Performance after your hard drive reaches 50% capacity

[Dan Irwin]

hi,

Last week i was reading the magazine "laptop" (it was an act of
desperation, stuck in an airport ) and it had a section on tips to
improve performance. One of the tips it had was to keep your hard
drive clean; to me that made sense, but then it said something that
seemed kind of odd: "once you get over 50 percent capacity, hard
drives are much slower because they can't create a mirror image". Is
there any truth to this statement? I can understand once you have less
than 6gb (if you use a tweak) you start running out of room and the
pagefile can no longer reach maximum size, but if you have a 60 gb
hard drive do you really need 30gb free for max performance? And what
is this mirror image thing?

 

[CJT]

hi,

Last week i was reading the magazine "laptop" (it was an act of
desperation, stuck in an airport ) and it had a section on tips to
improve performance. One of the tips it had was to keep your hard
drive clean; to me that made sense, but then it said something that
seemed kind of odd: "once you get over 50 percent capacity, hard
drives are much slower because they can't create a mirror image". Is
there any truth to this statement? I can understand once you have less
than 6gb (if you use a tweak) you start running out of room and the
pagefile can no longer reach maximum size, but if you have a 60 gb
hard drive do you really need 30gb free for max performance? And what
is this mirror image thing?

That sounds bogus to me.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

And to me! I reckon you need 20%+ free space. You can run on less but you
will see problem like the ability to defrag ( 15% needed ). Are you sure you
read the Article right?

--

~~~~~~


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Stourport, Worcs, England
Enquire, plan and execute.
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Please tell the newsgroup how any
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[J. Clarke]

hi,

Last week i was reading the magazine "laptop" (it was an act of
desperation, stuck in an airport ) and it had a section on tips to
improve performance. One of the tips it had was to keep your hard
drive clean; to me that made sense, but then it said something that
seemed kind of odd: "once you get over 50 percent capacity, hard
drives are much slower because they can't create a mirror image". Is
there any truth to this statement? I can understand once you have less
than 6gb (if you use a tweak) you start running out of room and the
pagefile can no longer reach maximum size, but if you have a 60 gb
hard drive do you really need 30gb free for max performance? And what
is this mirror image thing?

Find out what the guy was smoking, it might be pretty good stuff.

As the drive fills, performance declines simply because (a) the average seek
is longer and (b) the storage density and thus the data transfer rate is
highest on the outermost tracks, which are filled first.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

On a partitioned disk? Of course we do not what set up Dan has!

--

~~~~~~


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FCA

Stourport, Worcs, England
Enquire, plan and execute.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please tell the newsgroup how any
suggested solution worked for you.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Dan Irwin]

when i get back home i will scan in the page

Find out what the guy was smoking, it might be pretty good stuff.

As the drive fills, performance declines simply because (a) the average seek
is longer and (b) the storage density and thus the data transfer rate is
highest on the outermost tracks, which are filled first.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

hi,

Last week i was reading the magazine "laptop" (it was an act of
desperation, stuck in an airport ) and it had a section on tips to
improve performance. One of the tips it had was to keep your hard
drive clean; to me that made sense, but then it said something that
seemed kind of odd: "once you get over 50 percent capacity, hard
drives are much slower because they can't create a mirror image". Is
there any truth to this statement?

No truth to that.

I can understand once you have less
than 6gb (if you use a tweak) you start running out of room and the
pagefile can no longer reach maximum size, but if you have a 60 gb
hard drive do you really need 30gb free for max performance? And what
is this mirror image thing?

Something from lala land.

 

[yandr]

No truth to that.

Actually, it is kind of true.

Modern hard disks have an increasing range of disk transfer rates from the
inner diameter to the outer diameter of the disk. This is called a "zoned"
recording technique. Since hard disks are filled from the outside in, the
fastest data transfer occurs when the drive is first used (empty).

This is why when the computer is new and the HDD almost empty, a benchmark
will show higher performace than when the HDD is almost full

i do not know what is meant with the mirror image though.
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[Toshi1873]

Actually, it is kind of true.

Modern hard disks have an increasing range of disk transfer rates from the
inner diameter to the outer diameter of the disk. This is called a "zoned"
recording technique. Since hard disks are filled from the outside in, the
fastest data transfer occurs when the drive is first used (empty).

The transfer rate for the inner-tracks is usually only
25% (or thereabouts) higher then the outer-track speeds.
Sometimes not even that much of a difference (e.g.
25MB/s vs 30MB/s)

This is why when the computer is new and the HDD almost empty, a benchmark
will show higher performace than when the HDD is almost full

i do not know what is meant with the mirror image though.

What can happen is that NTFS (assuming that's what the
OP is using) starts to degrade in performance once the
drive hits 90-95% full. It will start to fragment
faster and other general slow-downs (dunno exact
reasons).

I try to keep my drives at the 15-25% empty mark (as
defrag won't run if you have less then 15% free).

 

[J. Clarke]

The transfer rate for the inner-tracks is usually only
25% (or thereabouts) higher then the outer-track speeds.
Sometimes not even that much of a difference (e.g.
25MB/s vs 30MB/s)

According to Hitachi the outermost zone on the 7K250 has a STR of 61.4
MB/sec vs 29.7 on the innermost.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

The transfer rate for the inner-tracks is usually only
25% (or thereabouts) higher then the outer-track speeds.

Utterly Clueless.

Sometimes not even that much of a difference (e.g. 25MB/s vs 30MB/s)

That would be an ATA66 drive run on an ATA33 channel or used with
a 40-wire cable.

Most 7200 rpm drives manage a 1:1.75 (75%) difference between inner
and outer STR. Even 15krpm drives manage a 1:1.5 (50%) difference.

The only drive that I could find to deviate was a Barracuda 36ES2
that had a 1:1.3 (30%) difference. I think this drive was suspected to
be an IDE drive on a SCSI interface and it probably got it's low
(lower than IDE) average access time by shortstroking the capacity
of an originally bigger drive to say half or even less.

 

[Rolf Blom]

On 2004-10-02 18:27, Toshi1873 wrote:
-snip-

What can happen is that NTFS (assuming that's what the
OP is using) starts to degrade in performance once the
drive hits 90-95% full. It will start to fragment
faster and other general slow-downs (dunno exact
reasons).

I try to keep my drives at the 15-25% empty mark (as
defrag won't run if you have less then 15% free).

Well, I filled my disk above 85% and got a complaint popup
from defrag, but it did still defragment the drive ok.
(I had kept it well defragmented prior to reaching the limit.)

I figure if the fragmented files fit in the free
space, they can still be moved around.

If you had an imaginary disk of immesureable storage capacity, you'd
still need 15% of it free, to defrag?


/Rolf



.... . . . . . . . . . .
Universe too fragmented.
Please defrag before installing new galaxies.
defrag y/n?

y

password> gibgnab
done
..