[Ti] HDD space and loss of snappy feel

[b]

According to Loren Schooley:

>I keep reading that a full HDD no matter what size slows the overall
>performance of the machine down considerably.
>
>My HDD is 20G and full-and slow. If I get the 80GIG and have 20 gigs of
>data, why is it that I can expect performance to pick back up?


The simple answer to your question is, of course: Because then it 
won't be full.


Well, for one thing, try to imagine the work involved on the part of 
the CPU when it is trying to find ever-decreasing space to 'write' 
data to. Your files must be fragmented, beyond belief. The same goes 
for your Directory, itself seriously fragmented, and forced to keep 
track of many tens of thousands of files, that are, themselves, 
scattered all over the drive.

Any applications which need 'free' space in which to render changes 
[Photoshop, Graphic Converter, all Audio apps, etc] also have no 
'scratch disk' space.

On top of that, a drive with 10%, or less, free space, will take a 
very long time to run a Directory rebuild upon. If it's even possible 
[if the the drive is, indeed, full] because the Defragmenters, and 
DiskWarrior's Rebuild Directory, depend upon there being free space 
available where it can move things to, in its efforts to make a 
concise 'sense' out of what must surely be a mess.

~flipper