Defragaphobic - time to slay the dragon...

Well, I got my hard drive files backed up for the most part now, and it's time to dive of of the defrag cliff and hope the bungee cord holds. Last time I defragged a hard drive, I was forced into the land of the lost system DLL's, and am now more than a little phobic about the big frag.

So. I am now in the land of the XP OS, and understand that "things are different here ", and I have done some homework and understand the general prep and precautions.

BUT, I am seeing some hints at the availability of more than one defrag component. For example, there is a standard one present with the XP OS, and I have also run across praises for packages like "PerfectDisk 2k, Microsoft certified defrag for XP ", and so on....

So, what's the best actual software to perform the defrag with?

 

Defragging always brings out numerous opinions.

I like O&O Defrag myself because it has more options.

But the fact is that all defraggers work well, even the one that comes with XP (a version of Diskeeper) is a fine piece of software.

Different defraggers have different algorithms and theories of fragmentation. Many rely on ordering according to most used, most recently accessed, etc. and some give you a choice of the method depending on what the primary use of the system is.

The bottom line is that fragmentation slows things down and increases the possibility of disk error. Defragging is a good thing from time to time.

But the method used is less important. Any defragging is better than no defragging, and the differences among defraggers when it comes to performance is minimal.

Problems can arise, however, when you use more than one defragger. The different theories of defragging can end up working against one another. Since it appears that XP does some idle-time defragging, a defragger that uses a different algorithm than XP's to defrag may end up at cross purposes, making the drive a mess and causing unnecessary wear and tear on the drive.

For that reason, I'd suggest just using XP's perfectly workable defragger, or one that replaces it, like O&O or Diskeeper. These both are integrated into the Microsoft Management Console and don't end up working against XP's defragger.

Defrag once in a while, use just one, and don't be overly concerned about it. NTFS fragments more slowly than FAT32 and the mere act of turning off the defragger fragments the drive again. There is no perfection in this area

(Just FYI: XP's defragger can be run from a command line. There is an undocumented switch that causes the defragger to defragment only the boot sequence to speed bootime, at least in theory. For example, the line: defrag C: -b will bring about a defragmentation of boot files and applications and the moving of them to minimize access time.)

 

Thanks for the informative advice y'all. I did peruse the suggested products, and will probably look at getting one of them in place down the road, but to keep it simple this time I just went with the standard defrag that comes with XP. I was not real impressed with it, but I guess it gets the job done. Took four hours, and I did not notice any tangible improvements in "response" generally, although conversely bootup and power down seem to take slightly longer now for some reason...but that's another problem that I am working on... Anyway, thanks for the info.

 

Pete C:

Actually, I neglected to mention that I did try to find the free version to give it a try, but everything that I ran across for Diskkeeper was for $ or a "trial ". I am finding that now a lot more, freeware going away...

I guess I could have missed the freeware download, but I thought I was pretty thorough. Anyway, I do intend to look a little harder for it, as it did sound like it would be considerably better -- might even go for the trial and flip over to the paid version, in which case guess I should check out all the others out there... Something else to research in detail... Anyway, thanks for the input, getting me on the right track.

As to your comment on whether or not the drive was partitioned and the corresponding length of time to defrag: no, it is an UNpartitioned 40 gig drive (or it is supposed to be 40 gb anyway, as it weighs in at 31.5 gb according to all system disk components...?) of which I have "only" consumed about 12 gig, and theoretically do not anticipate ever going much over 15 gig, likely with a maximum of 20 gig at the outside. So, it occurred to me, after seeing the defrag graph depicting files being dispersed over the full 40 gig expanse, if I partitioned it at 20 gig, then I would avoid the dispersal of wayward files over the tail end 20 gig void, and thereby speed up the defrag process? I wonder if that would be worth the effort and if their are any other plusses or minuses to that type of approach? Yes, I do plan to set up a device for "mirroring" in addition to the external hard drive, but I am thinking (me, thinking?) that I will install my old hard drive, or procure a new hard drive, and install as a second HD for mirroring, so partitioning the existing HD would be of no value for mirroring, and effectively partitioning would just be halving the drive to restrict usage... Any thoughts on this approach anyone? Maybe double mirroring in case of problems with the second hard drive? Or?

 

A little blurb from another forum

How Do You Spell Relief? D-E-F-R-A-G

I like being sneaky sometimes, just to see if users really notice the difference in performance when I do things without telling them. A message on my answering machine from a user at a small company complained of terrible PC performance that seemed to be getting worse over time. I have remote access to their network, so after taking a peek, I discovered that her 30GB hard drive was about 80% full. The first order of business was to clean out all of the junk. Temp files, downloaded apps, spyware, etc. That let about another 3GB of space go, providing a little more breathing room for the file system. The defrag was what really made the difference, though. Once a drive gets down below about 10-20% of available space (depending on the capacity of the disk), the file system has to juggle free blocks more frequently, which ultimately leads to major fragmentation, and a predictable drop in performance.

The next morning, I got a "nevermind" phone call, reporting that the sluggish system had suddenly worked out whatever caused the tantrum. I smiled broadly and unveiled my stealth maintenance practices, also teaching her when and how to defrag in order to prevent such issues in the future. Even on disks that aren't bulging at the platters, fragmentation can be serious performance killer, but when a disk is squeezed for space, the problem really gets out of hand.

The issue of FAT32 versus NTFS and the effect of fragmentation has been a widely debated topic, but trust me when I say that NTFS is every bit as hampered by fragmentation as FAT32, perhaps even worse, actually. When managing files on disk, NTFS typically has smaller cluster sizes than large FAT32 partitions. This has an inherent performance advantage in some cases, and helps to reduce the amount of wasted space, but it also means that files can be chopped into more small pieces and spread all over the surface of the disk when there aren't contiguous blocks of open space. The degree to which the cluster size affects fragmentation and performance in general varies infinitely, so just go on the assumption that any file system type will need to be defragmented on a regular basis, and your drive will be happier.

 

Here's the link:

http://www1.execsoft.com/dklite.exe

 

thanks for the link abraxas, got it installed, ready for the next dragonslaying event...

and thanks for the info paul43, I had not considered that "halving" the hard drive to restrict usage of the unused portion of the drive might actually have a negative counter effect and thereby also increase the frequency need for defragging... but, I am going to do the partitioning anyway to follow the advice of PeteC and others and segregate the OS and data files; a curious footnote to the info that you inserted tho -- I have noticed that since the defrag, the slightest pause or hesitation in "response time ", as tho the defrag actually resulted in slowing down my system just a fraction of a second... anyone ever observed the same effect and any reccomendations on what to do if anything...? note that I did some reccomended "cleaning" prior to the defrag, which included the registry (but I did not notice the slowdown after that and prior to the defrag, could have missed it tho...)...

whatever happened to the "good old days" when we could actually get some real work done on a PC instead spending most of our time patching, fixing, maintaining, optimizing, and securing it...

 

Hoo-eeh!

Well, I installed DKLite and have made the following unusual or unexpected observations.

First, I noticed that DKL "started up" the Diskeeper Control Center (all on it's own…). What? Sure nuff, shows up under task manager as eating up 4 megs of memory. Why does it auto load as resident when it is supposedly a component that is only executed on an infrequent basis? I did check options and help, but did not even see the control center referenced, and nothing about blocking the auto start… Is this a "feature" of DKL or did I miss something?

Also, after defragging just late yesterday via the built in XP defragger, a version of DK, I ran the analyzer after installing DKL today, just to see if it looked anything like the end result yesterday. Keep in mind that very little activity has transpired since the defrag. To my amazement, it did not look at all like the finished results yesterday - rather their little graph of my hard drive looked more like rush hour on the Palmetto Bug expressway (a mess….). And, of course, the implication by DKL was to do a defrag, and THEN to do one every day. Now really folks, tell me it ain't so… What kind of barometer do you all use to determine when to risk a defrag?

Lastly, the "findings" by DKL were a little obfuscatious to me, so I am plugging it in below in case anyone would like to comment on it…

Diskeeper has completed analysis of this volume and found 171 fragmented files and/or directories and 526 excess fragments.

The average number of fragments per file is 1.00.

On average, you have 0% excess fragments per file on this volume. This is a slightly fragmented volume. You should schedule Diskeeper to run at least once a day (if you haven't already done so) to keep fragmentation at a low level.

 

Diskeeper Proper runs as an XP service set to automatic. Check the service configuration for autostart, and options to automatically defrag when a certain percentage is reached.

The standard service runs all the time, tracking your usage and writing a performance log to which it refers for optimal defragmentation when you run it.

 

OH NO !!!! don't tell me that XP has something Similiar to the TaskMonitor and Applog folder in SE ?

If so that will get ASAP ( if possible )

BillyBob

 

If you're running Pro, Run: perfmon.msc

Here, you can view and configure the performance logs and alerts. You could make a tracking log of pagefile usage, for example. (Default folder for these logs is C:\Perflogs\).

Though I have switched from Diskeeper Pro to O&O (no particular reason than something different), if I remember right, DK used \Windows\Temp folder to store files called something like "PerfData" or something along those lines.

(Here is a perfect example of where Disk Cleaner would be safer to use than manual deletion of files in the temp folder. I have many apps whose logs would be lost were it not for Disk Cleaner's saving those temp files that have been recently accessed.)

 

Thanks everyone for the education on defragging, I am not quite so phobic about it anymore (but I will always do a system state backup first...).

Posting back, because now I see why DK lite is eating that 4 megs of resident memory. DKL was kind enough, after only a few days of activity, to inform me that it was time to defrag again, suggesting that I procure the pro version to do so, but also "warning" me with the following precaution...

"Diskeeper has automatically detected that the fragmentation of critical system files on volume(s) C have reached a point where it is adversely affecting your performance as well as your ability to fully defragment your volumes. These critical system files can only be safely defragmented with Diskeeper's Boot-Time Defragmentation option. To correct this situation, you should purchase full-version Diskeeper now and run Boot-Time Defragmentation as soon as possible. "

I would interpret this as freeware "nag" salesmanship. Based on our experience with DKL, anyone disagree???

 

As we all know, "free" means free of cost, not free of everything!

The DK service can be placed on manual so that it will stop monitoring the volume and only start when you want to defrag.

I have to admit that though O&O has a boot-time defrag ability, DK-full's does directories and metadata that most defraggers don't do.

You could add Pagedefrag to your arsenal to defragment pagefiles, registry, and others on boot:

http://www.mrtech.com/news/messages/2070.html