Hard Drive Capacity

[jlipkin]

How much do you fill a hard drive before you stop using it? My external RAID is getting close to capacity and I'm going to need to add some storage soon.

A long time ago, I used to fill drives to 80% before I retired them. Is this figure still good?

[Claude_Ferron]

Why would you stop using them at 80%??? Unless you know that you have bad sectors coming, I don't see any reason why you would do that. Plus if you know that you have bad sectors, replace the drive. I hope that you have setup a RAID mirror array (Type 1) to get secure storage. You should check for bad sectors on the new drive you plan to buy.

Claude Ferron, Owner / Photographer
www.subitophototo.net
Viewing System Solution - A proofing solution for event photography
Informations about the solution here (VSS)

[jlipkin]

I think I was told this in a course in server administration abou seven years ago. Perhaps it was a performance issue, or something to do with SCSI disks that's not relevant anymore.

[DougAxford]

My own experience on HD (not raid) is that performance takes a very noticeable hit after 95%. At that, you've reached the point where you're writing to too many different sections of the platter because the empty parts are all over the place and so small. At 90% we start clearing things out but it always seems to happen at the wrong time.

[BobSmith]

Leaving at least 20 percent free is a good idea for a working system drive; or some other drive where data is often written, deleted and written again. On a drive that's being used for archiving where you generally add files to it and don't do much to them afterwards except read them... fill that puppy up.

Bob Smith

[DougAxford]

I guess I should have been more specific. The 95% referred to a data drive, not an O/S drive.

I agree that your O/S drive, you want to be more careful.