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what % of data drive can you fill up before performance hit happens?

if you have a dedicated drive (not system drive) for archive files, is there a standard formula: that at special % when the drive is full, then it's performance will be hit or you should make the drive bigger?

Let's say the drive is 500GB, would you concerned if it reached 60/70/80/90% full? and what will be your next strategy for that kind of situation?
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Thank you..

the backups are happening. yes, i will remember the 70% rule dbrunton mentioned.

Gary, is this example appropriate to what you said (75% rule suggestion): if the drive is 500GB, then only partition it for 375GB and leave the 125GB empty? good to know about NTFS doing better on this.

  nobus, they are small files (MBs not GBs)
 
   right now, the C drive is 1 TB, 200GB user data and rest free.


one correction, i would like to make.. i said 'archives'.. yes, it will be mostly, but it will be hard to distinguish totally which ones are totally archives, as the work may require use of any of those files, and in strict sense, it may not be actually called archives.

But the system is slow often because there are too many files (MSOffice documents, pictures, videos, photoshop work etc), everytime C drive is opened... i understand the reasons you mentioned, and yes, the defrag is happening every week.
   
   read & write both happens a lot. my bigger aim in the question is how should I partition the 1TB.
     
 there are 2 factors:
 the system is little old (4 year old dell pc). there are two primary uses: one is GIS mapping software which is more resource intensive, and other photoshop.. other stuff are all MS-office based.
 
 There are 2 users.. Either the GIS or the Photoshop user.
 
 When the photoshop user is on, they will need access to the 200GB data and that will grow maybe additional approx 100GB usage a year.
 When the GIS user is on, they don't need any access to that data, but their data folder is relatively very small (max 2 GB).
 
 So, thinking of more efficient solution for both users. The GIS user needs all of CPU/Memory/DiskSpin dedicated to him. The photoshop user work is less critical.
 There will be a reboot between the time the 2 users use the system. GIS user at beginning of week and Photoshop user later in the week.
 
 We need a properly balanced drive planned as the system is ready for a fresh reinstall.
 
 Should I have something like 250GB-750GB partition between OS & data drive? or 500-500? The main installs on Win7 OS drive will be Photoshop, GIS program, MS-Office 2010 (very heavily used). thanks for any ideas.
 
 (This setup would be temporary, as in 3 months, likely there will be another system made available dedicated for the GIS user.)
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nobus, the 1TB is just internal.

the machine has never had a reinstall in 4 years.. so this is a good time to revisit it..
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nobus, are you referring to CHKDSK? if more sophisticated tool, pl suggest.

Dave, are you referring to Gary's suggestion "make the size of the partition 75% of the size of the drive" (Disk fragmentation I believe is no issue due to auto defrag each week)
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>> I'd partition the 1TB drive as 300GB for the system;  400GB for a 2nd data partition; and leave the last part of the drive unallocated.
OK.

>>but that's purely for organization reasons
Gary,

you would suggest not to bother about partitioning (not mandatory for SSD performance) and have one 500GB C drive for everything( and then keep the current 1Tb has an external/additional drive). In case of SSD, the rule of 75% does not apply, is that right?
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thanks gary and nobus.

would you suggest Inspiron 620 (2011) is ready for SSD? (it is a i5)
also please suggest most appropriate diag for this.
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a)
thanks.. and to really know what SATA provisions I have, i should run any diag out there?

b)
regardless of immediately apply SSD, regarding the partition of the 1TB when it is used as external drive perhaps- let's say i am partitioning it into two (300GB, 400GB and leaving rest empty), are they truly considered 2 drives (practically speaking).. would it be a literal or logical separation. example: if partionA is having very high reads (300GB), will it affect partitionB 400GB)
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thanks for the helpful guidance. appreciated.