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How to defrag a HDD properly

I seen that Mussles and thank you, But I just need to know what every setting I need to click just to do a regular Defrag on my main drive.

My game drive is optimized but the OS drive I cant make any sense of all the settings.
 
question, should all the windows folder be done through high performance like you do with games?
 
shevanel said:
question, should all the windows folder be done through high performance like you do with games?
Click to expand...

IMO yes, but then again IMO, you should have windows on another partition, or physical drive to your games.
 
I have had this U defrag working great one time but the last two machines I have put it on I have had some issues.. It says "moving closer to MTF" or something like that and it just stays there for hours...

I need to get a new hdd for this laptop.. this 5400RPM is ridiculously slow.
 
Last edited:
i've had the same bug with that, uncheck the box about moving directories close to the MFT and it stops happening.
 
I'm going to use auslogics until I reinstall 7 and split my partions and/or upgrade this hdd ..
 
shevanel said:
I have had this U defrag working great one time but the last two machines I have put it on I have had some issues.. It says "moving closer to MTF" or something like that and it just stays there for hours...

I need to get a new hdd for this laptop.. this 5400RPM is ridiculously slow.
Click to expand...

Seagate Momentus XT
 
You need just two freeware tools. CCleaner and Defraggler. First one is used to clean the junk which makes the work of the second tool Defraggler much easier and effective.
 
RejZoR said:
You need just two freeware tools. CCleaner and Defraggler. First one is used to clean the junk which makes the work of the second tool Defraggler much easier and effective.
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defraggler is a very basic defragger, none of the advanced options.
 
I've never had an issue with defragger. Its slow on degragging restore files however. Other then that its great.
 
yeah, but as i've said a few times in this thread: there is a big differnce between defragging fragmented files, and reorganising them/your MFT for better performance.

if you have all files within your games folder located physically next to each other, seek times are cut back - whereas they could be 'defragmented' but having 1000 files scattered all over the drive, it still takes time to locate and read them all.
 
Mussels said:
yeah, but as i've said a few times in this thread: there is a big differnce between defragging fragmented files, and reorganising them/your MFT for better performance.

if you have all files within your games folder located physically next to each other, seek times are cut back - whereas they could be 'defragmented' but having 1000 files scattered all over the drive, it still takes time to locate and read them all.
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Ok but your talking nano seconds here. Not worth the price of the software.
 
TheMailMan78 said:
Ok but your talking nano seconds here. Not worth the price of the software.
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... no.

HDD seek time is in milliseconds, if your drive averages 12 milliseconds, thats 12 milliseconds per file it has to find.


as an example, my company of heroes folder has 536 files.

.jpg


if it had to go seeking through even half of those, thats an extra 3 seconds on whatever its doing (probably, loading the game/map etc) on top of how long it takes due to the files size (throughput). thats normal, if they're in sequential order.

my estimation (12ms times 250 files) assumes that they're still in sequential order on the disk (sequential read), if they're scattered all to hell that could go well higher. i'll try and find a normal reading for random reads vs sequential.

874.jpg


according to everest, its almost double - so instead of being 3 seconds, its 6. if your game takes 20 seconds to load, it could be halved to 10s, being placed sequentially, as opposed to randomly - even if fully defragged.


is it going to make a large difference? depends on the game, and how many files it has (and how badly they're scattered)
 
Mussels said:
yeah, but as i've said a few times in this thread: there is a big differnce between defragging fragmented files, and reorganising them/your MFT for better performance.

if you have all files within your games folder located physically next to each other, seek times are cut back - whereas they could be 'defragmented' but having 1000 files scattered all over the drive, it still takes time to locate and read them all.
Click to expand...

Actually that's not entirely true. And Defraggler does that as well. It's called defragmentation and consolidation. Pretty much all programs do it these days. First stage makes sure files are in fact consisting of 1 fragment (so they aren't actually fragmented). Then it makes sure they are packed together so there isn't any free space in between and that files from same folders are also located together. MFT fragmentation is problematic to some degree, however it is only related to a seek position of the file inside the file system. It's not big either so unless it's in like 50.000 fragments, it shouldn't cause any noticeable slowdowns. It's much more problematic having files physically scattered across the drive, meaning the read/write head will have to travel large distances between physical locations.
 
i did a big edit to the post above, rejzor. had some of it in the wrong order.

consolidation is not the same as reordering the files, thats merely compacting all the data towards the start of the disk. Udefrag can sort by folder name (so all files in D:\games\Starcraft II\ are physically near each other, which is far superior to merely being randomly shoved as close as possible to the start of the drive.

If you can find me details on defraggler actually sorting them properly, then by all means - thats great.
 
Mussels said:
... no.

HDD seek time is in milliseconds, if your drive averages 12 milliseconds, thats 12 milliseconds per file it has to find.


as an example, my company of heroes folder has 536 files.

http://img.techpowerup.org/100904/.jpg

if it had to go seeking through even half of those, thats an extra 3 seconds on whatever its doing (probably, loading the game/map etc) on top of how long it takes due to the files size (throughput) - and it could well be longer than that, if the game tries to load several at once (causing your HDD to 'chatter' and seek back and forth)


is it going to make a large difference? depends on the game, and how many files it has (and how badly they're scattered)
Click to expand...

That doesnt hold water. That means it would take a grand total of 3 second to load 50% of the files.

First off most game do not load 50% of the total files at one single time during gameplay.
Second if it did it would only take the total of the "3 seconds" to load. Big deal. 3 seconds vs 2.5 seconds.

Edit: Time in half? I HIGHLY doubt that.
 
TheMailMan78 said:
That doesnt hold water. That means it would take a grand total of 3 second to load 50% of the files.

First off most game do not load 50% of the total files at one single time during gameplay.
Second if it did it would only take the total of the "3 seconds" to load. Big deal. 3 seconds vs 2.5 seconds.
Click to expand...

no, its 3s of seek time, added on to the time it takes for the data.

if it takes 20s to move 5GB, then its going to take 23s due to the delays from seeking (20S for a 5GB single file, as opposed to 23s for 5GB in 250 files)


if you dont beleive me, find a collection you have with large amounts of small files. try moving it somewhere, and then raring or zipping them and moving that. the compressed file always goes quicker, since there is only one file (and if its defragmented) - no seeking to worry about.
 
Mussels said:
no, its 3s of seek time, added on to the time it takes for the data.

if it takes 20s to move 5GB, then its going to take 23s due to the delays from seeking (20S for a 5GB single file, as opposed to 23s for 5GB in 250 files)
Click to expand...

Ok 23 seconds vs 22.5 seconds. Really you think thats worth buying the software?

Mussels said:
if you dont beleive me, find a collection you have with large amounts of small files. try moving it somewhere, and then raring or zipping them and moving that. the compressed file always goes quicker, since there is only one file (and if its defragmented) - no seeking to worry about.
Click to expand...

Thats consolidation. Defrags don't work like that.
 
TheMailMan78 said:
Ok 23 seconds vs 22.5 seconds. Really you think thats worth buying the software?
Click to expand...

where'd you get that number from?

with the example i gave above, its 3 vs 6 seconds. I also clearly stated that a game with more loose files would be slower.

163.jpg


How about that? could save you 10-15 seconds of loading time.


if its WORTH it, is up to you... but since you defrag in the first place, dont you ALREADY think its worth it?

i've already pointed out some of your misconceptions (thinking it was in nanoseconds) so please, look into your HDD - its random vs sequential read speeds in MB/s, as well as its access times, the amount of files in the games you play and do the math yourself. if the math shows you'll save an amount of time you care about, then its worth it - and if its not, its not.

in my case, waiting around for games to load bores me to death - so yes, it matters to me. i didnt buy a hexa core and a 5870 to sit staring at loading screens.
 
Mussels said:
where'd you get that number from?

with the example i gave above, its 3 vs 6 seconds. I also clearly stated that a game with more loose files would be slower.

http://img.techpowerup.org/100904/163.jpg

How about that? could save you 10-15 seconds of loading time.


if its WORTH it, is up to you... but since you defrag in the first place, don't you ALREADY think its worth it?

I've already pointed out some of your misconceptions (thinking it was in nanoseconds) so please, look into your HDD - its random vs sequential read speeds in MB/s, as well as its access times, the amount of files in the games you play and do the math yourself. if the math shows you'll save an amount of time you care about, then its worth it - and if its not, its not.

in my case, waiting around for games to load bores me to death - so yes, it matters to me. i didnt buy a hexa core and a 5870 to sit staring at loading screens.
Click to expand...

I put "nano seconds" as an exaggeration. Anyway what you are saying is if the over all load time is 30 seconds I could get it down to 15 seconds? 50% reduction by reorganizing the files?
 
TheMailMan78 said:
I put "nano seconds" as an exaggeration. Anyway what you are saying is if the over all load time is 30 seconds I could get it down to 15 seconds? 50% reduction by reorganizing the files?
Click to expand...

it varies really, since i have no way of knowing how many files the game actually loads, i cant give you accurate figures.

is a 15s reduction possible? yes. but its certainly not going to happen in every game, only the big ones with hundreds (or thousands) of files.
 
Mussels said:
it varies really, since i have no way of knowing how many files the game actually loads, i cant give you accurate figures.

is a 15s reduction possible? yes. but its certainly not going to happen in every game, only the big ones with hundreds (or thousands) of files.
Click to expand...

You are talking about a 50% reduction in load time man. Think about that. I'm not saying you are wrong about the load reduction. I just think you might see a 10% improvement at best.
 
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