It is as effective now as it was in early 2000s. And correct the difference in speed (on 4k density drives; almost all drives designed after 2013-2014) between the inner and outer tracks is greater than it was in older lower density drives. They still are around 50% slower in the inner tracks but their write speeds fluctuates more.
You need a link to prove drives today are bigger, and faster, and come with larger buffers than drives of yesteryear? You really need a link showing how a drive (or partition) that is running low on free disk space is more susceptible to performance degradation due to fragmentation? You are asking me to provide a link proving Bigfoot does not exist. Note I did not say there was no benefit to short stroking. I said with today's monster drives and plenty of free disk space (along with lots of system RAM), the benefits are negligible, if not totally insignificant. I feel confident the logic I presented speaks for itself so I would ask, if short-stroking did provide significant performance gains as you claim, why don't Windows, UNIX, Linux and MacOS automatically implement it by default? Surely they all have a keen interest in maximizing performance of their operating systems. Why don't Dell, HP, Acer, Samsung, Lenovo and all the major computer makers implement it on their PCs and notebooks? It would really be a simple process for them since they just image their disks during production anyway (and with extra hidden partitions too). Since it is NOT done by any of the major OS makers or computer makers, I would ask you provide a link showing us how they are all wrong! Please show us links that show short stroking decreases load times significantly - that is, noticeably by seconds! Not by a few scant milliseconds. If you can, then I will concede and apologize profusely. Just because something was beneficial years ago, that does not imply it still is today.
@Bill_Bright you still have not answered to my question... As for the fact if short strocking is beneficial or not... your initial argument was about low disk space, and then you talked about default OS formating (which every OS allows you to change by the way), default OEM configurations and confidence in your logic... ps. If something was benificial years ago and the technology remains the same, it continues to be benificial today. Actually short strocking is more benifical today with those monster drives because the user does not have to deal with shortage of space as he was in the past. Panagiotis
Exactly, HDD performance tests showed, that it indeed improved by ~30%, not just read/write speed, but also my HDD's access time has decreased from 12ms to 9ms, that is more than marginal. Mine current setup:
I answered it several times already. I said more than once, and most recently, Let's be real now. Yes, that is true. But hard drive technologies have changed significantly and in many ways from years ago. My first PC hard drive was a Seagate 20Mb drive. It was 5.25 inch, used the IDE interface, came with just 2Kb of buffer and a transfer rate of just 8.3Mbps, slow seek and access times, and it cost a fortune. EIDE doubled those speeds up to a blazing 16.7Mbps. Even today's budget drives now use the SATAIII interface with transfer speeds up to 6Gbps They are 3.5" (many are just 2.5"), terabytes of capacity, 64Mb of buffer is not even large by today's standards (many use flash memory buffers). Seek and access times are much much quicker. And of course, they are very affordable. So to suggest the technology has remained the same is just silly.
And yet again you avoid to answer a very simply question. 200gb are enough allocated space for the OS and the daily apps? Either they are enough or they are not. Oh please... Are you really implying that people used short strocking on drives with less than 20gb? And yes hdds technology remained the same all these years. What changed are the materials, the sizes, the density and the interfaces of the drives. After 60 years they still use platters and heads....
Sorry. Sure, 200GB is plenty big. But I would hardly call allocating 20% of a 1TB drive "short stroking". And regardless, never my point. I said repeatedly, any advantage with today's drives would be negligible. Do you seriously think the time it takes to move the read/write head across a platter surface that is not even 1.5 inches wide (on a 3.5 inch drive's platter) is going to take so long it will significantly affect performance? Since you are so insistent in questions being answered, I ask again, since OS and computer makers want the performance of their products to shine, if short stroking was so significant, why don't Dell, HP or any of the others image their disks with it already set up? They already include hidden recovery partitions. Adding a short stroking partition would be just as easy. Where and when do you think the concept of short strocking originated? This is just silly now. How do you think changes in sizes, densities and interfaces came about? It was through changes (significant advances) in hard drive technologies! After 100 years, cars still use 4 wheels, a steering wheel and internal combustion engines. I guess the technologies have remained the same for them too. I'm done here.
Only if you want to be. Wouldn't think it such an irregular request for a single link to support your rather brief lightly detailed description concerning what you outlined. At least as someone pretty active in the Hardware Department in matters as this. Not regarding this but rather an overview of the makeup of the file segments-fragmentation duress (which drives some to bypass Microsoft's for a third part Defrag solution such as Defraggler). Of course if it isn't so convenient for you to support those claims mentioned to file layout comparisons of contiguous vs fragmentation, what get's lock, what doesn't etc. ON ANY HARDWARE HDD that's quite understandable. Not that you would bother to clear that much up with only a link reference, was just expecting one.
And your claims are supported by what substantiated evidence? Don't you think if Microsoft, Linux, and other OS makers thought something would make their operating systems perform better that they would incorporate it, or at least recommend it? Does that really take some link to some study to prove? This is you wanting me to prove unicorns don't exist. If you are right, I ask once again, why done Sony, Samsung, Alienware, Dell, HP, Acer or ANY other hardware maker implement this to make their product stand out above the other. Do you really expect everyone to believe you are right and EVERYONE else is wrong?
@Bill_Bright- Gee buddy. Sorry I bothered. Hope it didn't shake you up too much with the request. Certainly had no idea offering something as simple as a supporting link might been disturbing to those claims on that matter. On topic this camp finds positive results with UD5 infinitely more effective than any series Windows offers for Defrag. And in support or interest to the Topic's OP, I have used Defraggler before and wouldn't hesitate to employ it again if it can better sort the disk fragmentations that improve performance and make for a better computing experience. As is I currently use Puran Defrag to "fill empty locations/gaps" before turning on UD5 which ensures solid consistency of file placements for longer periods between this type of maintenance.
Thank you. If you re-read my posts you'll see that I avoided calling it "short strocking". It affects the performance significantly enough. Especially when the dirve is filled at 50% and windows 10 upgrades afterwords. On my toshiba p300 the first 200gb have a speed of 220-190mb/sec. at 500gb the speed drops at 140mb/sec and at 800gb it drops at 100mb/sec. I avoided responding because it simple is not true. My toshiba laptop and my dell laptop where short-stroked by default. My acer laptops and my samsung laptop weren't. An example (and you'll understand if you read the posts why companies usually avoid short-strocking) https://www.dell.com/community/Lapt...-and-drive-quot-D-quot-confusion/td-p/3461523 For the home users it was implemented with windows 2000 and windows xp when maxtor released the first 20gb ide drive that was affordable to the puclic arround 2001-2002. Not on the moving parts (heads/platters)... and the moving parts are those that affect the speed (edit: I mean the difference in speed bewteen the inner and the outer parts of the platters) . On those the only revollutionary technology implemented was ACHI. If you say so... I guess I'll take your word for it. Panagiotis
... I want to start this comment by saying that I understand the point you are trying to make and respect your experience. However, the fact that these manufacturers do not implement this does not mean there is no benefit. Their main objective is profit, and this would be very unprofitable for them. It would increase their support load and increase their costs. Short stroking is only of benefit if you do not use the inner tracks at all. The average consumer would want the space wasted more than the extra speed. A 3 disk RAID 0 array would benefit speed more than just about anything else they can do with a storage setup but they don't do that either. At least not at retail. You can make the case that it is not practical for the average user but to suggest that all PCs do not come that way because there is no benefit is not the reason.
Where did I ever say there was no benefit? I didn't. Not once! Regardless, not sure I agree with your comments about the manufactures. Why wouldn't any of these makers enable it - at least on their high-priced systems they market as high performance or gaming systems - if there were benefits to it? Since, again, it would be a simple task to set up. Each model already has to have a unique factory disk image created for the components in that model. And that image already includes the factory restore partition so it would be a simple one-time task to create another partition with the OS on it just for short stroking. But not one does - not even for marketing fodder. I will say this one last time. There is a benefit, it is just negligible, at best, with today's fast hard drives. Look at this image of a platter from a 3.5 inch hard drive. That section of the platter where the house key is sitting on is not even 1.5 inches wide. I know because I have taken apart many drives. That's the distance the R/W head must sweep back and forth over. Are you really going to suggest a significant (and noticeable) amount of time will be saved if the R/W can spend most of its time over the outer rings? Are you really going to suggest that matters to a significant degree once the OS has already booted? Huh? So are you suggesting people buy monster drives, partition off a small section, save everything in that small section and not use the majority of the drive? That hardly makes sense and is a huge waste of money. Not even! Even the cheapest, slowest SSD can run circles around the fastest hard drive, even when used in the fastest RAID configuration. Not sure what you are saying here. The average user would NOT want the space wasted.
To say the benefit is negligible, at best, to me, says you feel there is no benefit. I did not mean to misquote you if that was not what you were looking to imply. Yet here it distinctly sounds like you are saying there is no benefit. I would expect that it would be even more of a benefit with today's fast drives, but I expect neither of us have tested this theory, so I am going to drop this one without any evidence either way. The real benefits of short stroking would be a higher sustained transfer rate of contiguous files. This would be more likely to benefit gaming than the every day use of small files. But gamers would be the most likely to spend the money for an exotic setup and today that would be an SSD array. Yes, that was my point, as this is how it was commonly done back in the days when it was popular and my reasoning for why manufacturers do not do it. Huge waste of money. Agreed, and also my point. Most consumers would not want the space wasted for short stroking. And when I made that RAID 0 statement, I was including SSDs so no disagreement there either. I run 2 SSDs in RAID 0 and the speed is pretty close to double. My overall point is that yes, I do believe that short stroking would provide a benefit that would be noticeable to an enthusiast but with the availability of SSDs today, nobody would actually do it. Would it work. Sure. Does anyone care? No. Also, A recent enough article on the subject for anyone that cares to read it: https://www.techjunkie.com/performance-tuning-black-art-short-stroke-hard-drive/
You really have gone blind to reality here. You are talking advantages of single digit (1-9) milliseconds - if not less than that. Much faster than Superman or even you can see. And for the record, once defragged, contiguous files can be in the middle of the disk too. And also for the record, except for the initial loading of the program - games included - most files the program would need after that would be tiny. So I totally disagree that gaming would benefit most - especially with today's high density drives where there is still a tremendous amount of data storage capacities in the inner circles too. Then where are all those enthusiasts promoting short stroking if it was noticeable as you claim? I see no reason to continue wasting everyone's time on this. Have a good day.
I experienced similar in the past, i.e., computers generally became faster after I used a third-party defragger. However, I realized that they would still slow down after several months, and even with the program scheduled, so I tried other programs and went back to the built-in one. Later, I found out that the built-in defragger didn't sometimes run, as the last run took place months earlier, even with default settings in place. I think it's possible that it runs if the system is idle, which means something is causing it not to be idle. Or the user did not use the machine often, and would shut it down before the program would run. Or the system HD would not have enough free space. Also, I'm not sure, but I think these programs operate in a similar fashion. That is, they try to combine small files, not bother with large ones, optimize slowly by moving certain system files to other parts of the drive, etc. In which case, it's probably better to just stick to the built-in one nd make sure that it and anything that the system does as part of maintenance (such as the built-in disk cleaner) are allowed to do so. The startup will also have to be checked to see if several unnecessary apps, drivers, and services are running after boot. Other things that might be helpful include coming up with a separate drive or partition for data files so that the system drive won't be fragmented as much. If it's a separate drive, then an SSD would be great if one can afford the additional cost.
They are very affordable at this point. A 500 GB Samsung is currently $79.99 U.S. on Amazon and a Crucial is $69.99. I'll never buy another spinning drive again unless it is a multiple TB drive for offline backup purposes.
Any of that is possible. Defragging (regardless which defragging program) involves moving just about every file on the disk around. That involves locking the file so the user or another program they are running does not modify or move that file at the same time which surely would cause corruption or lost data. So to avoid interfering with the user, unless manually triggered, it is always done "in the background" when the user and the computer are idle. But many users shutdown their computers after each session. Depending on how they shut it down, the defragging program may not get an opportunity to run. But also, several of these programs that run by a schedule will not defrag unless fragmentation is severe enough. And that makes sense. Defragging puts a lot of wear and tear on a hard drive (compared to other tasks). So if defragging is not needed, why run it? Ummm, no. None try to combine "files". That would corrupt the files. It would be like trying to save space by combining a 1/2 empty can of yellow paint with a 1/2 empty can of blue paint. Yeah, in the end you will have just one can of paint but you probably didn't want a can of green paint. So defragging combines all the segments (fragments) of 1 file and stores them all together on the disk. It is like putting all the pages of a 100 page report in the right order and in one single file folder - instead of all the pages scattered in no particular order throughout the file cabinet. And for sure, these programs work with large and small files. Which brings up a point. Before manually defragging, regardless the program used, it is best to run Disk Cleanup first - if you want the most efficient defragging possible. No use defragging with potentially 1000s of tiny cookies and temporary internet files on the disk if not really needed. This is not a problem - regardless if using a 3rd party defragger or the built-in one. The OS ensures 2 programs don't try to modify a file at the same time. And for the record, in the case of the built-in disk cleaner, that is not an automatic process. That is, the user must initiate Windows Disk Cleanup manually. And when that happens, the computer is no longer in an idle state. Yeah, they are definitely coming down. But they still have a ways to go before HDs lose their appeal. I note For $59.99 on Amazon, you can get a 2TB hard drive. Four times the space for less money is hard for those on a tight budget to ignore. But I agree with you and only buy SSDs now. If you spread the extra cost over the expected life of the computer, factor in the energy savings and increase in productivity, the extra cost becomes less a difference and much more easily justified. Plus, there is the hard to quantify but very real increased "enjoyment" factor. I enjoy how fast my computers boot, wake up, and load programs and run my tasks with SSDs - compared to when I ran with HDs.
