# Does space on the hard drive affect computer speed? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 21, 2003, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173 "2003-04-21T23:47:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2003, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/1 "2003-04-21T23:47:12Z")
My sister keeps telling me that when the computer gets slow, it’s because we have too much stuff on the hard drive. I try to tell her memory is different, but she refuses to listen. I know that after a long time with the computer on, it will start to leech off of the hard drive, but I doubt that’s the case. (We have an 11 gig C drive with almost three gigs left, and in addition, we have a second hard drive, the D drive, which is the same size and only has a quarter of it filled up.) I call bullshit on my sister. Who wins? ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/2 "2003-04-22T00:06:47Z")
It’s not so much how much is on the drive, it’s more how it’s arranged. When files grow, they usually don;t grow in place, so that new bits are placed in differents spots of the drive. The more places your computer has to look for all the bits, the longer it takes to perform a function. That’s why you defrag your drive from time to time. Along will come an expert who can clarify and/or correct me. ---
**Author:** ![Number](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/number/32/242_2.png) [@Number](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Number)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/3 "2003-04-22T00:11:10Z")
Your sister might be right in some instances, but not this one. Most modern operating systems use a _pagefile_ – a portion of the hard drive is used to supplement the main memory (RAM). This is also referred to as _virtual memory_, and it generally contributes quite a bit to overall performance. If there isn’t enough room on the disk to create the pagefile then your system will get noticably slower. This usually only happens if you are down to your last few hundred megs of space. 3 GB is plenty. ---
**Author:** ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/4 "2003-04-22T00:11:46Z")
Your sister might have a point in the following cases… What OS are you using ? 1. Windows does use the hard disk as a kind of secondary memory when your physical RAM gets used up. The paging file is an area on the hard disk that Windows uses as if it were RAM. The amount of hard disk space usually used by the paging file is upto about twice your physical RAM. Seeing that you have 3GB free on your primary hard disk, the rest of the data on the hard disk won’t affect your speed. 2. After a lot of installations, uninstallations, deleting and creating of files, the drive tends to get fragmented. Defragmenting the drives will improve performance. So while, in general, the space used on the hard drive does not affect computer speed, there are specific cases where it might. The clutter on your desktop does not affect your computer’s speed. The number of icons in the Quick Launch toolbar does not affect your computer’s speed. This is something that non-computer people cannot seem to fathom, no matter how many times you tell them. The icons in your system tray do affect computer performance, because these are loaded into memory. It is much more likely that the performance of your comp is affected by unnecessary items loaded at start up. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/5 "2003-04-22T00:23:38Z")
We defrag about once a month. And did so recently. Maybe I should empty the web history? We have Windows ME ---
**Author:** ![Number](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/number/32/242_2.png) [@Number](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Number)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/6 "2003-04-22T00:42:08Z")
Defragging once a month is plenty. Clearing the history probably won’t make any difference. Deleting the Temporary Internet Files may help a little with web browsing, particularly if they haven’t been cleared out in a while. However, as **xash** said, the most likely cause of system slowness is having too many things loading at startup. Go to **Start|Run** , type **msconfig** , and go to the **Startup** tab. Uncheck any items which aren’t absolutely essential, then reboot. If this causes any problems, simply check the items again. ---
**Author:** ![Mines\_Mystique](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mines\_Mystique](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mines_Mystique)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/7 "2003-04-22T01:14:42Z")
Also, doesn’t ME have a pretty bad memory leak? If you don’t restart every couple of days the RAM starts to get used up and Windows doesn’t clean it out. One option is to just restart the computer in the morning every other morning or something like that. Or you can download a program like [Rambooster](http://download.com.com/3000-2086-1400043.html?tag=lst-0-1) and run it every so often. This should help. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/8 "2003-04-22T01:36:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by xash \* > The number of icons in the Quick Launch toolbar does not affect your computer’s speed. This is something that non-computer people cannot seem to fathom, no matter how many times you tell them. The icons in your system tray do affect computer performance, because these are loaded into memory. Are you sure? In order for Quick Launch to function as intended, program icons in Quick Launch are effectively operating programs sitting “at idle” until you need them. You can still launch a program from the desktop icons and/or Start menu. Kill your Quick Launch icons to retrieve some taskbar real estate, gain a minute amount of computer “speed,” and reduce overall clutter. ---
**Author:** ![Petter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/dbc845/32.png) [@Petter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Petter)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/9 "2003-04-22T02:29:05Z")
Unless Quick Launch in Windows ME operates radically different from 2000/XP, the icons in it are just regular shortcuts to programs. They don’t represent ‘idling’ programs but just a one-click way to start them. ---
**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/10 "2003-04-22T02:38:27Z")
**Quick Launch** is the name of the row of icons on the bottom left in Win98+. It’s just another place to add icons. The **System Tray** on the right represents programs that typically run in the background. They usually don’t use that much CPU, but can use lots of RAM. IMHO, most are dumb. I want my programs to use CPU and ram on load, not all the time so they can fake loading faster. IIRC, the windows swap file is created on a contiguous section of disk, and is non-relocatable (and thus mostly immune to fragmentation). Running programs will have problems with their own files though, slowing them down a bit. So really, unless your working drive is massively fragmented, how much disk is used is irrelevent. You could have a multi-terrabyte array tacked on to your box, and the only performance hit would be the negligable amount the SCSI RAID driver used. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Urban\_Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/11 "2003-04-22T02:43:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by xash \* > The clutter on your desktop does not affect your computer’s speed. The number of icons in the Quick Launch toolbar does not affect your computer’s speed. This is something that non-computer people cannot seem to fathom, no matter how many times you tell them. The icons in your system tray do affect computer performance, because these are loaded into memory. \Actually\ they do. Since Windows 3.x days, there are two system resource files called USER and GDI that are both 64K in size. Icons and other stuff eat into these resources, and when they drop below 50% you will have problems. ---
**Author:** ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/12 "2003-04-22T05:58:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Duckster \* > \*\*Are you sure? In order for Quick Launch to function as intended, program icons in Quick Launch are effectively operating programs sitting “at idle” until you need them. \*\* Yes, I’m sure. Icons on the Quick Launch toolbars are not loaded into memory and sitting at idle. They are merely shortcuts to frequently used programs. ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/13 "2003-04-22T06:09:08Z")
You can tell this by pulling up the Task Manager, and looking at the list of active Processes. I have 28 Quick Launch icons, and the only ones that appear in the Process list are running either in my Taskbar or my System Tray. (This is Win2K; I imagine other Windowses have similar things.) ---
**Author:** ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/14 "2003-04-22T06:15:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Urban Ranger \* > \*\*\Actually\ they do. Since Windows 3.x days, there are two system resource files called USER and GDI that are both 64K in size. Icons and other stuff eat into these resources, and when they drop below 50% you will have problems. \*\* I do not see how shortcuts added to the desktop can affect system performance or eat into system resources. For a better understanding of system resources, go here : [http://www.qvctc.commnet.edu/classes/csc277/sysrsrce.html](http://www.qvctc.commnet.edu/classes/csc277/sysrsrce.html) and here, [http://onlinehelp.bc.ca/tips.htm](http://onlinehelp.bc.ca/tips.htm) > [@](#): > > Windows 3.1 maintained 64K regions of memory heaps for use by the graphics device interface (GDI) and USER system components. These heaps stored GDI or memory object information allocated when an application called a Windows API function. The amount of space available in the combination of these two heaps is identified as a percentage of system resources that are free. Under Windows 3.1, when the calculated amount of free space dropped to a low number, the system often reported that it was out of memory even though the amount of free memory was still quite high. This was often due to low memory in either the GDI or USER heap, or both. > > In Windows 95, to help reduce the system resource limitation, many data structures formerly stored in the 16-bit GDI and USER heaps are now stored in 32-bit heaps. This provides more room for the remaining data elements to be created These resources are used by open browser windows, multimedia applications, system monitoring utilities, active desktop, animated mouse cursors/desktop icons, sound schemes, multiple open applications, etc. ---
**Author:** ![sweepkick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/87869e/32.png) [@sweepkick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sweepkick)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/15 "2003-04-22T06:48:35Z")
You win. 3 gig of drive space is plenty. What might be confusing the issue, though, is you’re possibly hitting the limit of the physical RAM you have in your machine, causing the OS to perform more swapping of RAM pages to and from the hard drive. This situation typically causes a massive dropoff in user interface responsiveness, as well as causing the disk to seemingly “grind” as it tries to keep up with memory requests as the system switches through tasks. So she might be assuming that the disk is full because of the drive swapping/grinding. ---
**Author:** ![mooka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@mooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mooka)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/16 "2003-04-22T13:13:31Z")
Also make sure the recycle bin is empty. I forgot to empty it for a while once, and my computer slowed right down when doing anything disk intensive. I found out it was because the hard drive was full, and windows had to delete some file in the recycle bin to make room for new files which slowed everything down. ---
**Author:** ![Mort\_Furd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mort\_Furd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mort_Furd)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/17 "2003-04-22T13:26:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mines Mystique \*Also, doesn’t ME have a pretty bad memory leak? If you don’t restart every couple of days the RAM starts to get used up and Windows doesn’t clean it out. One option is to just restart the computer in the morning every other morning or something like that. Or you can download a program like [Rambooster](http://download.com.com/3000-2086-1400043.html?tag=lst-0-1) and run it every so often. This should help. Jesus Pete, please tell me that people aren’t so lazy that they can’t even be bothered to turn a computer off for the night. It only takes a few seconds to shutdown and the same again in the morning. Turn the bloody things off. It won’t hurt you or the computer, and it will save you some money on your elextric bill. ---
**Author:** ![Mort\_Furd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mort\_Furd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mort_Furd)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/18 "2003-04-22T13:31:13Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Urban Ranger \* > \Actually\ they do. Since Windows 3.x days, there are two system resource **files** called USER and GDI that are both 64K in size. Icons and other stuff eat into these resources, and when they drop below 50% you will have problems. These are not files. Windows in earlier versions had issues with memory management (in part due to the 80X86 processor architecture) that made it simpler to restrict the amount of memory available for the storage of certain variables to a measely 64 KByte. Please refrain from providing misleading, uninformative answers. ---
**Author:** ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/19 "2003-04-22T13:55:59Z")
**Mort Furd** , there are reasons people leave their comps on when not in use (but monitors off, of course) … here are some: [Leave the computer on?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32893) [Should I turn my computer off at night?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=80817) [Power Off/Power On](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15687) [Stopping/starting hard drives worse than idling all night?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=155440) [Computer Energy Use Question](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=128761) ---
**Author:** ![Urban\_Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2003, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173/20 "2003-04-22T13:59:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by xash \* > I do not see how shortcuts added to the desktop can affect system performance or eat into system resources. Since Explorer (i.e., your desktop) is a GDI application, and adding icons and such will cause Explorer to use up more resources. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-space-on-the-hard-drive-affect-computer-speed/170173.md?page=2)