It’s a bad idea to fill a Windows system drive completely full, and this could cause a variety of problems. But just how much empty space do you really need?
Why You Need Empty Space
You need some available space for a variety of reasons. If your drive fills up, you won’t be able to save new files to the drive or download anything, including Windows Updates.
Programs often need to create cache files, so they may crash or experience other errors. If you open a large number of programs and need extra memory, the Windows paging file will need to grow—but it won’t be able to grow and programs may crash or not open.For example, when we filled a Windows 10 PC’s drive completely full and attempted to run its included troubleshooters, we just saw a message saying “A problem is preventing the troubleshooter from starting”. Windows provides no further detail, but freeing up space allowed the troubleshooters to start. These tools can’t function without some free space, and other programs may also break for no apparent reason unless you realize your system drive is full and free up some space.
However, there’s no firm percentage or number of gigabytes of free space you need to maintain. Microsoft does not disclose a specific amount of free space you should keep.
There are a few rules of thumb going around online, but they aren’t necessarily applicable today. Let’s talk about why.
The 15% Rule of Thumb for Mechanical Hard Drives
You’ll commonly see a recommendation that you should leave 15% to 20% of a drive empty. That’s because, traditionally, you needed at least 15% free…
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