Is your HD half full or half empty?

[hyenolie]

you guest it.

is it better to have a hd that is half full or half empty, does a full hd perform any slower because more "porn" is on it?

does a 80 gig 7200 rpm that is 80% free perform better
than a 80 gig 7200 rpm that is only 20% free.

and ultimately does a 40 gig 10000rpm hd that is almost full do better than a 7200 rpm hd that is 120 gigs and only 20 gigs are used?

you think about this while i play some tunes from the 80's.

OMFG i sound like that faggggggg iiiitt from 102.7

 

[vgard]

I think it depends on the fragmentation on the drives..

 

[nw909]

I have 7.08 gigs left

 

[Shuzer]

What vgard said.

HD performance has nothing to do with how much space you have (although, I THINK Windows needs a certain amount of available space to run properly, but, it's very little), as long as the fragmentation is okay. So, if both HDs are properly defragged, then the 10000RPM will easily outperform the 7200RPM

 

[Shuzer]

Originally posted by Shuzer
What vgard said.

HD performance has nothing to do with how much space you have (although, I THINK Windows needs a certain amount of available space to run properly, but, it's very little), as long as the fragmentation is okay. So, if both HDs are properly defragged, then the 10000RPM will easily outperform the 7200RPM

18.4 of 109GB free for me..

And I have about 28GB of DVDs sitting on my HD that I have yet to get rid of

 

[hyenolie]

i have a 60 gig 7200 and only use 9.14 gigs

i defrag every other day, i dont know im a :bounce: weird0 :bounce:

 

[Dr. Freeman]

Originally posted by Shuzer
18.4 of 109GB free for me..

And I have about 28GB of DVDs sitting on my HD that I have yet to get rid of

all that porn.. Shuzer.. dude.. go get urself a gf yeeesh :upstare:

okay.. on a more serious note.. while u probably can't notice a substancial difference between a near full HD vs a half empty or more than half empty, im sure it has some affect..

ur HD has to search through that much more stuff if its full to get to what it needs right away..

anyway i had a conversation with comp technician and he explained that the bigger the HD capacity and the more full it gets, HD will be that much slower because the needle head that reads info has to go out that much further from the centre of the circular disk that holds all ur porn

anyway, he explained it in alot more detail and it clearly made sense.. since that conversation i have come to the conclusion that its better to buy 2 80gig HD's than to buy 1 massive 120gig or 160gig.. HD.. etc..

hopefully HD companies can improve the tech for HD's because compared to the rest of the comp HD tech is kinda slow in coming out.

 

[vgard]

If you have ever opened a harddrive, you would see that the 'needle' or 'needles' is actually located 'outside' the plates. it can move really quick from outside to inside, and unless your files are really fragmented, i don't think you would know the difference between a full or an empty drive. all you do when you delete youre files, is that you remove them from the hd's overview of what's on the drive(can't remember what it's called). So the data is still there even if you delete it. It will only go away if you put something else in it's place. Which you eventually do. So therefore, if your drive has been full, unless you low level format it (or something like that) the data will still be there. (sorry for my bad english) I therefore think that there is no difference between a full drive and an empty clean drive. You may convince me wrong with a good benchmark or something. this is only my thoughts. I have no proof of this.

[edit]

And besides, if you have a 30giga drive and a 300 giga drive, the only difference is that the 300 giga drive has more plates inside. So the needles don't go further, they rather search on another plate. (i don't know how many plates, but my old 1 giga had 2 plates.) The compression have become better than that though.

 

[vgard]

Originally posted by Dr. Freeman

anyway, he explained it in alot more detail and it clearly made sense.. since that conversation i have come to the conclusion that its better to buy 2 80gig HD's than to buy 1 massive 120gig or 160gig.. HD.. etc..

True, that is one of the reasons why raid is better than regular hd setups..

hopefully HD companies can improve the tech for HD's because compared to the rest of the comp HD tech is kinda slow in coming out. [/B]

I do hope so!

 

[SpuD]

i have 50 gigs out of 160 left

 

[Brian Damage]

If a drive has a head crash, and no one is using the computer, does it still cause an error?

That's supposed to sound Zen, BTW.:E

 

[vgard]

LOL

BTW, i have 35 giga free of 420.. I used to have 580, but i put my 160 giga in my xbox..
300 maxtor disk and 120 seagate.

 

[Element Alpha]

Yes, a hard disk that is full will be slower than an empty one. The overview vgard is talking about is the fattable, and is a minor reason for slowdowns. The major reason for slowdowns is the fact that harddisks spin a lot faster on the edge than in the center(every wheel does that). So data that is stored on the edge of the disks can be retrieved much faster.

At home I use 2 hard-disks. One I use for windows and applications that need efficiency, the other is for storage(and general messing around with). This way, my C drive stays rather clean. When you install a powerfull app, like HL2 for example, be sure to clean up and defragment your drive before you install it.

Also, set your virtual memory(=fake ram simulated on harddisk) to a fixed size by setting the max and min size to the same amount, and at least the double of your RAM. Virtual memory can cause a lot of fragmentation if not set like this.

 

[theGreenBunny]

Originally posted by Element Alpha
Also, set your virtual memory(=fake ram simulated on harddisk) to a fixed size by setting the max and min size to the same amount, and at least the double of your RAM. Virtual memory can cause a lot of fragmentation if not set like this.

The double of your RAM is way too much. I'm on win98 with 512 MB ram, and the highest virtual memory use I've seen (using a utility to record VM usage) while gaming is roughly 200 MB. I have it set at 400 just to be sure though

Anyway, point is: the best way to find out how much swapfile you really need is recording the usage while doing some memory-intensive stuff.

 

[staddydaddy]

Originally posted by hyenolie
i defrag every other day, i dont know im a :bounce: weird0 :bounce:

I defrag about everyday. I'm kind of a nut about it, but watching it defrag is kinda entrancing.

 

[Element Alpha]

The double of your RAM is way too much. I'm on win98 with 512 MB ram, and the highest virtual memory use I've seen (using a utility to record VM usage) while gaming is roughly 200 MB. I have it set at 400 just to be sure though

The Deus Ex demo says it requires a 600Mb swapfile minimum.

 

[theGreenBunny]

Say what? Maybe on a 128MB RAM machine? That much data in a swap file is really inefficient. And not like DX2 (I assume it's 2) is the most graphically advanced game ever. Well, fact is I've never had problems, when I start having them I'll size up

 

[hinson]

Originally posted by Shuzer
although, I THINK Windows needs a certain amount of available space to run properly, but, it's very little

agree
windows is a space-eater.

 

[simmo]

Mine:

20gig: 15gig free

40gig: 38gig free

:dozey:

 

[staddydaddy]

lol

 

[Patten]

I have 55 gigs free on an 80 gig HD

And about 10 gigs free on a 20 gig HD

Wow, things are getting full faster than I expected.

Luckily I have a 40 gig HD that I could easily plug into this comp, that one is empty, brand new.

 

[OCybrManO]

With my next upgrade I am still considering (not very seriously) adding 4 or 5 SATA hard drives for an extra terabyte (or more) of storage... so, maybe 100GB for games and the rest for porn (j/k).

I have the money... but it would be a waste.

 

[markshrimpton]

hard drives will always be half full.

You never say 'ohh look how much space i've got left', it will be 'i can only fit another 5(00) hours of movies on my Hd(s) ;(

 

[Shuzer]

I have roughly 10GB free on my 120GB drive.. although I have 30GB of DVDs I need to burn that are sitting on my drive (actual DVD structures.. and no, they're not movies, they're some school course DVDs that I've been meaning to copy, I got halfway through copying them and haven't gotten around to burning the rest)

Edit: Oh look, I already said this on the first page lol

 

[NJD2003]

Huh, when I saw this topic I was thinking about the "Is your glass half-full or half-empty" thing.