Why does having more things downloaded on my computer slow it down?
In: Technology
If you’re running out of space, it can affect your computer. The disk doesn’t fill up like a bucket of water, more like a Tetris grid. When it gets really close to full, there aren’t holes big enough to store things so it starts putting fragments everywhere. Fragments are harder to read and use than whole files.
Also, some apps use free space like scratch paper. If they can’t get enough scratch, they can act up. Running out of space really pisses off photoshop.
But just downloading a lot of things, and say having half your disk free? That shouldn’t slow you down at all. It doesn’t take it longer to find files because it doesn’t search for them that way. It keeps indexes of everything and the time to look up 1/1,000,000 isn’t meaningfully slower than 1/10,000.
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