How full is too full for an audio hard drive?

[DeyBwah]

Just wondering, how empty should you keep your audio drive? Mine was closing in on 75% and so I moved some stuff around, deleted a bunch of stuff and now I'm at 50%. I thought my hard drive being too full was why my rig was going so slow... I also thought it might be the most recent Windows Updates.. but I think it may just be that I had to uninstall PT and reinstall and something didn't quite go right.

Anyway, I'm leaning towards a reinstall now... As of this point, I'm getting Initializing Globals errors. Bah!!!

[guitardom]

Originally Posted by DeyBwah

Just wondering, how empty should you keep your audio drive? Mine was closing in on 75% and so I moved some stuff around, deleted a bunch of stuff and now I'm at 50%. I thought my hard drive being too full was why my rig was going so slow... I also thought it might be the most recent Windows Updates.. but I think it may just be that I had to uninstall PT and reinstall and something didn't quite go right.

Anyway, I'm leaning towards a reinstall now... As of this point, I'm getting Initializing Globals errors. Bah!!!

my rule of thumb is to never have less than 30% empty space on a drive. i typically try to stay at about 40-50% available. it will severly bog down your system and cause errors.

[caruso7r]

For your system drive at 50% is really not bad. What's more important though is how fragmented it is. Do you defrag on a regular basis? You should and if you don't it's never too late to start. Audio drives again at 50% shouldn't be a big deal, but if you have a little spare time it's always good to do a little spring cleaning with the drives. Before you go into the reinstall unless you're having major trouble, try defraging the system drive to see if it will help. To do it: Right click My Computer, select Manage and select defrag. It may take a while so have a coffee break or dinner etc. Remember to set the computer to never go to sleep but I assume it's already like that since you're running PT. EDIT: BTW you mention about windows updates. Do you have your computer set to let it download windows updated automatically? If so, you should turn that off as that may part of your problem. On a PT rig you should never have windows updates turned on.

[TOM@METRO]

And remember the best way to defrag an audio drive is, (after backup), transfer all files to another drive... then reformat the audio drive... then transfer the files back to the clean drive.

[Petander]

Originally Posted by guitardom

my rule of thumb is to never have less than 30% empty space on a drive. i typically try to stay at about 40-50% available. it will severly bog down your system and cause errors.

+1

I have a routine where I partition, say, a 500 G drive to use only 400. I simply leave some unallocated. And then I still leave mucho space in the audio partition , like 1/3 or so.

Haven´t had much (audio) drive probs this way. But still, drives DO die sooner or later. Got one Free Agent in warranty as we speak.

I don´t know whether this is "unallocated space trick" is "officially" a good practise or not but my drives have generally behaved well for years. The breakage percentage has gone down quite a bit.

[caruso7r]

Originally Posted by TOM@METRO

And remember the best way to defrag an audio drive is, (after backup), transfer all files to another drive... then reformat the audio drive... then transfer the files back to the clean drive.

Actually I never defrag an audio drive cause by the time it gets filled up, I'll back it up to other places and only copy the sessions I need at hand back to the main audio drive. This is only a way that I work though. I specifically have a work drive for PT and once it starts to fill up with sessions that are done, I take them off.

[TOM@METRO]

Originally Posted by caruso7r

Actually I never defrag an audio drive cause by the time it gets filled up, I'll back it up to other places and only copy the sessions I need at hand back to the main audio drive. This is only a way that I work though. I specifically have a work drive for PT and once it starts to fill up with sessions that are done, I take them off.

I agree, it's a good idea to archive offline.

[DeyBwah]

Damn I love DUC. Great suggestions everyone, thanks so much!

I like the offline idea, keeping only live projects on the PT drive.

I'll definitely defrag all my drives, for my PT drive, I'll do what Tom suggested and move all my files, defrag, then move back.

I'm factory imaging my computer as we speak.

It seems like creating the perfect PT environment is really an Art & Science.

[JonnyGinese]

Originally Posted by TOM@METRO

And remember the best way to defrag an audio drive is, (after backup), transfer all files to another drive... then reformat the audio drive... then transfer the files back to the clean drive.

+1 on this method... I do the same. After a couple bands I will put easy band in a contain zip(no compression), label w/date and put it on my external.. And also back it up on DVDs. Then format the audio drive. And copy any current sessions back or leave it blank for new clients.