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How full is too full?
How full is too full on my FW drive? Can I put media on it until it’s completely full and still work with it, or is there a limit to how much empty space the drive needs. (My experience with an Avid is that you usually need about 10% space for it to work without crashing/freezing)
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5 Replies
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10% is probably cutting too close. 15-20% would a be more realistic minimum.
Tony!
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I’m with Tony, when you pass the 20% barrier any system will slow down and eventually crash.
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On a 240G drive I should leave 48G free?
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15-20% of the available space after formatting the drive is a good general rule. Nothing is written in stone and you may get away with less free space. Would I risk it for any length of time? Probably not, unless I wanted to add another troubleshooting step to eliminate when next issue arrives. Here’s a quote by Larry Jordan on Ken Stones excellent website:
“1) Make sure your hard disks are never more than 85% full. Hard disks need lots of room to create temporary files. If a hard disk gets too full, it can lock up and prevent both writing and reading data. Go to Final Cut Pro -> System Settings -> Scratch disks and set the “Minimum Allowable Free Space On Scratch Disks” equal to 15% of your largest hard disk.”
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/basic_troubleshooting_fcp_jordan.html
Tony!
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Barefeats.com usually shows test results on empty drives and at 90% full. There are some test results there that show the empty, 60%, and 80% full performance (a 5 drive internal G5 array, for example). The performance dropped a lot at 80%.
Ed (who crams way too much onto his drives)
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