De Frag a HD

stvmor · 30 Sep 2006 at 22:49

And lets not forget the 'boot time defragmentartion'

Messiah Khan · 30 Sep 2006 at 23:02

Something I was thinking the other day; Why don't harddrives defrag all the time? (Forgive me if this already exists) What I mean is, cpu have the idle proccess when there not doing anything. This can be replaced with processes like folding@home etc to make the cpu do something usefull with its spare time. But how come a harddrive can't do the same, and use its spare time to constantly sort files for best performance? I know some of you are saying; "but would you really want the sound of a harddrive defragging all the time?" But you wouldn't get this as most of the time the disk would be completely un-fragmented anyway.

squiffy · 30 Sep 2006 at 23:07

NTFS structing means deframentation is less likely than FAT parittions

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/ntfs/relFrag-c.html

Day03 · 30 Sep 2006 at 23:31

messiah khan said:
Something I was thinking the other day; Why don't harddrives defrag all the time? (Forgive me if this already exists) What I mean is, cpu have the idle proccess when there not doing anything. This can be replaced with processes like folding@home etc to make the cpu do something usefull with its spare time. But how come a harddrive can't do the same, and use its spare time to constantly sort files for best performance? I know some of you are saying; "but would you really want the sound of a harddrive defragging all the time?" But you wouldn't get this as most of the time the disk would be completely un-fragmented anyway.

I'm not sure if it was a coincidence or not but one of my hard drives packed in shortly after i set a defrag program to do exactly that, it's called 'Set it and forget it' in diskeeper. Since then I just stay clear of that function. Just give the HDD a rest if you can. If it's working non stop then its life will be shorted, that's my view.

dbmzk1 · 1 Oct 2006 at 04:02

If its not defraging what is XP doing when sometimes while totally idle the hard drive starts accessing like crazy?

squiffy · 1 Oct 2006 at 11:40

dbmzk1 said:
If its not defraging what is XP doing when sometimes while totally idle the hard drive starts accessing like crazy?

It's the auto defragment feature in windows. I disable it.

Day03 · 1 Oct 2006 at 17:20

dbmzk1 said:
If its not defraging what is XP doing when sometimes while totally idle the hard drive starts accessing like crazy?

It might be indexing the files on your HDD. I disable indexing as it's a waste of system resources.

stvmor · 1 Oct 2006 at 23:29

squiffy said:
It's the auto defragment feature in windows. I disable it.

Almost certainly, I have tried both ways and indexing is now off on all my drives.

However:- :confused:

squiffy said:
I'm not sure if it was a coincidence or not but one of my hard drives packed in shortly after i set a defrag program to do exactly that, it's called 'Set it and forget it' in diskeeper. Since then I just stay clear of that function. Just give the HDD a rest if you can. If it's working non stop then its life will be shorted, that's my view..

Can't agree with that! If you do a 'boot time defrag' then a normal one after, Diskeeper will sort ALL files which includes tidying the mess Widozey leaves your HDD's in!

It's just bad luck if your HDD dies :eek:

Tysonator · 10 Oct 2006 at 13:50

I am off on holiday soon, however on my return I will be ordering Diskeeper for my PC.
I think we to do what we can to keep our PC's running in high stat of tune.
I use XP defrag at the weekend to increase the boot up time & program loading time on my youngests PC, she was very happy that it works faster now.
If Diskeeper is better than XP then it is worth the cash.

Is it a multi Op Sysyem format ! ?

_Ben_ · 11 Oct 2006 at 16:59

One of the problems with defragmentation tools like the Windows one, Diskeeper and others is that they can defragment files but they do not consolidate the free space by removing the gaps between files. Leaving these gaps causes fragmentation to occur again very quickly because Windows will write new files in to these gaps, a situation that gets worse as the disk fills up. In fairness this isn’t fault of the defragmentation software but more due to the way the NTFS file system works. When a file is moved on the disk there is a delay before Windows updates the master file table (MFT) to reflect its new location, so if the defragmentation software was to wait for these updates to complete before evaluating where to move the next file too, it could take an eternity to finish the task. To play it safe most defrag tools will leave gaps of clusters between files to avoid overwriting a cluster containing valid data.

There is a tool out called DIRMS (Do It Right Microsoft) that is a command line defragmenter that gives you the option to consolidate free space with it’s compact command, but also to move files about the disk based on date, etc. The new version I’ve not found too impressive, but if you can get a copy of 1.0.0.4 it works very well and it’s free. On a badly fragmented computer I will normally first run a pass to move the files together by date (typically puts OS files together at the front of the disk), then run a compact which will take ages to finish but after a few passes will remove most/all the gaps between files and leave you with a single chunk of free space.

Another very good tool for improving Windows boot performance is BootVIS, a free tool Microsoft supplied to OEMs for a short time to improve the time Windows XP took to boot (Google it and you’ll find a download somewhere). Using a combination of DIRMS and BootVIS you can make dramatic improvements on your system performance. If your PC takes longer than 30 seconds to boot, then you’ll make massive improvements with these tools.

silversurfer · 11 Oct 2006 at 18:31

Ive used bootvis before, its good.

Never heard of DIRMS though it seems obvious in its task, can it be multi-tasked in the background. I have 6 hdd on this system so I should be able to isolate one in the background if it can work this way?

Or I could slot it into an old machine connected to a raid card and just leave it there for days or however long it takes.

jNive · 14 Oct 2006 at 02:47

And lets not forget the 'boot time defragmentation'

O&O has boot-time also. it automatically adds files to the boot-time defrag list if they are locked or in use

Something I was thinking the other day; Why don't harddrives defrag all the time? (Forgive me if this already exists) What I mean is, cpu have the idle proccess when there not doing anything

O&O Defrag again does this, a thing called AutoSense, that can defrag automatically when a trigger level is reached , or by other means.

Also, it has options to defrag files, by name, access time, date, or it can do a space defrag or a stealth defrag ( stealth can defrag quietly in the background without interfering with running applications and doesnt require 10% free space like the other methods )

Also, it has the option to defrag your files in accordance with Layout.ini, an XP/Vista feature related to the Prefetch utility to automatically determine optimal file layout for booting and application launching etc.

bledd · 14 Oct 2006 at 12:28

another well satisfied o&o defrag user

version 8 really is awesome

6 had some memory hog issues.. but thats all sorted now

Firegod · 14 Oct 2006 at 12:52

O&O Defrag here as well.

That DIRMS sounds quite interesting...

Tysonator · 23 Oct 2006 at 15:16

_Ben_ said:
One of the problems with defragmentation tools like the Windows one, Diskeeper and others is that they can defragment files but they do not consolidate the free space by removing the gaps between files. Leaving these gaps causes fragmentation to occur again very quickly because Windows will write new files in to these gaps, a situation that gets worse as the disk fills up. In fairness this isn’t fault of the defragmentation software but more due to the way the NTFS file system works. When a file is moved on the disk there is a delay before Windows updates the master file table (MFT) to reflect its new location, so if the defragmentation software was to wait for these updates to complete before evaluating where to move the next file too, it could take an eternity to finish the task. To play it safe most defrag tools will leave gaps of clusters between files to avoid overwriting a cluster containing valid data.

There is a tool out called DIRMS (Do It Right Microsoft) that is a command line defragmenter that gives you the option to consolidate free space with it’s compact command, but also to move files about the disk based on date, etc. The new version I’ve not found too impressive, but if you can get a copy of 1.0.0.4 it works very well and it’s free. On a badly fragmented computer I will normally first run a pass to move the files together by date (typically puts OS files together at the front of the disk), then run a compact which will take ages to finish but after a few passes will remove most/all the gaps between files and leave you with a single chunk of free space.

Another very good tool for improving Windows boot performance is BootVIS, a free tool Microsoft supplied to OEMs for a short time to improve the time Windows XP took to boot (Google it and you’ll find a download somewhere). Using a combination of DIRMS and BootVIS you can make dramatic improvements on your system performance. If your PC takes longer than 30 seconds to boot, then you’ll make massive improvements with these tools.

Hello BEn,

thanks for the reply, very helpful indeed.
I am running Sata1 hard Drive which uses a Silcon Raid driver. I think my mother board & MS XP see the Hard drive on the Mother Board as a third party drive. So that takes a little longer than if it was an IDE hard drive to boot up.
So will DIRMS and BootVIS work in my set up ? :confused:

Mnay thanks