performance reduction due to how full HDD?

[trumpet]

I've been told Windows performance begins to degrade drastically if
the HDD is more than half full. Seems pretty unlikely off hand, but
apparently that's the first question Best Buy techs ask anyone looking
for performance tweaking - how full is the drive?!

Anyone have any explanation as to why this might be, or is it some
kind of urban myth?

My system is running two 20 gig drives, and my 6 gig C: partition is
down to 400 megs free; getting it half empty would be an odious task
at this point - probably involving repartioning, and I don't really
want to tackle that job on the basis of hearsay. Also, I'm not sure
if this supposedly applies to all drives, only the master, only the
boot partition, or what.

Any thoughts?


Note - to reply by email, please reformat the addressee (should be pretty obvious)

 

[Jim Lewandowski]

I've been told Windows performance begins to degrade drastically if
the HDD is more than half full. Seems pretty unlikely off hand, but
apparently that's the first question Best Buy techs ask anyone looking
for performance tweaking - how full is the drive?!

Anyone have any explanation as to why this might be, or is it some
kind of urban myth?

***
Urban myth. Back 15 years ago when hard drives were dog slow, there was SOME truth to
this.

My system is running two 20 gig drives, and my 6 gig C: partition is
down to 400 megs free; getting it half empty would be an odious task
at this point - probably involving repartioning, and I don't really
want to tackle that job on the basis of hearsay. Also, I'm not sure
if this supposedly applies to all drives, only the master, only the
boot partition, or what.

Any thoughts?

***
The only possible performance detriment for having a disk too full relates to having
closely accessed files/folders too far apart on the hard disc. Examples of this are like
during boot when tons of files are being loaded into memory, or when you double-click a MS
word doc and it has to load the MS word code ALSO. If you have a fragmented file (let's
take a few MS Word DLLs/EXEs) you might increase the load time a few tenths (.20) of a
second or so but is that enough to notice? Likely not.

There are other APPLICATION issues like having Internet Explorer configured with WAY too
much Temporary Internet Files cause MORE hard disc access because not all of it will fit
in memory. But this technically doesn't have to do with having a "too full" hard drive
but rather the application configuration.

Don't take my word for it. Download filemon and/or diskmon from
http://www.sysinternals.com and monitor what file accesses do occur for your C: partition.

Hard drive performance usually has to do with how MUCH data is being accessed rather than
WHAT'S being accessed.

JL

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I've been told Windows performance begins to degrade drastically if
the HDD is more than half full. Seems pretty unlikely off hand, but
apparently that's the first question Best Buy techs ask anyone
looking
for performance tweaking - how full is the drive?!

Anyone have any explanation as to why this might be, or is it some
kind of urban myth?

My system is running two 20 gig drives, and my 6 gig C: partition is
down to 400 megs free; getting it half empty would be an odious
task
at this point - probably involving repartioning, and I don't really
want to tackle that job on the basis of hearsay. Also, I'm not sure
if this supposedly applies to all drives, only the master, only the
boot partition, or what.

Any thoughts?


Note - to reply by email, please reformat the addressee (should be
pretty obvious)

Sort of an urban myth - but not completely. Certain tasks you should be
doing periodically (defragmentation, etc) are limited by your free space -
not to mention your ability to use a swap file for virtual memory shot.

In my opinion - a 6GB boot partition for Windows XP is MUCH too small. I
personally would have at least one of your two 20GB be nothing but your
Windows boot drive. Then I would probably go out and buy a much larger
secondary drive.

 

[Richard Urban MVP]

Sort of an urban myth - but not completely. Certain tasks you should be
doing periodically (defragmentation, etc) are limited by your free space -
not to mention your ability to use a swap file for virtual memory shot.

In my opinion - a 6GB boot partition for Windows XP is MUCH too small. I
personally would have at least one of your two 20GB be nothing but your
Windows boot drive. Then I would probably go out and buy a much larger
secondary drive.

Agreed. For the past three years I have installed Windows XP on 20 gig
partitions when setting up computers for my customers. Most customers, even
after 2-3 years, still have 6-8 gig free. Of course, the fact that I always
move their "My Documents" to Drive D has a lot to do with it also.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[xy2z]

Its always good to keep the drive clean of junk and leave atleast enough
free space for a defrag, which is about 15% space for the XP tool.