How Much Hard Drive Space Are You Using?

[TheGreatSatan]

I'm lucky if I use more than 40GB of hard drive space total, so I often think high capacity hard drives are pointless in my systems. I usually buy them anyway because it's cheaper these days to have more than less. How much storage are you actually using?

[nevermind1534]

I filled up my 500GB drive, so I bought a 1TB WD Caviar Black.

[blueonblack]

I've got a 320GB drive with about 100GB free. Time to upgrade.

[knowledgegranted]

No exageration I have 1 250gb HD, 1 120gb, 1 80gb, 1 60gb and another 120gb all full. My 500gb external hardrive is almost full and my file servers is COMPLETELY full.

[rendermandan]

At home, I'm probably using about a total of 500 gb.

At work its a different story.

1.89tb server with only 14 gb free.

1.73tb server with only 392 mb free.

1.40tb server with only 238 gb free

and a wopping 3.78tb server with only 26.5 gb free.

This does not include all the projects backed up on massive tape drives.

[FrooP]

i have 1.4tb here (400gb backup external) and i have about 600gig full

[Drum Thumper]

I'm currently eating up a newly installed 500 gig drive. I've got a lot of music in .flac form that I've been archiving on DVD due to hard drive constraints, and am putting all that on the 500 gig drive.

I can see already that 500 gigs won't be enough. There's going to be another newegg purchase in my future lol...

[XcOM]

my laptop i am using about 40gb, all drives in the server and NAS box comes to a total of about 2.5TB

[FuzzyPlushroom]

About 361 gigs, between all my partitions on two drives (250GB and 160GB). I've been getting a 750GB/1TB drive "Real Soon Now" for the last couple months.

EDIT: And forty-odd gigs used on the laptop.

Some of the 361 GB is duplicated between my two drives, too.

[Drum Thumper]

I've been getting a 750GB/1TB drive "Real Soon Now" for the last couple months.


The shipping on that alone is the killer. :D

[simon275]

I have 250gb in my desktop that has like 10gb spare and my server that I just built has a 1tb drive with only Debian on it at the moment.

[eslfish]

I have alot of games, so about anywhere from 50-100gigs of HD space taken

[p0Pe]

i have:
250 gig in 2 partitions, one for xp (25 gb) and the rest for projekt files and important program installs total 5 gb free
250 gig for windows 7 testing 214 gb free
320 for games and game installs 4 gb free
1 tb drive for movie trailers 6 gigs free
1 tb drive for backup of important files and HD movie trailers - 500 gb free

on server i have 340 with 150 free maybe.
and an external on 250 that i cant remember whats on lol

so total i have 3410 gigs and aprox 900 gigs free. yeah.. im a sucker for space.

[Luke122]

750gb External - Full
320gb External - Full
100gb Laptop Hdd - 80gb used
110gb desktop 1 - 90gb used (30gb + 80gb hdds)
400gb desktop 2 - 300gb used (320 + 80 hdds)
80gb desktop 3 - 60 gb used
60gb laptop - 30gb free
80gb Macmini - 20gb free

..I have too much stuff.

[crenn]

4x 1TB drives, just over 300GB free over all of them.

EDIT: I just found out that I'll be getting another 500GB drive when my father upgrades his server to a single 1TB drive.

[Zeroignite]

Drive 0:
101/160 GB on C: (Win XP)

Drive 1:
38/50 GB on H: (Win 7)
33/40 GB D: (extra movies/music)
60 GB not yet partitioned (gonna add to D: soon)

[The boy 4rm oz]

Project LEXA:
1x WD 320GB SATAII drive (7200rpm) - 90% full
Upgrading to an SSD/Raptor and a 1TB drive

Laptop:
1x WD 320GB SATAII drive (5400rpm) - 40GB used, no music on it yet

External Drive:
1x Maxtor 250GB IDE drive (7200rpm) - full almost
I'm building a server that will take care of backing up data so this will be rolled onto my laptop.

[FuzzyPlushroom]

New drive, WD Caviar Green 1TB (EADS): Seven gigs used out of 930 total. Now that it's made it a couple weeks I'm gonna start backing stuff up to it.

I was a little nervous about the idea of green caviar, but it's proven itself so far.

[BuzzKillington]

I think the main killer of space is video editing. You can have 30 minutes of raw video taking up a good 40gigs of space.

Hell, even some MMO's nowadays are 30gigs by themselves. Age of Conan is taking up 29gigs with 5500 files. Pirates of the Burning Sea is just as bad although I don't have it installed at the moment.

On my laptop I'm currently using 126gigs on my main and a whopping 47gigs on my slave :oP Probably another 200gigs on my external. Hard to say because I haven't had it connected in a long while.

[The boy 4rm oz]

Yeah I know what you mean Buzz. Taking a 30second vid in FRAPS at full res and 70FPS is around 950MB, that's a big file for 30secs for video.

[w0lv3r1n3]

SAMSUNG HD753LJ 750 Gig Drive:
Hitachi HDP725050GLA 500 Gig Drive ( just bought a month ago )
Seagate ST325082 0AS USB Device 500 Gig External ( for backups )

Info Below:

Drive Drive Type File System Total Size Used Space Free Space % Free Volume Serial
C: (Local Disk) Local Disk NTFS 99999 MB 71570 MB 28429 MB 28 % 2459-0DA8
D: Optical Drive
E: (SATA01) Local Disk NTFS 615400 MB 452828 MB 162572 MB 26 % B2C0-E49E
F: (SATA02) Local Disk NTFS 476936 MB 54482 MB 422454 MB 89 % 2618-25D4
G: Removable Disk
H: Removable Disk
I: Removable Disk
J: Removable Disk
K: (EXTERNAL) Local Disk NTFS 238472 MB 165131 MB 73340 MB 31 % 5CAE-0493

[haha49]

I'm lucky if I use more than 40GB of hard drive space total, so I often think high capacity hard drives are pointless in my systems. I usually buy them anyway because it's cheaper these days to have more than less. How much storage are you actually using?

Im at 4 tb..

[The boy 4rm oz]

I just ordered my Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB :D.

[pcclan]

i have the seagate 1tb

[billygoat333]

Im at 4 tb..

you must have a lot of movies. :P

[Spawn-Inc]

well i'm done with stupid crappy seagate drives... i've had 2 die on me (1 may have been my fault for not updating firmware) but i love the name so much...

4 drives with 1.5TB total

1. 250gb for windows xp only
2. 250gb for programs only
3. 500gb storage/backup
4. 500gb for winows vista(100gb), window 7(100gb), and storage(300gb)


http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/2615/discg.jpg


i haven't yet installed vista or 7 as that was my latest drive to die on me.

[The boy 4rm oz]

Got some nice partitions there Spawn. Once I get my 1TB drive I will have a 320GB for Vista and utilities and the 1TB for games and data.

[Spawn-Inc]

i might take the chance with 2x 250gb in raid, but i need a raid card as all my sata slots are filled.

[Zero767]

I have 500gb and have only used like 100gb. I am good for a while yet :)

[silverdemon]

computer || space || used

router-computer (rack-mounted Dell, win svr 2003) || 135GB || 6GB
home server (300GB + 500GB + 1TB) || 1,64TB || 1TB
main computer || 500GB || 250GB
other computers || 140GB || 35GB

total space: about 2.5TB
total USED: about 1.25TB

[x88x]

Well, back when I was actually attending college full-time, I had a ...certain computer... with combined 4TB of storage space (a nasty web of directory-mapped partitions), and I think about 50GB or so free, but now, since I didn't have a use for that computer, and it's drives all got wiped...but that's another story... I have sworn to myself that I'll never again buy a hard drive smaller than 1TB, and never again will I have that much storage space without RAID5. I haven't started that build yet though, so atm I'm at:

1.5TB external with 58GB free (Rainbow Tables)
1.5TB internal with 403GB free (assorted)
500GB internal with 224GB free (OS/apps/etc) (will shortly be replaced by 2x60GB Vertex's in RAID0, hopefully tomorrow)

EDIT:
As a side note, does anyone have experience using WD EADS drives in RAID5?

[mrmoti]

Main Computer:
1 - WD 160 Gb (boot, windows) - 20 to 40 Gb free
2 - Seagate 500 Gb (storage) - 40 Gb free
3 - Seagate 1.5 Tb (storage) - 170 Gb free

and no pr0n!!!

[TheGreatSatan]

^You're fired!

[pcclan]

well right now i was downgraded to 20gbs for 6 week:dead::hurt::mad::twisted::facepalm::evil:
this is my hard drive Maxtor Fireball 3 20GB harddive ATA133 5400RPM 2MB Cache Hard Drive from a seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATA 3Gb/s 1-TB Hard Drive 32mb cache

[Kayin]

Near 5.5 TB, and no pr0n.

Lots of that is CAD work or graphics arts, but we also back up all our movies in case of scratches-that's legit still, cause they're not on the network-and because the HTPC I'm designing is optical-free (most of my builds are headless these days) so I have copies of almost everything hosted somewhere.

Next move will be a networked LaCie Bigger Disk. Thinking 2.5TB.

[simon275]

1.5TB external with 58GB free (Rainbow Tables)



What rainbow table/s do you have?

[x88x]

What rainbow table/s do you have?

All the ones put out by freerainbowtables.org, and the Church of WiFi's WPA tables. I got them all got a project I was working on at work, but have yet to actually use them much :facepalm: I had about 60% of my shared 10/2 FiOS line dedicated to the RT downloads, for about a month... But hey, on the other hand, now I have them :p I'm thinking of setting up a mirror for them once I get my own place and a 20/20 line. Also, once I get my fileserver up and running, I'm gonna be transferring all the tables onto that, pulling the 1.5TB into it, and throwing some other drive into that...honestly, how often do I need 1.5TB in a portable drive (well, except for those times I want more :P ).

[Waynio]

2.56TB free of 5.25TB altogether

[farlo]

i have a 640 gb hdd, and in down to my last 60gbs free.
i need to build a htpc, cause 450gbs of it are videos.

[Oneslowz28]

I have about 2tb worth of backed up photos, and important stuff and another 650gb or so worth of stuff on my file server which is also backed up on my gaming pc. So I have about 4tb in total. 2 are on external drives.

[slaveofconvention]

My PC - 750GB (Unformatted Capacity)
Server - 4.2TB w/ 544GB free (Windows Home Server - 8 various HD's in it from 300GB-1TB)
Wife's PC - 500GB
Son's PC - 500GB
Media Centre - 300GB
3 Laptops - 440GB
"Spare" PC's - Probably in the 6-800GB total region

All in all - too damned much considering my first PC had a 2GB hard disk and that was "HUGE" because most PC's "only" came with 1.2....

[The boy 4rm oz]

Now that is a lot of HDD space lol.

[st8smn]

wd 500g (os+games)
wd 320g (movies)
seagate 200g (music)
wd 80 g (programs)
and a wd 640g backup -external

i have about 10 20g drives but their 'givaways' for people that wont shut up about 'no room' lol

[slaveofconvention]

http://www.slaveofconvention.com/imagestore/WHS.JPG

Down from 544GB free to 486GB in just over a month - I think it's time for another disk again as I have about 200 gig to put on there from various sources and don't like it getting to the point where there's no overhead for disk failure :s

[Crazy Buddhist]

160G in DeskPooter 57Gig free
80G in laptop 38Gig free

145Gig in use

[mtekk]

Let's see here...

On a 160GB laptop HD 78.3GB are free, and all I have on it is programming and circuit design applications plus about 4GB of photos.

On a 80GB drive about .1MB free. I have it as a backup of all the music videos I've ever recorded off the TV and other miscellaneous media.

On a 200GB drive, about 5GB free, held most of the programs and media on my desktop computer before I upgraded this spring.

On a 160GB drive about 30GB free, was the windows drive on my former desktop, has a bunch of code, school work, programs and media on it.

On a 250GB drive about 30GB free, everything on it is Window Media Center TV recordings, mostly HD content.

On a 120GB laptop drive about 30GB free (again had to make room as it's the primary drive on my media center right now), Windows 7 + TV recordings, looks like the entire season of Royal Pains is on there waiting for me to catch up on the last few episodes. (Need to finish the build so I can use the 1TB drive I have for it)

On a 80GB drive in my print/testbed server is a bunch of code, and media backups. Not sure how much space is free on it.

On a 250GB drive about 184GB free. This is in my desktop, and I have only a few games on it (BF:2142, BF:Heroes, Tropico, Sid Meier's Railroads! and Test Drive Unlimited). If I installed everything on it, I'd probably have less than half of it free. It's more of a temporary installation as I'm waiting for October 22nd to get Windows 7 (and then the VelociRaptor goes in, and I'll probably get an intel SSD at that time too).

[Eclecticos]

Just a 500GB, and a 250GB internal SATA drive.
Next purchase will be a 1TB external hard drive,
1TB external eSATA DVR unit, or a Linksys Media Hub.

Have allot of free space. Routine maintenance and cleanup is recommended.

[gntlkilr]

Gaming Rig -- 150Gb Raptor, 2 500 Gb Samsung RAID 0.

File Server -- 14 TB in RAID 6, Currently at 22% free.

A few other computers in the house, running approximately 500Gb each.

[slytherock]

To be honest; I've lost the count...
At home I have more then 6 computers running 24/7, including a server.
At work (I'm now my own boss) I have more then 5 other comp. including another server (and I'm the only employee)

From what I know from myself; none of my comp have less then 1TB each and my servers have more then 3TB each... but to be honest, none of my comp is full.... (more then half full but not full) so I dont check that anymore

edit: oh, and I have more then 2TB of external drives that I dont use anymore.... Gotta find somewhere to use it...

[Crazy Buddhist]

160G in DeskPooter 57Gig free
80G in laptop 38Gig free

145Gig in use

Deskpooter just got some presents 1 x 80G drive for programs and 1 x 320G for data.

Total space now = 640G

Oh and these are my first SATA drives :P

CB

[x88x]

Heehee, got a HDD back from Samsung (RMA) last week and after expanding my array (took about 48 hours, all told), my server is now at:
1x 4GB CF Card (OS)
5x 1.5TB HDD (mdadm RAID-5 array)

Total: 5.4TB
Used: 3.2TB
Available: 1.9TB (I know, I know...I'm working on it :D)

It's funny that some of us are to the point finally where the "lost" space from the binary-decimal disconnect is larger than a large number of HDDs on the market :P

[Oneslowz28]

Add another 689 GB to mine. Just completed the 2009 photo back up. That 750gb HDD I ordered last week got used up fast. It will allow me to free up a 500GB WD green series though once I figure out what photos on it are duplicated on the 750 and then I migrate the rest over. The 500 will be put to use in a HTPC

[x88x]

It will allow me to free up a 500GB WD green series though once I figure out what photos on it are duplicated on the 750 and then I migrate the rest over. The 500 will be put to use in a HTPC

Nice. I love the Green series drives; they're great for HTPC's; so quiet...

[JimMask]

I use a 80gb HD always running out of space. I'll be getting a 500gb end of this year.

[Oneslowz28]

I couldn't make it 1 week with 80gb during wedding season. I Currently have just over 2tb of photos.

[Luke122]

Time for a redundant SAN I think. ;)

[Technochicken]

I couldn't make it 1 week with 80gb during wedding season. I Currently have just over 2tb of photos.

What resolution are the photos you are taking? I used to have approximately 10,000 8 megapixel photo's and I don't think they even took 10 gigs of space.

I personally have a 320 gig drive for my OS and software, 80 gigabytes of which I have used, a 500 gigabyte WD green that has 400 gigabytes left on it, and a 500 gigabyte backup drive that's about half full.

[Luke122]

What resolution are the photos you are taking? I used to have approximately 10,000 8 megapixel photo's and I don't think they even took 10 gigs of space.

That doesnt sound right to me.. I had lass than that for sure @ 6mp, and mine was 15gb. The average wedding for me = 3 to 4 gb.

[x88x]

If he was using JPG90, it looks like that could be right:
http://web.forret.com/tools/megapixel.asp?width=3160&height=2528

Any lossless or uncompressed formats though, and it would be way over.

[Technochicken]

I don't know what format they were, as my camera is a piece of junk, but now that I come to think of it, a couple thousand of those were 1600x1200, which is probably why they took up so little space in total.

[artoodeeto]

jeez y'all have a lot of stuff. Here's mine:

internal 120GB SSD - using about 64GB, so about 56GB free (mostly games)
external 500GB HD - using about 120GB, so around 360GB free (storage and backup for photos, music, scanned pics, old 3D modeling projects from school, some backed up programs)

[el_magnifico]

2 80gb hard drives, one for OS and one for cr*pola....one external 120gb maxtor one-touch

these r old stuff....don't really care for new unless the old is dead!

oh....cr*pola drive has 1% free space left

[cellsite60]

Got a 500gb that is almost empty, except my OS, due to a "blue screen of death" and a 250gb external HD with about 10gb free.
On the shelf there is 2*40gb, 1*80gb.

[Twigsoffury]

I know someone that has a 1.5TB drive dedicated JUST TO FRAPS recording....

Thats all thats on it. 1-3GB fraps videos (sometimes theres a cluster of 3.9GB videos that'll total out over 100) and its almost always more then half / Three quarters full.

I've noticed most of them larger drives seem to operate a hell of alot slower then the sub 1.0TB models.

[x88x]

I've noticed most of them larger drives seem to operate a hell of alot slower then the sub 1.0TB models.

The two reasons you may have seen this (driver/etc issues aside) have to do with platter density and rotational speed.

I forget if it was the same when the first 1TB drives came out, but all of the early 1.5TB drives were low rotational speed (5400 or 5900 RPM) drives, so obviously, all other factors being equal, if one drive is spinning slower than the other, the heads are moving over the data points at a slower speed, and thus the performance is gonna be slower.

The second possible reason is that for a long time manufacturers were making 1TB drives with four 250GB platters. Most have since stepped up to 333GB platters, and at least one has stepped up to 500GB platters (Samsung F3 series). So, if you were comparing a 1TB drive with 250GB platters with a sub-1TB drive with 333GB platters, then again, all other things being equal, the sub-1TB drive will perform better, because as the platters spin, even though they are spinning at the same rate, the heads reading/writing the higher density platter pass over more data in the same arc length as the platters reading/writing the lower density platter.

However, to my knowledge there are no drives on the market larger than 1TB with anything smaller than 500GB platters. Additionally, with many manufacturers coming out with 7200RPM 1.5TB and 2TB drives, hopefully soon both of these issues will no longer be a problem.

[The boy 4rm oz]

My 1TB Samsung F1 is over half full so I purchased a 1TB WD Caviar Green to replace a dead 500GB drive in a Seagate FreeAgent and to act as a backup for my main machine. I am really happy with the WD, 64MB cache and variable speed from 54,000rpm to 72,000 rpm and dead quiet even at full spin. It is now also about half full lol.

[x88x]

Oooh, I hadn't realized WD was pushing the 64MB cache down further into their drive lineup :D

[mDust]

You're all a bunch of data addicts! I just formatted over 700+ GB only because I didn't feel like sorting it...I control the data, the data doesn't control me! Unless you do a lot of multimedia editing or have uncompressed music, you should all be ashamed of yourselves!:D

I try to keep it <1TB. If it starts getting close I backup what I need and write zeros over the rest of it.

[The boy 4rm oz]

I used to be stingy with my storage but considering 1TB drives are so cheap I don't care anymore. I used to play games then uninstall them, now I just keep them. I would have about 25-30 games installed on my HDD now, and that's not including Steam games. Not to mention the amount of media and files I keep just for the hell of it lol.

[Outlaw]

Main PC:
160GB- OS (130 Free, recent wipe)
250GB- Storage (232 Free, recent wipe)
250GB- Backup (198 Free, recent wipe)

HP Mini:
16GB- OS (1.7 Free, Win7 takes a lot of space)

HP Laptop:
120GB- OS (120 Free, currently down due to Laptop failure)

Spare PC:
20GB- OS/Storage (5-10 Free?, just used for Internet browsing)

Other Spare PC:
120GB- OS/Storage (Just restored, 105ish Free)

HTPC if you want to call it that:
80GB- Movies are streamed from Main PC which has external hooked up. (70 Free?, only has OS and Media Player)

External:
8GB- Flash Drive (3GB Free)
500GB- 2.5" portable used with Mini HP (probably 450 Free. Bought because it was cheap)
750GB- Media Storage (72GB Free)
1TB- Backup to 750GB

Total: 3.274TB

[x88x]

Not to mention the amount of media and files I keep just for the hell of it lol.

This. This exactly...also, all the stuff that I have on various other forms of media that it's just so much easier to rip to my server. I'll be honest, 90% of the stuff I have doesn't get used too often (ok, maybe more than that.....), but "I might need it!". :P

[Trace]

And it's cheap enough to keep it just in case

[The boy 4rm oz]

I am currently in the process of ripping all my DVD's to AVI's, full quality, so I can have easy access to them for my new WD TV unit. Each DVD rip is anywhere from 1.7GB-3GB depending how old they are and I have about 100 DVDs, so you do the math lol. Of course I have all of these backed up on a separate external HDD plus another one that is permanently connected to WD TV. It's just so much easier to buy more storage these days then worry about restrictions. I would now have close to 5TB of storage within my home but I probably only use 40% off all that, it's just better value to buy 1TB drives.

[x88x]

And it's cheap enough to keep it just in case
Heheh, yup. I remember the last time I deleted something because I thought I would never need it again... I kid you not, within 24 hours I had 4 people contact me looking for it. :facepalm: Never again!



it's just better value to buy 1TB drives.

Actually, the 1.5TB drives are at the best value point now. :D

[Trace]

I'm afraid he's right :up:

[The boy 4rm oz]

Actually, the 1.5TB drives are at the best value point now. :D

Touche :D.

[Luthien]

I said 11Gb to 100Gb. That's based on the 18Gb that's been used on the netbook I'm on right now. I also have a 1Tb external drive that's about 1/4 to 1/3 full. I'm not sure how much is used on my desktop tight now, but I know it's not much.

[The boy 4rm oz]

I have now filled a 1TB drive with movies for WD TV. And am in the process of transferring those files to a 2TB drive and I have around about 300GB of games going on that 1TB drive. I also have all my data backed up on a 1TB drive which is about 75% full.

[chaksq]

I have a lot of data between all my computers/drives (over a terabyte) plus a complete copy of everything on my 2TB external drive. Kinda surprised myself when I figure it out.

[jazzrocking]

I have 250 Gb of HDD. But I have used just 11 to 12GB of it. The most part of this 12 Gb is filled with songs as I love music and music is the thing which I can not live without.

[tlmaclennan]

I have 4 1TB drives, one acting as a parity drive for my FlexRAID array. All are almost full, only one has 70GB with the rest with less than 10GB left.

Then I have 2 250GB drives. One for dual boot OS (Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit) and it is about 50% full. Then a 750GB drive for Misc. storage that has 100GB free.

I'm going to need to buy another 1TB soon.