plus bring my other largely unused computer and it's backup to the equation (some faculty documentation, about 300GB x2)... yeah, I'd say you've got nothing too special going on there.

I wasnt asking if it was special, just if it was bad.

In what way exactly?

Only your main internal HD needs some "safety" space to function properly, and even that is optional.

Pardon my last reply, I thought you wanted to know if you have too much things on your HDs in general.

Not enough free space. 10GB out of 1.5TB will give poor write performance and is not enough to defragment.

Usually I'll try to keep at least 25% free space, but If I ever get below 15% I go on a deletion spree, randomly deleting stuff until my appetite for deletion is sated.

I usually make a 20~30GB partition for my OS, and another 10~20GB partition for programs and backup, then all the remaining go into one big partition for everything else including gaming, storage etc....