Less than 15% Free Space & Defrag

[Gait_Keeper]

What's the deal with defragging with less than 15% free space

XP says don't but if I do what is the out come? good, bad, don't matter?

[Sixpac_XP]

I think that the reason when you don't have much drive space left it takes a very long time for the defrag to complete. This is because when a defrag happens lots of data is moved around on the hard drive. The less space you have the more is has to move the data back and forth and around to optimize the data structure on your hard drive.

[Bizkitkid2001]

Not only does it take longer, it might not be able to completely defrag it.

[Gait_Keeper]

Hmm..........ok a couple of things should I do it? What to do with 2 or three lost gigs of storeage? what do you do?

I have 2 hard drives

40 gig WD (C,D,E)

80gig Maxtor (F,G,H,I,J)

E: drive
18.4 total
16.2 used
2.20 free

I: drive
19.0 total
16.2 used
2.82 free

I lose 5.02 gigs or more if I move things around to meet the 15% requirement? Mp3's on both of these drives, I'm backing up my CD collection, I didn't get the 2nd drive at the same time I built this machine thats why they're E, the I

[elroy]

Move some files from C to D and defrag C. Now move files from D to C and defrag D. Now move everything back where it was. Also you can manually set your swap file to a lower size while you do the defrag.

[Bizkitkid2001]

If its just MP3s on the hard drive, then I see no reason to defrag the drive at all. You won't notice a speed increase after you defrag the drive. Now if there are programs and/or windows install on one of those drives, then by all means defrag them as often as you can.

[Gait_Keeper]

only MP3's on E and I

I kind of knew MP3's shouldn't need defragging, but what when one of the other drives starts getting full?

Now I understand why a drive needs 15% or more, so that windows can move files around, I think there should be a better way I'm losing gigs of storage, if I ever get that full.

smaller partitions will mean 15% is less, right

15% of 20gigs is more than 15% of 10 gigs

[Bizkitkid2001]

You only need 15% free when you defrag. But if you don't need to defrag, you can use that 15% space.

[zepper]

Yup, just move files around as needed to defrag. When you copy the files back onto a defragged partition, the copied files are automatically defragged during the copy process. You can set the swap file to 0 or very small fixed size or just turn it off during defrag as well. You can also empty the recycle bins and temporarily set their size to 0 or disable them as well. The larger the partition, the smaller percentage you can make the recycle bins. On a one GB partition the default recycle bin is 10% or 100MB!
.bh.

[Gait_Keeper]

Ah the recycle bin taking up some space great tip!!!!

one drive is at 11% freem space, is I adjust the recycle bin I can defrag because I'm not that afr off 10% of 19gigs 1.9 gig recycle bin right?