Hard disks - Thin line between storage and "over-storage"

[The Weather]

I've got three hard disks. Both the E and D drives got a capacity of almost 10 GB. The free space of them both is below 1 GB, however I don't consider it as a problem, as they are not the disks on which the system files are.

Then, there is the C disk which has an overall capacity of 20 GB. The sad thing now, is that the free space is around 2.5 GB. I understand that this is getting close to 'critical', but I am out of CD-R(W)'s at the moment, and I have no place to move the stored data. At the moment I am downloading a file which size is 700 MB. 50 % of it is downloaded, so another 350 MB will be used in the very near future. So, the free space of the C disk (capacity: 20 GB) will be a little more than 2 GB.

Now, to the core; How far can you go in storage before there is a real danger? Regarding my C drive of 20 GB, what's the limit - how much can I store before the drive one day suddenly stops? It is a little slow now, compared to when the free space was 5 GB - anyhow; I haven't seen any signs of 'emergency'.

Any ideas or inputs?

 

[The Amish Kid]

Im sure your hard drive willn't just stop. It would probably just stop the download or whatever if you run out of space. Or it wouldnt even let you start it if you didnt have enough space for it. I have filled up hard drives completely before and they didn't just stop. Also have you tryed running disk cleanup to try and free up some space? Also you could defrag your hard drive to try and speed it up.

 

[The Weather]

Im sure your hard drive willn't just stop. It would probably just stop the download or whatever if you run out of space. Or it wouldnt even let you start it if you didnt have enough space for it. I have filled up hard drives completely before and they didn't just stop. Also have you tryed running disk cleanup to try and free up some space? Also you could defrag your hard drive to try and speed it up.

Yes, I have run most of the available clean-up processes, I think. However, I haven't defragmented in the recent time, so I will do it soon.

My fear is that the disk one day will not behave as it normally does. Is there a common limit for disk usage? How much of the total capacity can be used without getting close to 'ventures' of any kind? To me, free space of 2.5 GB of 20 GB sounds dangerously close to the limit - however; as mentioned, I haven't seen any signs of emergency yet.

 

[mammikoura]

Don't worry about it. I've had my hdd like almost completely full many times.
The only thing u will notice is that stuff will run a little slower if there is no free space on the hdd (or partition) where the operating system is.
And I've also heard that if there is like no space left at all then the computer just won't boot. Not sure of that.

And for defrag to have 100% effectiviness u need to have 15% free space on the partition.

 

[The Weather]

Don't worry about it. I've had my hdd like almost completely full many times.
The only thing u will notice is that stuff will run a little slower if there is no free space on the hdd (or partition) where the operating system is.
And I've also heard that if there is like no space left at all then the computer just won't boot. Not sure of that.

And for defrag to have 100% effectiviness u need to have 15% free space on the partition.

OK - so I don't really need to worry yet, then.

No space left = no boot - well, sounds fair, but I don't think I am going to 'experiment' with this!

Thanks for the replies.