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How much space needed on External hd

M

maverick100

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 2, 2019
121
55
I have a 2017 Imac; with two Thunderbold 3 4 bay external drive cases and 1 Thunderbolt 2 4 bay drive case attached.

I have a 10tb Itunes library 99% video; currently installed on 12tb. I have multiple backups on site and one complete master of drives stored off site.

My question is: How much free space is needed for these drives to function properly?

I have used CCC for several years to backup the masters; without failure.

Cost is secondary to having good backups; Have looked at moving them to 18tb or 20tb (can't find any where to purchase these).

Thanks in advance for all comments and Suggestions
 
Much like gpu's/ram/cpu's, storage devices are becoming endangered.
A lot of places are out of stock, or charging over-the-odds.

In answer to your question it is usually recommended about 20-25% free space, but that is more for a system drive.
 
MarkC426 said:
Much like gpu's/ram/cpu's, storage devices are becoming endangered.
A lot of places are out of stock, or charging over-the-odds.

In answer to your question it is usually recommended about 20-25% free space, but that is more for a system drive.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info. That is more than I knew
 
maverick100 said:
I have a 10tb Itunes library 99% video; currently installed on 12tb. I have multiple backups on site and one complete master of drives stored off site.

My question is: How much free space is needed for these drives to function properly?

I have used CCC for several years to backup the masters; without failure.
Click to expand...

My rule of thumb is 70% - never let a drive get past that

That is a huge iTunes Library - unusual to use iTunes for Videos?

I use CCC for back up also - and have 3 media back up's per week - 1) Saturday main back up to specific "drive 1", 2) NAS bak up - Time Capsule - Sunday, 3) Wednesday back up to "drive 2"

I don't need or see a need for snap shots with 3 separate back ups per week - all scripted with CCC - Automatic - and way less space required. Just IMHO
 
When it's just a file storage HDD that's going to be pretty much all reads. You can fill that drive to the brim. Never had an issue with that. It's when it's frequently doing reads and writes, scratch disk or boot volume. Where you really have to concern yourself with how full it is.

That's how the media drives are on my file server. I just fill them up and add another. They've been working fine for years like that. As all they do now is access videos to stream with Plex.

I'm not worried about fragmentation as everything would have been written sequentially. From one video to the next. Performance isn't an issue. As even the data closest to the center of the platter may be read quickly enough for watching video.
 
IF the drive is being used only for data storage, you need minimal "free space" on it. Say, perhaps 100mb or even less.

It's really only drives that have the OS or apps on them to which "the free space rules" apply. That's because such drives have a need for "breathing room" for swap files, temp files, and other business of a transitory nature that requires "space" to which to write non-user-accessible files and data.

But a "data only" drive?
You can fill that [almost] right up "to the brim", and it should still be fine.
 
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