NTFS 10% free rule apply to storage drives?

[- wardog -]

I know NTFS begins balking at less than 10% free space on a drive that contains the OS.

But does the 10% rule apply to drives that are only used for storage?

I see that even storage drives when looked at in explorer will show red when less than 10% is remaining. But is it actually detrimental when used as a storage drive?

[parsec]

Re: NTFS 10% free rule apply to storage drives?

Good question, I frankly have never heard of that.

The 10% figure must be arbitrary, and old, since 10% of 1TB is 100GB. "Yeah, only 100GB left, better start deleting a few emails..."

For a storage drive, and talking HDDs of course, I wouldn't think so. But who knows how many bad blocks, etc, might exist on some (old) HDDs. I bet the 10% figure is a dumbed down, worst case figure for that poor old guy, Joe Average.

I once filled a small SSD to as full as possible as a torture test. It had less than 10MB free when I was done. I think NTFS hates having to find the few LBA's available in those circumstances. Even on a 120GB SSD, it took a while to do that, and that was with only ~120, 1GB files on it. It seemed like NTFS had to verify that was actually true, it didn't want to believe it. Or it was the SSD freaking out, quite possible.

Got an old HDD laying around? Fill it up and see what happens.

[profJim]

Re: NTFS 10% free rule apply to storage drives?

Good luck if there is very little free space on a highly fragmented partition with very large files and you run most defragging programs.

[- wardog -]

Re: NTFS 10% free rule apply to storage drives?

Good luck if there is very little free space on a highly fragmented partition with very large files and you run most defragging programs.

Yea I maybe should have elaborated more on why I ask.

I've seven 3TB drives in my A/V server # 1, partitioned as 3x1TB each. They hold full DVD iso's playable through my home theater. I'm stealthily eyeballing that remaining 100GB that "could' hold another 10-12 iso's on each drive.

Thus no defragging as they are there on a permanent basis. Well, ok, until or when higher capacity drives become reasonably priced that is. I've bought twenty 3TB drives and what with backups of the current 7, making 14 filled so far, I have three more to write to and the requisite 3 to backup to. Backup drives are stored individually in protective cases on a shelf here.

That leaves me to run a HDD throughput program on one that's at 90% then copy some other iso's onto the drive till near 100% and retest. Lazily I was hoping for an easy answer

That, I'm still undecided if I want to whack them down to the actual movie itself. But the thought of doing that to ~1000 full iso's would be very time consuming. Save me some serious space, and I do have the spare drives to cut them on and rotate in place. And I still have another give or take 400 DVD's that I need to copy. Decisions decisions......

[profJim]

Re: NTFS 10% free rule apply to storage drives?

Very Interesting.
And how many secondary duplicate 3TB hard drives do you have in a safe and secure offsite storage area?
Hmmmmmm .......... sounds like you have HD-DVD-ISO OCD.

[- wardog -]

Re: NTFS 10% free rule apply to storage drives?

Offsite? Meh. Does on the other side of the room count as a valid place?

[profJim]

Re: NTFS 10% free rule apply to storage drives?

Offsite? Meh. Does on the other side of the room count as a valid place?

Uh.....not if:

• there's a fire or theft in your room
• a tornado, flood or comet Ison destroys your house
• etc....

Come on, you know the proper way to save and rotate duplicate or triplicate backup copies.

[- wardog -]

Re: NTFS 10% free rule apply to storage drives?

Ison. Wow. I'm impressed. You stay right on top of things.

Did you get out to view the Leonid meteor shower Nov 16-17? You there in WA had a good shot at some cool night sky viewing. Next up are the Geminids on Dec 13-14.

For the time spent copying them to HDD I really should find a relative willing to store them. And another to keep the boxes of DVD and BR.

I'm more worried a Skrel's Ursa destroying my place. Or Thor's Hammer go flying through and collect this mess on the way out :)_