Could these things somehow slow the performance of my system?

BicycleRow · 16 Jan 2017

Hey,

When you delete a file it disappears from the system but the data stays on the hard drive, right? Is there something like too much data on the hard drive? If so, could it somehow slow down the performance of the system? Just askin' because I've been deleting a lot of huge files recently and this thought came across my mind. Also, what about having a ton of big files on my PC at the same time? Could it somehow slow down the system?

lehnerus2000 · 16 Jan 2017

On a HDD, files may be fragmented, which could slow down your machine.
The OS has to wait for each block of data to be found (the read head must move to the right track and then wait for the appropriate data block to arrive) before it can be read off of the HDD.

W10 has a built-in tool that is supposed to take care of that.

Tutorial
Optimize and Defrag Drives in Windows 10

Files may be fragmented on an SSD, but because of the way SSDs work it shouldn't be an issue.

Fragmentation
Fragmentation (computing) - Wikipedia
Defragmentation - Wikipedia

swarfega · 16 Jan 2017

You could run the included defrag tool say once a week and that'l help. This tool is able to distinguish between SSDs and HDD's.

fdegrove · 17 Jan 2017

Hi,

When you delete a file it disappears from the system but the data stays on the hard drive, right?

Until it gets overwritten by new data.
As far as the OS is concerned the space occupied is available so it doesn't hurt in any way when you write/delete lots of data to the hard drive.

SSD is totally different since the cells need to be empty for it to write from them again. Hence, "garbage collection", the internal housekeeping of the drive.

Garbage Collection and TRIM in SSDs Explained - An SSD Primer | The SSD Review

Cheers,