Is there a minimum amount of unused memory requirement for external hard drives?

[Bluenoser]

As far as I can tell this has not been asked/answered here, if I am wrong I apologize for duplicating a thread, it was an honest mistake though because I didn't find it when I looked.

Now, I have a couple of 1 TB external drives I use to store my files on. Now, I know with my internal HDD I need to leave 20% clear for the OS and other core software to work with. However, as I understand these external hard drives they are essentially flash drives like thumb drives just on a much larger scale, so I would expect they have far less requirement for such unused memory being required. The problem for me though is the site for the drives I have (Seagate) do not appear to have any such information on this question to be found. So I was hoping some of the more tech savvy members of this forum might have some idea of how much minimum memory I should leave unused, or even if I really need to at all since I use these drives solely for storage, I run no software off either of them save what it came with to begin with, which is essentially a basic "dashboard" that tells me the amount used/not used. I never added any apps to it, as I only want these drives for storage.

I am fine with either a percentage number or an absolute (as in 1 gigabyte, 10 gigabytes, etc), it would just be nice to know this before I accidentally overload these drives and lose all the hard collected data from them, because until I can afford another external drive I cannot back them up at the moment and I would hate to lose all the many moons of of work these two drives have on them. Thanks to all that read this post and special thanks to any and all that respond to it with information that answers this long wondered by me question.

[lemmingllama]

Although I do not know a magic number and was unable to find anything for this with quick google searches, my preferences are to leave 1% of the drive open. So that would be 10GB for your 1TB drives. As far as I know though, there is no magic number.

[ZeroPenguins]

I don't know if this is suppose to be a joke or not, but you can fill up your HDD and leave less than 0.1% left. You won't lose any data from my understanding. This is just storage, lol my 2TB I filled it up to only about 1% left. Unless you're talking about when a HDD have bad sectors right? Then yes it's possible to lose a bit of files, but I won't worry over that too much.

[Bluenoser]

Although I do not know a magic number and was unable to find anything for this with quick google searches, my preferences are to leave 1% of the drive open. So that would be 10GB for your 1TB drives. As far as I know though, there is no magic number.

Thanks, I couldn't find anything on my google searches either regarding this point. I was hoping that others here from their own experiences would have an idea derived from practical experience which was why I asked, and I thank you for your swift and helpful reply.

I don't know if this is suppose to be a joke or not, but you can fill up your HDD and leave less than 0.1% left. You won't lose any data from my understanding. This is just storage, lol my 2TB I filled it up to only about 1% left. Unless you're talking about when a HDD have bad sectors right? Then yes it's possible to lose a bit of files, but I won't worry over that too much.

No, this question was in complete earnest. Nor was I talking about bad sectors, I honestly have no idea what would happen if one overloads one of these drives, I just learned in life that it is better to assume the worst case scenario as a default position until one knows better, and in this case losing all the files would be my worst case scenario. However, now I know I can probably use another 40 Gigs I have before needing to stop on each drive by leaving 1% free just to be on the safe side, that gives me almost 90 Gigs more to use before I have to stop adding files, and for that information I am truly grateful to you and lemmingllama.

[Koby]

I've actually filled my 2TB up to the point it had less than 40 mb free and it didn't seem to effect it any.

[Bluenoser]

I've actually filled my 2TB up to the point it had less than 40 mb free and it didn't seem to effect it any.

Wow, that's interesting to find out Koby, thanks for offering it! I'll likely leave a bit more margin that that but it is nice to be finding out that there doesn't seem to be a need to leave more than a tiny fraction of the space open as opposed to what one has to do with an internal drive. Much appreciated!

[ZeroPenguins]

I don't where you got the idea of having to leave space left from, but for storage drives only, you don't have to. And plus even if it was on your HDD with pagefile on it, it won't matter! Since the pagefile is already reserved in your HDD. If you don't believe me, I can post an image of my 2TB internal drive that is only used for animes, of having less than 1% left.

[Bluenoser]

I don't where you got the idea of having to leave space left from, but for storage drives only, you don't have to. And plus even if it was on your HDD with pagefile on it, it won't matter! Since the pagefile is already reserved in your HDD. If you don't believe me, I can post an image of my 2TB internal drive that is only used for animes, of having less than 1% left.

I got that idea from being introduced to computers back in the day when kilobytes were the big hard drive sizes and 1200 baud was really really fast...LOL Seriously, I have no experience with such drives and I couldn't find anything that answered this question, so I assumed that likely meant there was no such problem but I really hate relying on assumptions, and I am well aware of my own ignorance these days. Since I knew there was that problem with internal drives I felt it was best to use that as a standard until I found out otherwise...granted I figured there should be far less needed which is why I went to 5% from 20% for the externals, but still felt better leave too much extra space than not enough until I knew for sure. What I did study in computing comes from well over 15 years ago now and we all know how fast knowledge gets obsolete in the IT field. Not to mention having had a couple of strokes since then to scramble the old memory systems, so these days I am a pretty ignorant end user much to my regret.

As to not believing you, I never said any such thing as I recall, I am more than fine with taking your word for it.

[ZeroPenguins]

I got that idea from being introduced to computers back in the day when kilobytes were the big hard drive sizes and 1200 baud was really really fast...LOL Seriously, I have no experience with such drives and I couldn't find anything that answered this question, so I assumed that likely meant there was no such problem but I really hate relying on assumptions, and I am well aware of my own ignorance these days. Since I knew there was that problem with internal drives I felt it was best to use that as a standard until I found out otherwise...granted I figured there should be far less needed which is why I went to 5% from 20% for the externals, but still felt better leave too much extra space than not enough until I knew for sure. What I did study in computing comes from well over 15 years ago now and we all know how fast knowledge gets obsolete in the IT field. Not to mention having had a couple of strokes since then to scramble the old memory systems, so these days I am a pretty ignorant end user much to my regret.

As to not believing you, I never said any such thing as I recall, I am more than fine with taking your word for it.

Oh I see, I sounded a bit rude. Now that I re-read my post, I'm sorry about that, just a bit cranky due to the fact I got uni today (I want more holidays!). If you're really paranoid about losing your data, best way is to make backups. I had a lot of animes backed up on MU incase something happened to my HDD, but that plan went downhill now didn't it? lols

[Bluenoser]

Oh I see, I sounded a bit rude. Now that I re-read my post, I'm sorry about that, just a bit cranky due to the fact I got uni today (I want more holidays!). If you're really paranoid about losing your data, best way is to make backups. I had a lot of animes backed up on MU incase something happened to my HDD, but that plan went downhill now didn't it? lols

Yes, you did sound a tad sharp, but rude...no I wouldn't go that far myself, still apology accepted, forgiven, and forgotten. As to making the backups, that's the plan when the next quarterly GST check comes in so I can afford to buy another external, this time a larger one to store everything in. The downside of being on a tight fixed income is that you have little room for extras, especially when you are married. The paranoia is actually thanks to the great MU tsunami because it would be far harder and far more time consuming to replace what I've managed to get over the last half year or so, especially on the Eng dub side which my wife needs to be able to enjoy anime. So I am tending to be a tad cautious, as I said before better to overestimate one's dangers than to under in my books. Thanks again though for all your help.

[ZeroPenguins]

Yeah I know what you mean... I got a lot of animes that you can't find on file hosting sites as well. I suppose if you look hard enough in IRC you could find them, but stuff like TCL, joseole, etc etc you can't find them that easily now days.

[Bluenoser]

Well, thank you all who helped answer my concerns on this point, it has been greatly appreciated and put to use.

Unless someone comes up with something new as far as I am concerned this thread is closed, and the moderators are free to mark it as such. Thanks again!