How much free space should I leave on disks?

I understand that there should always be free work space on disk
drives, but how much? Is there a simple percentage? Is it different for
programs and data?

I'm using a laptop with Drive C for programs 54 GB and Drive D for
data 40 GB.

Thanks for any help.

Judy wrote:

I understand that there should always be free work space on disk
drives, but how much? Is there a simple percentage? Is it different
for programs and data?



There's no simple answer that's right for everyone. It depends.

First, note that you can't run Windows Defrag unless you have at least 15%
free space. But oiver and above that, what's generally more important than a
*percentage* of free space is the amount of free space. You may see advice,
for example, to always have 25% free space. But there's an enormous
difference between 25% of a 10GB drive (a tiny amount) and 25% of a 500GB
drive (a very large amount for most people).

Also how much you should have free depends largely on your work habits and
how you use your computer. My wife's computer, for example, is very stable
as to what she has on her drive. She uses it almost exclusively for E-mail,
some light word processing, web surfing, and an occasional game of
solitaire. She needs much less free space than does someone who is doing
much more, always creating new data files and loading new software, etc.



I'm using a laptop with Drive C for programs 54 GB and Drive D for
data 40 GB.


For both drives, I think you need to ask yourself how stable the amounts you
have loaded are. If you never install new programs, you don't need much free
space on C. And if you don't create many new data files, you similarly don't
need much free space on D:.


--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
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