How to defrag a HDD properly

[AsRock]

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.

I'll take that 10% any day even more with games like GTA 4.

 

[Mussels]

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.

my opinion is at least backed up with specific info and math, whereas yours is opinion and feeling.


as asrock said (and i've said, many times) it all comes down to the game.

the program has a bloody free trial, test it for yourself!

 

[TheMailMan78]

my opinion is at least backed up with specific info and math, whereas yours is opinion and feeling.


as asrock said (and i've said, many times) it all comes down to the game.

the program has a bloody free trial, test it for yourself!

Don't get pissy my little kangaroo rapist. I'm trying to figure this out. I am using math also but I am trying to figure out the real benefit. So this is how it goes, please tell me if I am wrong.

Normal Defrag:
The files are scattered across the platter but non-fragmented.
20s load time 3s access.

Super Mussels Defrag 2.0:
The files are non-fragmented AND located on the edge of the platter.
20s load time 2s access.

 

[slyfox2151]

Don't get pissy my little kangaroo rapist. I'm trying to figure this out. I am using math also but I am trying to figure out the real benefit. So this is how it goes, please tell me if I am wrong.

Normal Defrag:
The files are scattered across the platter but non-fragmented.
20s load time 3s access.

Super Mussels Defrag 2.0:
The files are non-fragmented AND located on the edge of the platter.
20s load time 2s access.

if there scattered everywhere.. the access time will be a lot higher then if there all together.... everytime it has to seek to the next file it will take a few more MS... the more files that are spread the longer it will take.



all files together = Seek once..
500 files spread widely... - seek 500 times @ 6 to 20 MS.. depending on HDD speed and distance between files.

 

[Mussels]

Don't get pissy my little kangaroo rapist. I'm trying to figure this out. I am using math also but I am trying to figure out the real benefit. So this is how it goes, please tell me if I am wrong.

Normal Defrag:
The files are scattered across the platter but non-fragmented.
20s load time 3s access.

Super Mussels Defrag 2.0:
The files are non-fragmented AND located on the edge of the platter.
20s load time 2s access.

if they were located towards the outer edge of the platter, the throughput goes up - so the load time goes down. the 20s would not be static.

access times again vary on how many files there are, and how far apart they are - if its 50 files it may save 1 second, if its 5,000 it may save you 30.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Well you convined me. Ill try the other defrag program out next my next rebuild.

Edit:

I guess I fell for the bullshit.
I DL the program and ran it. Before I did ANYTHING this is what I had.

And that was done with DEFRAGGLER. As you can see everything is pretty much on the edge already.

 

[Mussels]

Well you convined me. Ill try the other defrag program out next my next rebuild.

Edit:

I guess I fell for the bullshit.
I DL the program and ran it. Before I did ANYTHING this is what I had.
http://img.techpowerup.org/100905/Untitled.jpg

And that was done with DEFRAGGLER. As you can see everything is pretty much on the edge already.

yes, its on the edge. thats a good start. Udefrag goes further than that - it can put all the files in a folder near each other.

your files are still scattered, they're just scattered over that smaller region of the drive (read: you wont get throughput gains, but you can still get access time gains)

 

[{JNT}Raptor]

Well you convined me. Ill try the other defrag program out next my next rebuild.

Edit:

I guess I fell for the bullshit.
I DL the program and ran it. Before I did ANYTHING this is what I had.
http://img.techpowerup.org/100905/Untitled.jpg

And that was done with DEFRAGGLER. As you can see everything is pretty much on the edge already.

As it should be with ANY decent defrag app out there....whats your point?? .....as Mussels has already been trying to tell you.....all files pertaining to "each" game can be placed "together" in a single folder..."together"...not scattered all around...even if your files are around the outer edge they are not being stored "together".

To me it just looks like your trying to put it down and laugh at people the same time.

 

[Mussels]

As it should be with ANY decent defrag app out there....whats your point?? .....as Mussels has already been trying to tell you.....all files pertaining to "each" game can be placed "together" in a single folder..."together"...not scattered all around...even if your files are around the outer edge they are not being stored "together".

To me it just looks like your trying to put it down and laugh at people the same time.

personally i think he either hasnt quite grasped the concept behind it, or hasnt got the math quite figured out.


in a very simple generalisation: the blocks in Udefrags UI. your game files could be in each of those, or in ONE of those. if they're compacted into the one they're physically near each other, cutting seek times to jump back and forth between them. Again, whether or not its a big change, all depends on how many files the game accesses.

I know i load first of all my friends in MP games, and it pisses them off since they have 'superior' i7 systems - so IMO, this works, and well.

 

[Bundy]

Sorry to drag up an old thread but I'm a little concerned about some missing info that might cause readers some issues.

1. Mussels example is not an OS drive. Thats mostly why his selection of defrag options worked. If you must defrag the OS drive, it might be better to ensure respect layout.ini is selected. It would also be wise to do what Mussels recommended and keep your OS on it's own partition so that defragging tasks can be better defined.

2. It is not true to say that windows only defrags files. It also reorganises the files according to layout.ini on every boot. There is a registry flag that records the completion time of the last update of layout.ini at HKLM>software>microsoft>windowsNT>currentversion>prefetcher>lastdisklayouttimestring. You can also get the time from layout.ini file properties. Usually, layout.ini gets updated every 3rd reboot. If layout.ini differs from what your defragger wants, the boot time optimisation will undo your defraggers work and vice versa resulting in continuous defragging and longer boot up times.
To disable windows boot time optimisation, you need to set HKLM>software>microsoft>dfrg>bootoptimizefunction>enable = N
To see if it has been active, look at HKLM>software>microsoft>dfrg>bootoptimisefunction>optimizecomplete
IMO, I would leave these settings alone and not use a commercial defragger on the OS drive because the windows version does a great job - especially if you separate the OS as suggested in point 1. If you must, use a defagger that can respect layout.ini.

3. Running a defragger too often will most likely result in the system restore files being gradually deleted because sys restore is recording all that activity and runs out of space. I do not recommend background defraggers for this reason, including versions that claim to not affect the shadow copy. Defrag once a week is plenty.

4. it is possible to force windows defrag from the command line, including boot optimisation. The command is...defrag and the parameters are below
-c Defragments all volumes on this computer.
Don’t specify a drive letter while using this.

-a Performs fragmentation analysis only.

-r Performs partial defragmentation (default). Attempts to
consolidate only fragments smaller than 64 megabytes (MB).

-w Performs full defragmentation. Attempts to consolidate all file
fragments, regardless of their size, even 64 MB files.

-f Forces defragmentation of the volume when free space is low.
A volume must have at least 15 % free space before Disk Defragmenter
can completely defragment it.

-i This makes Defrag run in the background, and operate only if the
computer is idle, like when run as a scheduled task.

-b Optimizes boot files and applications only. Use this option
during a separate defrag operation.

-v Specifies verbose mode. The defragmentation and analysis output
is more detailed.

e.g. defrag c: -v

will defrag c: but not files larger than 64MB and produce a report at the end.

It should only be necessary to use the above commands if you are preparing a drive for imaging etc.

5. Some commercial defraggers do nothing more than provide a GUI for the command line prompts in point 4. Buyer beware!

6. Those using Kaspersky nay find they get faster defrags of the OS drive if "enable self defense" is unchecked whilst defragging and then rechecked immediately after. Most certainly don't run an auto defragger on a drive containing kaspersky - it will almost never end.

Summarising

Install windows into it's own partition and try to avoid filling this up with files. Use windows defrag on this drive. Put all your game/storage files on another drive and either use windows defrag or a 3rd party optimiser like Ultimate defrag to order the files as you wish. Don't defrag too often!

 

[REDDLINE]

So he has alot of his stuff on tons of partitions? does it improve performance?

 

[qubit]

So he has alot of his stuff on tons of partitions? does it improve performance?

Creating partitions doesn't change performance in any way. It's just used to help organize the disc or install multiple operating systems so that they don't interfere with each other.

 

[Bundy]

So he has alot of his stuff on tons of partitions? does it improve performance?

Qubit answered the question well. An example can be my drives - I have the OS on c: organised according to layout.ini and my steam game files on drive d: organised by file order. Movies and music are stored on a network drive that rarely is defragged - mainly because I only write to this drive, so the files don't defragment anyway.

Performance is gained from the outcome of the file ordering/defragging, partitions just make it easier and quicker to accomplish this.

 

[Mussels]

So he has alot of his stuff on tons of partitions? does it improve performance?

i keep my OS on a seperate partition, since the optimal settings for it, are different to the optimal settings for a games or storage drive.


as i said above: OS's fragment rapidly, other drives do not. containing that fragmentation to as small a partition as possible, saves you defrag time on your other drives - hell, i havent defragged my storage drives in months, and there isnt a single fragmented file on any of them.

 

[Stearic]

Currently, I keep the OS and all the program files (games, Office, Adobe CS4 etc) on C: which is an unpartitioned 640GB drive. My other files are all on the remaining 3 drives- G, M and P. Page file has its own small partition on M:, and P: is solely for RAW/TIFF/JPEG files from my dslr. I have designated G: and M: as scratch/cache disks for CS4. Everything is well maintained by DK2010 in auto defrag mode with directory consolidation enabled. This set up works perfectly well for my needs.

BTW, I am pretty sure that DK2010 respects layout.ini when sequencing files.

An SSD would be nice, but I am okay with my storage setup for now. What I really, really need is a new CPU. My E6550 is but a minnow in the pool swarming with core i7 sharks

 

[Bundy]

Currently, I keep the OS and all the program files (games, Office, Adobe CS4 etc) on C: which is an unpartitioned 640GB drive. My other files are all on the remaining 3 drives- G, M and P. Page file has its own small partition on M:, and P: is solely for RAW/TIFF/JPEG files from my dslr. I have designated G: and M: as scratch/cache disks for CS4. Everything is well maintained by DK2010 in auto defrag mode with directory consolidation enabled. This set up works perfectly well for my needs.

BTW, I am pretty sure that DK2010 respects layout.ini when sequencing files.

An SSD would be nice, but I am okay with my storage setup for now. What I really, really need is a new CPU. My E6550 is but a minnow in the pool swarming with core i7 sharks

How far back do your restore points go? I am wondering if Kaspersky self protect is what causes auto defraggers grief. I have one rig that doesn't loose any restore points (using avast) but another using kaspersky is lucky to retain one copy. That was using Ashampoo magical defrag (I tried others as well, including DK).

 

[Stearic]

I am running XP and Avira on that rig.