Disk Defrag Questionssss!

what does the benefit of disk defragmentation?

coz ive been trying out perfect disk 7 for quite a while now and i dont realy notice any change in speed after defragging my disk.

and it takes too long to defrag using Perfect disk my poor disk usually defrags well over 12 hrs. the last time i defrag i think its on 17 hrs but it only completed 90%. i dont really like to put my disk in to that long hours of work.

and im just afraid that after all the trouble that my disk went through just to defrag itself il be undoing all its work in a matter of few days. if this is true, its not a really good idea to defrag my disk in the 1st place right?

i usually defrag my disk every 2 or 3 weeks. should i do it more often to increase the speed of defragging?

and can some explain the results of my defragment? i looks kinda odd and very patchy, with many holes of free space. i dont really know how to interpret that list of colored blocks. and what does the smaller blue and red blocks means?

and lastly i have very little space left on my disk only 4 gig left lol! i have 225GB usable (250 Gb) does this have any conflict in defragging? is it very essential to free up some space?

thanks a lot, sorry if i have loads of question. il be earnestly waiting for your replies. thanks a lot!

 

Hi myhomie

I'm not surprised it takes you a long time to defrag with only
4 gig of free space left. During defrag the computer has to move
blocks of information to and fro and the less room for it to move
to the longer it will take. I have read articles where they
reccomend you have at least %15 of free hard disk space.

 

the benefit is simply performance but if u dont notice it, i suspect it has to do with ur low free space.

at teh bottom left of perfectdisk there is a legend key, i can see it in ur screenshot. blue blocks are files that are rarely modified and reb block are those of frequently modified files.

 

I agree with what Texcritter and WSFuser said. You probably also want to remove all the temporary files and junk files before you do the defragmentation. You know, the performance of a computer is decided by many factors.

 

@myhomie - if u wish, u can use ccleaner to clean out the junk from ur comp.

 

Without a doubt it is the amount of free space left .

 

I also think that a good partitioning can reduce your defragmenting.
That was one of the advantages of partitioning, if my memory serves me well.

 

Fragmentation does'nt slow down hdd performance as much as some people would like to make you think.

OS system cache, disc caching help reduce any performance losses, including from fragmentated file, then you have the fact that disc access is random, therefore reading PARTS of files (not even complete files) all over the drive, so exact file placement is not a significant factor in drive performance.

Also Win XP will defrag file (parts) for quicker execution and startup of applications and the operating system, this is where most performance gains are to be made (by defragging files that are used the most).

I forgot to say, definately lack of free space in your case. Free space is needed to move the files about as they are moved out of the way of target destinations of files.

 

If you have NTFS, especially, defragging is one of the biggest overhyped things you can do with your computer. Some professionals argue that any performance gains are psychological. But if you want a speedy defrag and want to do it more than once every two months or so (as I do) then simply put you OS on a partition of 4 or 5 gigs (with programs) and it will defrag in no time.

 

Well put Wonderbread.

Yes NTFS does attempt to reduce fragmentation of files. By trying to place the file in the smallest space it will fit, FAT used to just starting putting the file in the first space on the logical map. NTFS is aware of all the free areas of space on a drive, FAT only the first !

According to diskeeper 10 (when I installed it on a machine which had'nt been defragged for months), I was loosing 11% performance on the fragmented files on my drive, which ammounted to 1% so thats an overal performance gain of 0.11% not really noticable, and thats assuming I would use the fragmented files and ignoring the XP prefetch cache to speed up application launching and booting.

The only times I have seen fragementation become an issue are with nearly full drives (I mean 20% free space or less) and you are working with big files that will drop that free space significantly.

IMHO I am a fan of regular daily (or more) defrags, which only take a little time to complete whilst the machine is idle. I am not fussed about getting a perfect defrag as long as the job is done quickly without me knowing (eg whilst I make a coffee, but I will never sit there waiting for a manual defrag to complete as the time lost for the defrag would take years to gain back in performance gains.

 

Me, I am using Diskeeper Lite and I schedule to defrag my drives once a week and also when I have just install/s or remove a program/s on my pc. Coz I noticed that when I didn't do a regular weekly defragmentation it will takes more longer time to defrag. That is more fragmentation more time needed to defragment it. Diskeeper also informs that it needs at least 20% free space in every drive in order to defrag it so I always keep it up that it'll not be lesser than that.

But before I defrag my drives...first I have to remove unnecessary files on my pc temp, junks etc. and also checks the disks for possible errors, and that's it that I starts to defrag. And after that I also uses NTREGOPT to defrag my registry.

I felt my system is much more faster after defragging.

 

Diskeeper 9 Pro here, it also defrags the MFT which is almost as important as defragging files. I've set mine to defrag when needed, so it starts a few times each day Good stuff
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/708/untitled11iy.th.jpg

 

I can not quite understand why O&O Defrag seems not popular here at Wilders. Its UI is nice, it takes little resource, and it is fast. More important, it can optimize file allocation according to different criteria while doing defragmentation, which can greatly improve performance. It is a much better piece of software than PerfectDisk and Diskeeper from my trial experience. Anyway, I am just a user too.

 

For optimal defragmentation you always need to have at least 10% free diskspace. I wondered why nobody mentioned mst Defrag yet. In the past I've been using O&O Defrag and Diskeeper (trialled PerfectDisk too, never liked it). But mst Defrag turned out to be the best option for me.

I'm still hoping we can use ReiserFS 4 partitions to install Windows on

 

I dont use MST defrag because when defragging a large file even slows my machine down whilst defragging that file (even with registry tweaks it happens), whereas Diskeeper 10 will pause. Shame really as that is the only let down for me in a very good program.

 

wow. got some really good replies there.
thanks guys.

so basing from the replies..
problem no. 1 is the small disk space. need to free up some space and partitioning should help the speedy defrag.

and fragmentation doesnt have a consderable effect in the performance unless your disk space runs really low.
and i dont need to waste 17hrs+ defragging my HD.

so in conclusion what should i do to maintain my system performance?

nick i dont quite understand what you said.
what will i do with the OS system cache, disc caching etc.?
sorry sounds like a stupid question. lol.

thanks again for the great replies!

 

I can see major improvements when defragging a drive, it's alot faster to load/find files, but some people needs to restart their pc to see the performance increase. This is due to low memory avaliable, and Windows has to create a larger swap file. It just drags everything down, plain & simple.

( some people = Me included about a month ago )

 

IMHO, I take the defrag often but quickly approach, I use the set it and forget background defrag mode of diskeeper. Thing is dont let it impede with your productivity.

These mechanisms help reduce the negative effect of fragmentation when reading AND writting files.

 

I really cant follow the logic of that statement (not meaning to be nasty)..

Reboot = increase in peformance due to low memory ?!?

Is memory somehow lost and then magically gained after a reboot, if that is what you are saying you are running something with a bad memory leak, and is not a fault of Windows.

As soon as you closed the offending app/processes, Windows WILL always recover the memory (assuming it can close the darned app without a reboot ).

 

If you play a game or do some major 3D rendering, you will notice a slow puter (after an hour or 2, depending on your RAM amount).
A restart will clear the RAM/page file and your puter will be alot faster, because it doesn't need to access the page file on the harddisk (which is ALOT slower than accessing RAM).

 

Brian, you will find that as soon as you reboot and open your game or major 3D rendering you would end up in the same low memory situation.
Also, Windows will do a perfectly fine job of recovering memory afterwards and stop using the page file as much.

Memory simply cannot be lost which requires a reboot to fix in Windows (unless you are running programs with bad memory leaks).

 

Hi,

I´m wondering about if I need to defrag or not. My PC is about a year old and I never defragged, it´s running quite smoothly but sometimes loading images in XnView can take a while (I mean in thumbnail mode), and it also seems like HDD usage is getting a bit more intensive. So will I see any benefit, probably not right?

And if I do plan to defrag which tools should I use? I only want to use freeware. Are Power Defragmenter and PageDefrag good enough? I need to use them both right? And if I use these tools I do not need to use the standard XP defragger (Diskeeper Lite)anymore, I guess?

Here is how my HDD looks like at the moment:

http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/6880/screenshot136fy8.png

Red = Fragmented
White = Free space

I have used 100 GB of my 225 GB, 60 GB is used by VMware virtual machines, the rest is mostly audio, video and photos.

 

I hate fragmentation and so I try to be a minimalist. The standard XP defragger is not good, I won't go into detail about it here because you should know it does not and will not improve the condition of your files. I never defragmented my other, old, computer for 8 years, believe it or not?


I maintain a high standard for my computer now, defragmentation is every 4-5 days or daily depending on my activities.
The BEST defragmentation product I can recommend to you now is Perfectdisk 8 from www.raxco.com

It does its job excellent. I use perfectdisk myself. Sorry, but not all issues can be tackled effectively by freeware. Don't defragment and your hard disk drive will suffer physically. The drive's performance is hindered by fragmentation.

Essentially, good computing habits.

 

Brian N

I have Diskeeper 10 Pro as my defrag proggie...you mentioned MFT...please find screenie re: MFT warning.....do I need to take immediate action?...what action do I perform ?...what benefits in terms of performance will it have ?....

Sorry for the multiple questions....

Regards

ftwynne59

 

Thanks for the feedback Nadira, anyone else with advice?

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