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Is there any reason to leave free space on a storage HDD that only holds games?

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I've got 140 GB left on a 2 TB storage HDD, the indicator in Windows turned red. Any reason I shouldn't fill another 120-130 GB on this storage drive so that virtually all the space is used?

I've heard of a rule of thumb that you should have 10% free on HDDs, but does that apply to every drive or just the OS drive?
 

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That primarily only applies to OS/System drives. Data drives, as long as they're not "Program Files" alternatives, and are purely storage, can be as full as you want to make them. Just make sure in the Advanced System Settings that they're not set with a Paging File.
 

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Having very little free space is going to make defrags take forever, but if you aren't moving data to and from the drive that often it shouldn't matter.
 

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I've heard of a rule of thumb that you should have 10% free on HDDs
That primarily only applies to OS/System drives. Data drives, as long as they're not "Program Files" alternatives, and are purely storage, can be as full as you want to make them. Just make sure in the Advanced System Settings that they're not set with a Paging File.
IF your pagefile is set to dynamic (it expands and contracts in size as needed ) then you might need more than 10%
Having very little free space is going to make defrags take forever,
Windows used to require 30% free space as a minimum to efficiently Defrag ( Sometimes not enough space = refusal/failure to defrag).
 
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All your free space are belong to us, so yes, please leave plenty, if you know what's good for ya, hahaha :roll: :D

But seriously, this is more important on your OS drive than storage drives, but a little free space never hurts if by chance you occasionally write temporary or cache files to the storage drive......
 
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Yes, The reason is you will need more space eventually.
 
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I always fill my HDD to the brim. Fill it up!
 

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I would just defrag the drive before you use the last bit of space because, as already mentioned, the defrags are going to take forever once it's completely full.

Keeping free space is only really important for drives that have a lot of rapidly-changing data. A games drive can be 99% full - just leave yourself enough space to apply game updates.
 

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As it gets full, its harder to defragment (and slower) but thats about it, until its empty

So yes, you can end up with performance issues when its very full (delete a game with lots of small files, new game/update/save file whatever suddenly has one file in 500 fragments
 
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Around 200MB the notification that your drive is full can annoy you, untill you are good to go, if it is a storage drive not frequent data changing.
Around 10 % you can consider to get a bigger one :)
 
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Always nice to leave a bit of space on a drive.
 
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ive been use all my hdd sdd to the max, all drive red colour, dont have any issue so far, i think is okay with full space
 
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I'd leave a bit of room, maybe 10Gb-50Gb on a Steam Drive.

They go thru and update odd things sometimes, and I had it totally freak out when they released a huge update for Doom 2016.

I was using an SSD, and it didn't have enough room, so I had to shuffle some stuff.
BTW, the SSD only made about a 5 second difference in load times for me, which was not worth the expense.

For Movies and stuff like that, I'd say fill it up. :)
 

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I'd leave a bit of room, maybe 10Gb-50Gb on a Steam Drive.

They go thru and update odd things sometimes, and I had it totally freak out when they released a huge update for Doom 2016.

I was using an SSD, and it didn't have enough room, so I had to shuffle some stuff.
BTW, the SSD only made about a 5 second difference in load times for me, which was not worth the expense.

For Movies and stuff like that, I'd say fill it up. :)
See, I consider a Steam Drive as a "Program Files" location, not purely data storage. My data drives are only that, but I was able to budget a 1Tb SSD for my system, and try to remove the games I'm not actively playing. The "other" drives contain local copies of my music, ripped DVDs, etc.
 
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The only time you need to leave a bit of space is for like OS, or DB engines or Critical apps that rely on writing to the drive to function. If it's just data or games, then 100% it no problem. Wouldn't do that to your OS drive though as that would cause problemas.
 
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The only time you need to leave a bit of space is for like OS, or DB engines or Critical apps that rely on writing to the drive to function. If it's just data or games, then 100% it no problem. Wouldn't do that to your OS drive though as that would cause problemas.
couldnt agree more, i forgot to mentioned my fulldrive is always external drive for data only, on my os i always put free space around 10% from whole capacity:p
 

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I've got 140 GB left on a 2 TB storage HDD, the indicator in Windows turned red. Any reason I shouldn't fill another 120-130 GB on this storage drive so that virtually all the space is used?

I've heard of a rule of thumb that you should have 10% free on HDDs, but does that apply to every drive or just the OS drive?
The only thing that may bite you if you fill the drive is patches may fail to install. But they'd have to be pretty big patches.
Other than that, defrag will take forever and you want your HDD defragged.
 
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See, I consider a Steam Drive as a "Program Files" location, not purely data storage. My data drives are only that, but I was able to budget a 1Tb SSD for my system, and try to remove the games I'm not actively playing. The "other" drives contain local copies of my music, ripped DVDs, etc.

I hadn't thought of it that way, but I agree; it's a location that gets a lot of action, like PF's.

For the movie drives, I'd like to have some huge PROM drive. :) (OK, 100TB Blu Rays would be fine, as long as I can make backups, lol.

I thought SSD's were similar, but they lose charge, and are rewritten on read, so wear when read. :(

All my movies are thus on a Raid5 array, and I replace drives when they start flagging errors.
I have DVD's I recorded 20 years ago, (The Matrix was first) and what started as an array of 233GB drives is now an array of 8TB drives, lol.

Somehow, I have 20,000+ hours of hirez MP3 files, and 6 TB of video.
According to my player, I watch 5% of my videos repeatedly, and 1% of my music, lol.
 

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I've got 140 GB left on a 2 TB storage HDD, the indicator in Windows turned red. Any reason I shouldn't fill another 120-130 GB on this storage drive so that virtually all the space is used?

I've heard of a rule of thumb that you should have 10% free on HDDs, but does that apply to every drive or just the OS drive?

Yes leave space for defragmenting and maintenance of the drive
 

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I’ve seen several people refer to a game only drive as a storeage drive. It really isn’t. A storage drive is for data, or library contents, NOT programs, which all those games are. I’m with @Ahhzz on this.

Leave a little free space, as those games will need defragging occasionally and room to install patches. I have frequently seen Uplay, EGS and Steam install gigs at a time. Also, those games on the complete outer edges of the playters are going to be the slowest to access. Why needlessly increase that time?
 
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