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Time to defrag? |
Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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... I don't know. Is 19,947 fragments good or bad?
-----sig: |
Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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well the "average fragments per file" isn't too bad, unless that means every file that is stored in more than one sector is fragmented (doubtful). This is worrying: Quote: Total fragmented files = 23,560 Oh, I recently de fragged my data volume, its now getting 40MB/s write speeds. not too shabby eh? Especially for software raid on two plain (couple year old) PATA/IDE drives eh? Read speed is dismal (16-27MB/s) though, not sure why. oh, managed to just get these numbers: Write Test: 1024.000000MB in 23.819346 Seconds, 42.990265MB/s Read Test: 1024.000000MB in 28.774792 Seconds, 35.586704MB/s
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HoHo
Member #4,534
April 2004
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Pagefile fragmentation Pagefile size = 512 MB Total fragments = 2,180 Now that is bad. To make things better you could simulate *nix way of swap by creating a whole partition only for the swap. I doubt that defraging helps a whole lot. Sure, it will improve things but probably not by much. If you defrag the drive let us know how well did it work __________ |
Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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3% is too little for any FS*. But yes a defrag WILL help. a whole hell of a lot, till it fragments again and you spend most of your time seeking instead of reading and writing. Freeing up space and then de-fraging is the best bet. *) Well, actually that depends on the size of the FS. if its several Hundred GB in size, it might be enough, if its several TB in size, then its definitely enough. edit, oh and I always try to setup a separate partition for my swap, or at least fix its size to 512MB-1GB in size or so. then its quite hard to fragment it -- |
Matt Smith
Member #783
November 2000
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Defragging a drive that full will be murderously slow :p Move some stuff off it temporarily. You would want AT LEAST as much free space as the biggest file, and everything up to half empty will speed it up some more. |
Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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Not only slow, but depending on the tool used, impossible. MS's defrag is utterly stupid. restarts on disk access, and cant defrag in many cases. Try Perfect Disk, O&O Defrag, or Diskeeper (well actually one of them, iirc is made by the same people as the MS defrag... cant recall which) -- |
James Stanley
Member #7,275
May 2006
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Why don't you use a file system that doesn't fragment? Oh, wait, Windows... |
Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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Quote: Why don't you use a file system that doesn't fragment? No such thing. Some just fragment worse than others. A decently recent FS will use some "smart" algorithms for allocating pieces of files as close to the proper place as possible to reduce seeks in loading single files. Even better is an OS that manages to pack related files together to reduce on seeks even further. I saw an article the otherday that put out that Ext2/3's anti-fragmentation algorithms are causing files that would otherwise be allocated close to others that are related (say a bunch in a extracted tar, or a split up multi GB file) are spread across your disk, causing a fair amount of seeking when loading many related files, like your init or kde startup. A good tool would be able to organize your files selectively, put all your startup files in a contiguous section, your app's data all in a contiguous section each, etc. -- |
Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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Quote: edit, oh and I always try to setup a separate partition for my swap, or at least fix its size to 512MB-1GB in size or so. then its quite hard to fragment it It's not so bad when it's a fixed file size unless you exceed it (which doesn't happen for me). Quote: Defragging a drive that full will be murderously slow :p Move some stuff off it temporarily. You would want AT LEAST as much free space as the biggest file, and everything up to half empty will speed it up some more.
Windows wanted 15%, I got 14.5%. I left it over night and it was still 1% of "compressing files." Needless to say, I have to drop a few more files. The reason it's so full is that my 200 GB hard drive is dying so I have to throw most of it on my other two. -----sig: |
LennyLen
Member #5,313
December 2004
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Quote: The reason it's so full is that my 200 GB hard drive is dying so I have to throw most of it on my other two.
That's what DVD burners are for. Which reminds me that I need to go burn stuff to DVD. I only have 2GB free on my HD.
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HoHo
Member #4,534
April 2004
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Quote: It's not so bad when it's a fixed file size unless you exceed it (which doesn't happen for me). Then why is your swap divided roughly into 2000 256kb pieces? __________ |
Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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Quote: That's what DVD burners are for That's a ridiculous waste of money per GB of storage space. Quote: Then why is your swap divided roughly into 2000 256kb pieces? Because it was changed at one point. It doesn't just magically move around the hard drive on it's own. -----sig: |
Hard Rock
Member #1,547
September 2001
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Quote: That's a ridiculous waste of money per GB of storage space. !!!!!!!! For $30 i get 300GB worth of storage in DVDs. Where do you get your storage? I want a $30 300GB harddrive. _________________________________________________ |
relpatseht
Member #5,034
September 2004
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Harddrives are, unlike DVDs, rewriteable. Personally, I wouldn't pay $30 for a 300GB harddrive with write once read many sectors even though it would have a much higher write speed than a DVD, though, that may be because I only have $30 and have never used more than 40GB of harddrive space.
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BAF
Member #2,981
December 2002
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Quote: Because it was changed at one point. It doesn't just magically move around the hard drive on it's own. If you don't set the size explicately, with no room to increase or drecrease, it will move around on it's own. Quote: That's a ridiculous waste of money per GB of storage space. No it's not. DVDs are a good cheap solution for storing backups, even though they have to be checked every year for quality. If it's not read/write, then storing on DVD makes sense. Or you could use something like Amazon's S3. |
Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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Quote: If you don't set the size explicately, with no room to increase or drecrease, it will move around on it's own. But I have set it to a fixed size. -----sig: |
LennyLen
Member #5,313
December 2004
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Quote: That's a ridiculous waste of money per GB of storage space. Sigh... I wan't suggesting you use it as permanent storage, but when you're hard drives are failing, it's better then losing stuff.
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Billybob
Member #3,136
January 2003
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Quote: Sigh... I wan't suggesting you use it as permanent storage, but when you're hard drives are failing, it's better then losing stuff. Well except that it isn't permanent. I bet my Seagates will last 3x longer than my backup CD/DVDs.
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Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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I don't see much fragmentation on windows even when I don't defrag more often than 3 months. Maybe 53Gb free. Sometimes when I'm just sitting there thinking, the disk drive lights up and seeks like crazy for 20-40 minutes at a time, I was assuming it was doing some sort of defrag automatically. No cron type stuff is scheduled at all. They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas. |
Derezo
Member #1,666
April 2001
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The indexing service often does that. I've also read that windows optimizes your hard disk while idle (ie. defrags it), but I've also heard that it does no such thing. I don't know what to believe I rarely need to defrag my main drive, but I regularly need to defrag my secondary drives. Data is moved around on those drives much more often and they are usually larger files. "He who controls the stuffing controls the Universe" |
Goalie Ca
Member #2,579
July 2002
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NTFS isn't the most sophisticated file system (it really isn't apologists but it might have been back in the day). Sadly it looks like windows users will be stuck with it for at least a decade to come. Kinda reminds me of IE going stale. ------------- |
BAF
Member #2,981
December 2002
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Quote: Well except that it isn't permanent. I bet my Seagates will last 3x longer than my backup CD/DVDs.
I bet my backup DVDs are more than 3x cheaper than your Seagates. |
Steve Terry
Member #1,989
March 2002
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BAF
Member #2,981
December 2002
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Statistics -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Volume Files Volume size = 232 GB Cluster size = 4 KB Used space = 192 GB Free space = 41,368 MB Percent free space = 17 % Fragmentation percentage Volume fragmentation = 31 % Data fragmentation = 37 % Directory fragmentation Total directories = 36,656 Fragmented directories = 591 Excess directory fragments = 5,170 File fragmentation Total files = 469,527 Average file size = 548 KB Total fragmented files = 26,975 Total excess fragments = 167,811 Average fragments per file = 1.35 Files with performance loss = 26,939 Paging file fragmentation Paging/Swap file size = 0 bytes Total fragments = 0 Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation Total MFT size = 528 MB MFT records In Use = 508,637 Percent MFT in use = 94 % Total MFT fragments = 21 Job Report Volume (C:): Recommendations -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Findings on C: Diskeeper has completed analysis of this volume and found 27,567 fragmented files and/or directories and 173,002 excess fragments. The average number of fragments per file is 1.35. This volume is heavily fragmented, with 17% of the total volume space available for defragmentation. If you haven't run Diskeeper on this volume yet, it is time to do so. If you have run Diskeeper on this volume, you should schedule Diskeeper to run more often than it has been running to reduce the current fragmentation and maintain a lower level of fragmentation. Also, scheduling Diskeeper to run at times when system activity is low improves the overall performance of your computer. 1. Free up space on volume C by emptying the Recycle Bin or removing any unwanted files. 2. Due to the high MFT usage, it is recommended that you expand the MFT on this volume. Use the Frag Shield option in the Diskeeper Configuration Properties to configure the MFT on this volume to a larger size. 3. Due to the high memory usage it is recommended that you run Frag Shield to expand your paging file. 4. Defragment volume C now using Diskeeper. Health -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Warning! The overall health of volume C: is degraded The overall health is at "Warning" level for the following reasons: 1. The MFT usage is currently 94 percent of the total MFT size, which indicates it is likely the MFT will become fragmented. 2. The peak memory usage since the last reboot is currently 90 percent of the total available memory, which indicates it is likely the paging file will become fragmented. 3. The volume is heavily fragmented. The average number of fragments per file is 1.35. 4. The free space on this volume is very low (17%), making it difficult to defragment the volume. Access Time -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Time to read all files on volume C Current read time: 38 minutes Optimum read time: 26 minutes 30% improvement Time to read fragmented files on volume C Current read time: 103 minutes Optimum read time: 91 minutes 11% improvement
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Richard Phipps
Member #1,632
November 2001
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So, what's the best free defragger to use for Windows XP? |
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