How much space do I need to leave on an external drive?

[paskel]

so i google and see recs to leave 10-15% free on a hard drive.
but they state that is due to leaving room to defrag.

i use a 6 tb external to store music & video files.
i do not play files from the drive and dont run games or programs etc
it is solely for storage - just copy files to the drive and leave them there.

so if i just want to fill a dive w files cant i fill it near capacity?
a 6 tb drive hows up as 5.45 anyway so that would mean saving 500GB free?

that seems like a wast of space

[xjsb125]

Probably you can just fill it. But get a backup drive for your external. Just in case. How many backups should you have? Anything greater than or equal to the number 1 is a correct answer.

[paskel]

thanks. also meant to say, i will NOT be defragging so the extra space may not be needed
is that correct?

[xjsb125]

If you're not defragging it, I wouldn't think you'd need the extra space.

[TheMysticMuse]

yes correct extra space not needed. this doesn't mean that you should fill it up 100 % though. Not even 99 % I would say. Spare a couple of GB's for data caching. Never good to go 100 %.