Defragging disks.

farss wrote on 12/8/2004, 10:12 PM

Being the good little Vegemite that I am, no that's not true, OK, when I start feeling guilty about how I mistreat my disks I put aside a few hours overnight to defrag them.
However I'm kind of thinking it's all a bit of a waste. It's nice to have all the files contiguous however that still leaves lots of little spaces waiting to soak up fragmented bits of my next capture. Now some time ago I tried the trial version of Perfect Disk.
It did seem miles better than the vanilla defrag if you're working with large files as it optimises the empty space as well.
So my question is, does anyone find doing more than just the basic defrag helps, if so what to use or am I worrying over nothing?
Bob.

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Comments

Coursedesign wrote on 12/16/2004, 9:29 PM

"requiring multiple passes to "completely" defrag"

Read the tutorial on the Diskeeper site to see why they think this is the best way.

" I didn't like the lack of control that the "set it & forget it" setting caused (it'd start defragging in the middle of a video capture, which did cause some dropped frames on my system). It also caused my system to run Scan Disk on bootup too frequently for my tastes (I have 2 drives / 4 partitions total)."

If you had read the instructions for Diskkeeper, you would have seen that you can set the hours when it runs defrag. You can even set it to never to run automatically.

In many years of using Diskkeeper on many machines, I have never had it cause a Scandisk on startup, neither have I heard of anybody else who has this problem. That is more likely to have to do with a hardware problem on your system.

BillyBoy wrote on 12/17/2004, 6:28 AM

I've had "problems". Indeed, when using it, it was necessary to use a different application to clean up the mess Diskeeper created! In fact my experience with Diskeeper was so bad I swore off EVER using any more Diskeeper anything. I had several long chats with their "tech" help and they too threw up their hands not knowing what was causing the problem. I was using a lessor version, they gave me a free copy of their "pro" version and it still went wild.

My issue, because I switch out drives in drawers, was Diskeeper ON ITS OWN, without notice or warning of any kind would start up and decide it was time to 'defrag' whatever drive or drives it felt like. This, if I was in the middle of rendering a Vegas project would not only destroy the render if it deceided that drives needed defragging,, but Diskeeper was so illbehaved it would lock up the PC totally. Yea, I had the software set to NEVER run, yet it decided it wanted to defrag now, and did.

What happened to me, over and over was Diskeeper undone whatever settings I set, and did its own thing. VERY ill behaved software in my opinion and it always did a crappy job of defragging, NEVER, EVER, not even once totally cleaning up the entire disk, always leaving a good percentage of sectors un-defraged, even if only Diskeepr was running alone.

In my opinion you can do MUCH better then Diskeeper. This isn't a hardware issue, its a BAD SOFTWARE issue. Diskeeper is poorly written and junk in my view.

vitamin_D wrote on 12/17/2004, 10:43 AM

I use O&O and defrag once month or so. I've not had any issues, but I never let my fragmentation get so bad that I'd notice anyway.

- jim

Tattoo wrote on 12/18/2004, 9:51 AM

Coursedesign:

I'm no computer newbie - I've been a geek since my first Apple II. Of course I read the instructions, especially when it didn't do what I wanted it to.

I don't care why Diskkeeper thinks multiple passes is better. As long as my data is safe and the job gets done, which they all guarantee. I don't appreciate the extra time (my time, not computer time) involved to get it done, though. And the "set & forget" is one of Diskkeepers big selling points, but I found it to be a$$-pain.

The Scandisk may very well be a hardware issue. But Diskkeeper detected something it couldn't handle and commanded the Scandisk as required. Hard to believe you haven't run into this, as I've had it on multiple computers over the years. In fact, it seems like the Windows 98 defrag program forced you to run Scandisk before even attempting a defrag. Maybe it was Win 3.1, I dunno.

Both Diskkeeper & Perfect Disk are good programs, and I highly recommend defragging to everyone. However, for better control & more complete one pass defrag, I highly recommend Perfect Disk over Diskkeeper. Maybe Diskkeeper has better features for a network administrator or something, but Perfect Disk is the superior program for me.

BillyBoy wrote on 12/18/2004, 2:56 PM

Scandisk serves a different purpose then defragging. When Windows shuts down normally a simple one bit flag is changed that tells Windows it (the one last used) is a good copy of the Registry with which it can boot the system next time you start up. If the flag isn't set Window will access a hidden duplicate Registry file which is a mirror image of the last successful Registry loaded. This is how XP is usually able to "recover" from a "serious error".

When your system hangs, you suffer a power outage or just turn the computer off via the big red switch rather then the right way then this flag doesn't get set and Windows will attempt to see if there are problems. Scandisk can find and "repair" cross-linked files, "lost" clusters and other such hickup usually suffered when you don't shut down correctly. A cross linked file simply means Windows thinks two or more files are sharing the same sectors on your hard drive. This of course is bad news and can prevent normal defragging.

How Windows 'takes over control' of your computer at boot is rather interesting. The big steps are:

When you first turn on your PC, it goes through a process called POST (power on self test). If successful, it then does a POST for each adapter card installed using the computer's BIOS informaiton.

The BIOS reads the MBR (Master Boot Record) which is in the first sector of the first hard disk (usually Drive C) and then transfers control to the code contained in in the MBR which is created by the Windows XP Setup routine when you first install Windows. If successful to this point, Windows takes over the remaining startup process with your computer handling over full control to Windows. If at this point your system hangs its because your computer is no longer controlling anything from BIOS, it is depeding on whatever OS you loaded to take over the booting process.

First Windows reads the boot sector which is the first sector that contains the code that starts a little file called 'Ntldr' which is the boot strap loader for Windows XP. The first job of Ntldr is to allow full memory addressing, then start the file system then it reads 'boot.ini'. Ntldr then uses uses the path specified in the boot.ini file to attempt to find the boot partition where Windows XP is installed.

Once found it loads two core XP files: Ntoskrnl.exe and Hal.dll.
Ntldr then reads the Registry files, selects a hardware profile, a control set and loads all the necessary device drivers.

If successful to this point Ntoskrnl.exe takes over and starts up the Winlogon.exe file which starts Lsass.exe, the Local Security Administration) routine. This little app is what displays the Windows Welcome screen, if the Pro version also the Log On dialog boxes).