Re: Disk defragmentation - is it worth it?

Mark M <nomail@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
Rod Speed wrote

This includes a serious upgrade (for us) of our file server and
Exchange & SQL server. Our current file server has oodles of
free disk space (60%) but I'm looking at all options. We've
tried out Diskeeper and PerfectDisk in the past but to be
honest, haven't noticed that much degradation in responsiveness
even with a doubling in the number of users.

Yeah, I dont believe that defragging has any value
now except in the most unusual circumstances.

Hi there Rod, I do understand where you're coming from about no
real need to defrag these days but I have to say that my own
experience, which may be based on rather unusual (!) personal
circumstances, is somewhat different.

I have some 160 GB drives each with a single partition with lots
of jpeg files. The files are very approximately 200 KB each and
there are well over 1 million of them in a 149 GB partition. They
are formatted as NTFS5 using XP. When I access the jpegs using
Acdsee (and that may be relevant) it can take Acdsee as much
as 2 minutes to build its folder tree when the disk is fragmented.

What are you displaying, actual jpg images or file names ?

The files I have are downloaded from the Net and I know
this is a notoriously bad way of getting fragmentation.

I find that all this is speeded up by defragging.

Now here is some unusual data ... I run these data
drives quite full as they are not accessed a lot.

Then they shouldnt be getting fragmented a lot either.

One has got about 2 GB free (actually 1.3 GB!) according
to WinXP although maybe space will get stolen from the
allocation to the MFT if I need it. Even if I have 40% free it
does not seem to make a big defference to the need to defrag.

How are you deciding when it needs to be defragged ?

It sounds like it isnt the speed of access in Acdsee now.

I have oth Diskkeeper and O&O installed but
I much prefer to use Perfectdisk. Perfectdisk
often shows that I have directory fragmentation.

That does not however mean that you will actually be able
to pick the before and after defrag with a randomised double
blind trial and its obviously in the interests of the authors to
make it look like drives need defragging when they dont.

I don't know which directories Perfectdisk means because
they are most definitely directories not in NTFS system files.

Just how active is the drive in the sense of new jpgs ?

Maybe they are some sort of directory
which XP maintains outside the NTFS files?

Nope.

And I think it's these fragmented directories
which are causing a lot of my problem.

Another problem may actually be coming from Perfectdisk
itself as their tech support tells me that in some circs Perfectdisk
completely ignores the "NtfsMftZoneReservation" registry key
setting for the size to allocate to the MFT zone. Perfectdisk may
well permit far less than the 12.5% minimum which XP thinks the
NtfsMftZoneReservation setting allows. This means that some
of my MFT's are very small (one is a mere 104 MB on a 149
GB partition according to NTFSInfo from SysInternals).

So maybe that is why I get rather good results from regular defragging.

Yeah, it doesnt look like fragmentation is actually the problem in your
case.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Whats causing fragmentation of systems metadata files?
    ... I asked this because I perform defrag routines quite often ... forced to make off-line defrags so perfectdisk can ... arrange the metadata files which are managed by the system only. ... permanent fragmentation of such system files since 1 month back. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain)
  • Re: Disk defragmentation - is it worth it?
    ... free disk space but I'm looking at all options. ... tried out Diskeeper and PerfectDisk in the past but to be ... notoriously bad way of getting fragmentation. ... I find that all this is speeded up by defragging. ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage)
  • Re: Disk Defragmenter Will Not Automatically Run--Vista Ultimate... How Can I Fix This?
    ... The Impact of Disk Fragmentation: ... PerfectDisk White Papers: ... make the analysis threshold a variable so that I could defrag in Idle ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.general)
  • Re: Defraggers for XP
    ... >consolidating free space, meaning that newly added files to a hard drive ... >previously defragged by PerfectDisk are likely to be less fragmented than ... to do a proper defrag of big ones. ... for fragmentation because so often they get re-read repeatedly from the ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: cant defragment certain files
    ... The free space is very fragmented so I suspect defrag is struggling to ... don't really have a problem even though the degree of fragmentation ... sure that you have not less than 20% of free disk space. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
Loading