When you fill up extra space on your hard drive, you’ll begin to notice a myriad of problems. Not leaving enough extra space on your hard drive can lead to slow performance, programs crashing and the inability to download and install important security updates. How much spare room you’ll need to leave on your hard drive will depend on some factors.
How Much Extra Space on Your Hard Drive?
On older computers with mechanical hard drives, the rule of leaving 15%-20% was for the purpose of defragmenting your hard drive. Think about organizing a messy room – if there’s not enough room to move things around, it will be impossible to organize and you’ll have a difficult time finding things. It’s the same with a mechanical hard drive. Your hard drive will need room to re-organize and defragment files, which will help with efficiency when it goes to access files.
On more modern solid-state drives found in most computers today, how much space you’ll need to leave will depend on a few things. Some believe leaving 25% of your space free will optimize performance, however, many solid-state drives are over-provisioned, meaning that it actually has more memory than stated and can work with less free space while still maintaining optimal performance. This means that you might be okay with as little as 5%-10% free space before your PC starts losing performance, but there’s no real way to determine this until you’ve overloaded your computer.
Hard Drive Too Full?
Consider upgrading your hard drive or subscribing to a cloud service to store large files.
Need help with storage and networking solutions? Contact CCSI today and speak with one of our networking experts.
