hard drive technical question

[perky]

hi
I am using xp pro fully updated and I have a technical question that someone
maybe able to answer. I have a 60gig hard drive and it is never more than
half full. I would like to know if I am using the same portion of the drive
all the time or are all the items on the drive covering the whole drive.
Basically, I would like to know if the unused section of the drive never
get's used,is this unwise and should I fill the drive occasionally to use
all the drive. Sorry to be a bit long-winded but I am trying to explain as
best I can
thank you

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I am using xp pro fully updated and I have a technical question
that someone maybe able to answer. I have a 60gig hard drive and it
is never more than half full. I would like to know if I am using
the same portion of the drive all the time or are all the items on
the drive covering the whole drive. Basically, I would like to know
if the unused section of the drive never get's used,is this unwise
and should I fill the drive occasionally to use all the drive.
Sorry to be a bit long-winded but I am trying to explain as best I
can

It is not unwise. In fact - the drive does not care and it is not harming
it in any way.

When you write data to a hard disk drive - it is not necessarily writing it
in order from the inside of the platter (think of a record/LP) to the
outside... It jumps around - writing pretty well randomly.

Suggested reading:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/hard-disk.htm

For your computers performance - you may wish to CHKDSK and DEFRAG the drive
on occassion.

How to use Disk Cleanup
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310312

How to scan your disks for errors
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265

How to Defragment your hard drives
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314848

Also - don't *depend* on your hard disk drive alone. If that is the only
copy you have of all your stuff -that *is* unwise. Archive/backup to
external media (USB hard disk drive, CD or DVD, etc.)

 

[R. McCarty]

There is no technical reason to fill a drive or force use of a particular
area
of sectors. If you visualize the drive as circle, the outermost area is the
fastest. The heads move less writing/reading to the outside area. Using
the inner area requires more head movement. ( longer access times ). A
NTFS volume has it's MFT offset by a certain percent from the start of
the volume (~15%). Where the data is written depends on the availability
of free space. A heavily fragmented volume will have data spread across
a larger percentage of the drive and perform less than optimally.

 

[throwitout]

hi
I am using xp pro fully updated and I have a technical question that someone
maybe able to answer. I have a 60gig hard drive and it is never more than
half full. I would like to know if I am using the same portion of the drive
all the time or are all the items on the drive covering the whole drive.
Basically, I would like to know if the unused section of the drive never
get's used,is this unwise and should I fill the drive occasionally to use
all the drive. Sorry to be a bit long-winded but I am trying to explain as
best I can
thank you

Generally as you add and delete files things will start to get spaced
around the hard drive. As a rough approximation of how things are
spaced, look at the analyze screen in defrag:
My Computer->Right click C:-> properties->tools->Defragment now.

Click analyze and it will show (roughly) how the data is spaced across
the drive. Usually it won't always be all compactly in the far left
side (start of disk), but kind of spread out. If there's a lot of red
you probably should defragment your drive

It really isn't something worth worrying about, you aren't in anyway
harming your drive the way you're using it now.

 

[VanguardLH]

in message

I am using xp pro fully updated and I have a technical question that
someone maybe able to answer. I have a 60gig hard drive and it is
never more than half full. I would like to know if I am using the
same portion of the drive all the time or are all the items on the
drive covering the whole drive. Basically, I would like to know if
the unused section of the drive never get's used,is this unwise and
should I fill the drive occasionally to use all the drive. Sorry to
be a bit long-winded but I am trying to explain as best I can

Do you also feel the need to occasionally fill your glass to the brim
because you think that not doing so would somehow diminish its
capacity?

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

The others have pretty well answered your question so I will simply supply
some often forgotten advice. If you want to reduce fragmentation on the
drive, increase performance, and utilize new areas of the drive stop using
the Save command wherever you can. Save only writes the changes to a file
and the file manager only looks for the next convenient place on the hard
drive that will store the fragment. Over time a file can be in a hundred
pieces and the disk head has to move all over the place to read file
sequentially into memory.

Use the Save As command instead and use the same filename you have been
using. The Save As command causes the file manager to save the entire
contents of the file in a contiguous new filespace somewhere else on the
hard drive. This makes it very easy on the hard drive to read the file into
memory the next time because the heads only have to move to the starting
point and just read. Not only that but it requires much less drive activity
to defrag (there still is a lot of save activity from system processes too)
and defrag is easier on the drive mechanism and quicker to perform.

 

[perky]

thank you all for taking the trouble to clarify my question. it really is
appreciated
keep up the good work

 

[Lil' Dave]

On my PC, system files seems to reside all over the windows partition. The
swapfile stays pretty much at the end of the windows partition after
educating it by removal at the proper time and reinstating it. Rest stays
up towards the beginning of the partition including the MFT table which
can't be moved. Using an older version of diskeeper for defragmentation.