HDD & Partition Question?

[WoodPeckr]

It's recommended not to fill a HDD more than 80%.
Does this also apply to any partitions you have created within a HDD or can you fill one of those partitions beyond 80% as long as the rest of the HDD is below 80% capacity overall?
Or should each partiton be treated as a separate HDD?

 

[svtcobra]

It's recommended not to fill a HDD more than 80%.
Does this also apply to any partitions you have created within a HDD or can you fill one of those partitions beyond 80% as long as the rest of the HDD is below 80% capacity overall?
quote]

It all comes down to personal preference.

Me personally never trusted partitioning a drive. I've always bought a 2nd back up drive to install programs on and save data, and use the main drive only for the O/S. Filling up a drive can slow it down if you're using it as you're boot drive, and it will take longer for the programs to access you're information if the drive it full. Partitioning a drive is not efficient because if the drive happens to go dead you're S.O.L unless you're willing to pay the $$$ to a recovery place to get you're data back.

Or should each partition be treated as a separate HDD?

Remember it is only one drive you're are partition. so in theory, it is not classed as a separate hard disk drive.

 

[Radio_Shack]

There really is no set rule about 80% or any %. It is highly dependant on your own needs and use.

If you find that your drive is 80% used and it's sluggish when accessing anything on the drive it's time for a defragmenation to get the sectors of related data lined up nicely.

Like others have said. Perhaps better to use the boot disk for just O/S related and get another disk (internal or external) for your data or programs to run off of. Disks are so cheap now you can build a few terabytes for next to nothing. I still remember my first hard disk back in early 1980s. The thing was 5MB and cost me nearly $1K. I was so happy As a programmer I find I never have enough disk space.

 

[WoodPeckr]

I do have 2 drives, the boot drive and an external for backup.
The boot drive has 4 partitions 20GB for XP, 20GB for linux, the balance partitions two 40GBs for storage.
I liked the 20GB for XP because defragging is quicker on 20GB than 100GB.
With linux you never have to defrag.

I did the same on my Ext HDD long time ago thinking it was a good idea based on what a friend at work said. It has 4, 40GB partitions for backup and storage and one of them is over 80 full, hence the question. All still fly with no slowness at all. However years ago I did fill a HDD up to over 95% and noted it got slow and eratic but that was with Win98.

This setup has run great for a couple years now on an 11 year old Pent II PC that with proper PM still hums along like new, albeit mainly running linux now.

 

[Anynym]

It's recommended not to fill a HDD more than 80%.
Does this also apply to any partitions you have created within a HDD or can you fill one of those partitions beyond 80% as long as the rest of the HDD is below 80% capacity overall?
Or should each partiton be treated as a separate HDD?

As others have said, there's no hard and fast rule at play. But for Microsoft operating systems, there are dynamic and temporary files which the OS needs space for, and if the disk gets 100% full then bad things can happen. This usually applies to the "C" drive.

Other partitions can fill up to 100% without the same impact - you might not be able to save a new version of a file (because freeing up the space taken up by the old file happens after the new file gets written), and individual applications might fail (if they need to write to the full disk) but the system shouldn't crash.

The total free space spread among all the partitions is irrelevant - each partition is "logically" a separate hard drive.

That being said, it's often preferable to create separate partitions for your OS and Data, so that you can back up all your data more easily. And if your system dies, you can reinstall your OS, reinstall your applications, restore your data, and continue as you were.

 

[WoodPeckr]

The total free space spread among all the partitions is irrelevant - each partition is "logically" a separate hard drive.

This was my understanding and when you click on 'My Computer' in Windows, 3 disks show up as if they were 3 HDDs.
Linus does the same and shows 3 Disks. However what's nice on linux is you can go into all 3 drives, even Windows and drag/use files back & forth between Windows & linux and vice versa. Windows doesn't allow you to go into the linux partition and treats the linux partition as 'unknown'.

That being said, it's often preferable to create separate partitions for your OS and Data, so that you can back up all your data more easily. And if your system dies, you can reinstall your OS, reinstall your applications, restore your data, and continue as you were.

I learned this trick by accident.
I have an old 8GB HDD with a clean version of XP on it for this purpose. When XP would act flakely, probably from me trying something on it probably not proper, I simply swap drives, throw this old HDD in as primary, then format the other drive I farked up, copy over the contents, XP and all my apps, programs, etc., then swap drives again and I'm up in running again like new in less than an hour.