defrag (Skuzzy?)

[Banshee7]

Hopefully Skuzzy will read this:

What exactly is a defrag?  When should I do this?  Any precautions I should take or things I should know?

[BaldEagl]

Defrag:  Short for defragment.  It regroups data on your hard drive to put files that are used together near one another and also eliminates "dead" space on the drive.  All of this to improve the speed at which data is accessed on the drive.

If you add, delete, download or change a lot of files on your drive often you should probably defrag often (monthly).  If not you can do it less frequently.  I do mine every two months.  If you wait too long it can take a very long time to defrag.  If you do it relatively often it's mostly painless.

There are no dangers in defragging but prior to doing so you may want to clean up your hard drive.  To do so run disc clean-up.

If you have multiple drives or partitions, you can put your operating system and applications on one drive (less volitile files) and your documents, music, etc. (more volitile files) on another to reduce how often you need to defrag.

Both these programs are located in programs/accessories/system tools from your start menu.

[Chalenge]

I use O&O Defrag and defrag by filename every two weeks to a month. I also have my OS drive set to stealth defrag at bootup.

http://www.oo-software.com/home/en/

[Denholm]

O&O Is amazing. Every few months I'll run a Full/Access on all of our systems. Keeps them running fast.

[Animl]

Defrag should be performed ** no less then once a week **.... if you're a gamer. When the drive that contains your game files starts to become fragmented you will start to get glitches and stalls as the game waits for a file (usually graphics) to be accessed. Most updating can cause some fragmentation as it replaces files or adds them and in some cases deletes them.

This would cause issues especially if you have the game set to see other people's skins. When you get within a range of the object it has to pull the skin up so you can see it. If the drive is fragmented the game can stall until it loads. Defragmenteing a drive is one of THE most under-rated proceeedures not done often enough,...by many.

Memory can't function quickly if it's waiting on files to be loaded into it. The Hard Drive will always be THE biggest bottlenecks in a system, the more fragmented it is, the bigger the bottleneck becomes. It doesn't matter how fast your memory is or Video card if it's waiting on files.

MTF being set too small can also cause performance issues.

Doing a boot defrag can really boost performnce of a HD. Diskkeeper is probably one of the best utilities, it will fix all of the above.

Defragging a drive need to be top on the list for gamers, and usually it's not. It's VERY important, more so then some make it.

The Mechanics of Disks

The basic components of hard disks have not changed significantly since their invention in the 1950s. Hard disks have one or more polished platters made of aluminum or glass that hold a magnetic medium used for storing information. The platters are stacked onto a spindle and rotated by a spindle motor at very high speeds, often in excess of 160 miles per hour. A platter has concentric circles called tracks, and each track is divided into small sections called sectors, each capable of holding a fixed amount of information.

Small devices called heads are responsible for the actual reading and writing of data on the platter. Each platter has two heads (for the top and bottom), and the heads are mounted on sliders positioned over the surface of the disks, which in turn are mounted on arms. The entire assembly is connected to and controlled by an actuator, which in turn is connected to a logic board that allows for the communication between a computer and the hard disk.

To read or write information to the disk, an application makes a request of an operating system to create, modify or delete a file. The operating system then translates the logical request into a physical request containing the actual locations to be read or written on the hard disk. The logic board then instructs the actuator to move the heads to the appropriate track, and to read or write the appropriate sectors from the rotating platter below.

The mechanical movement of the head across a platter is typically one of the most expensive operations of a hard disk. As a result, most operating systems seek to minimize this head movement through caching, optimizing I/O requests, and streamlining the storage of data on a disk. Streamlining the storage of data typically involves writing the data for individual files in a file system contiguously on a platter, allowing the head to read or write data without needing to be repositioned.

Due to their mechanical nature, hard disks represent one of the poorest-performing components in a system. Electronic components, such as the CPU, motherboard, and memory, are improving performance at a much faster pace than hard disks, whose performance is limited by the mechanics of spinning a platter and moving a head. As a result, since an integrated system is often as fast as its slowest component, it is essential to ensure hard disks are performing at their optimum level.


The Cause of Fragmentation

When a file is stored in clusters that are not physically located next to each other on the platter, it is fragmented. Fragmentation can occur for various reasons, but the most common cause is the modification or deletion of files. For example, if you deleted a non-fragmented 40K file that occupied 10 contiguous clusters on an area of the disk surrounded by other used clusters, the disk will now have 10 free clusters available for use. If you then saved an 80K file, which requires 20 clusters, the operating system may choose to use the 10 recently free clusters and then find an additional 10 clusters from somewhere else on the disk. This means our 80K file is now fragmented, residing in two different locations on the disk.

Over time, files in NTFS tend to be broken into more and more non-contiguous clusters on a disk. This fragmentation of files accumulates over time, causing a gradual increase in the movement of a head across the platters of a hard disk, and thereby resulting in a gradual increase in the time for each I/O operation.

The impact of fragmentation on system performance differs based on the usage of the fragmented files. For example, a single infrequently used Microsoft Office document is unlikely to have an impact on overall system performance. However, fragmentation of a paging file, which provides virtual memory to all applications on a system, will likely have a more noticeable impact.

Fragmentation can affect all files, including system files. Fragmentation also can occur both in the MFT and in the general storage area. As the MFT expands to meet the growing number or files or directories, it can take over non-contiguous clusters, and thereby become fragmented. In addition, even the metafiles within the MFT can be allocated non-contiguous clusters and therefore be fragmented.

A generally repeated belief is that NTFS is resistant to fragmentation. Unfortunately, this is a myth. The underlying algorithm for identifying free space appears to readily re-use smaller non-contiguous space when in fact contiguous space does exist elsewhere on the disk. As a result, fragmentation will impact all Windows systems.

[Animl]

If you go to my website you can also find BIOS and memory tweaks and a Services guide in PDF format.

I will also post an article on fragmentation, as it's just as important as any other hardware issues. The site is newish and still growing.

The link in my signature.

[Tigger29]

OK here's how it works.  Think of your hard drive as a parking lot.  There are many empty parking spaces.

Let's say 20 cars pull in.. of course they are going to park closest to the store.  In this case you'd have 20 full spaces near the store, and a bunch of empty spaces towards the rear.

Then 10 random cars leave.  And while they are leaving 10 more come in.  By this point you have 10 random spaces taken up further away from the store, and 10 random empty spaces closer to the store.

And as you know, the busier it gets, the longer it takes to find a parking spot... and the one you might get might be far away which means a lot of walking.

What defrag does is closes the parking lot and moves all the cars back to the closest spaces, and the empty ones further away.  On top of that it will move the cars the come in the most often closer to the store, and the less used cars further away... this way the more frequent 'patrons' have a faster walk to the store, and the people who rarely visit have the longer walk... resulting in a more efficient setup.

Of course, this never lasts very long, which is why frequent defrags help, however there is such a thing as over kill... no need to do it every day.

It's of course a bit more complicated than that, but I think this shows a nice visual representation of it all...

[Krusty]

Defragging is overrated. I've heard folks use it as a duct tape for PC repair. Internet explorer crashing? Defrag. Internet going down? Defrag.

Generally speaking it's nice to have your file cluster sequentially laid out so you can just read them in order, however you're not going to magically see stutters in a game that didn't have them otherwise, if you don't defrag your system. You're not going to gain additional FPS, nor are you going to lessen load times *much*

It's a nice system maintenance tool, and it's good for the health of your PC to do once in a while, but once a week?

Bah.

[Animl]

Defragging is overrated. I've heard folks use it as a duct tape for PC repair. Internet explorer crashing? Defrag. Internet going down? Defrag.

Generally speaking it's nice to have your file cluster sequentially laid out so you can just read them in order, however you're not going to magically see stutters in a game that didn't have them otherwise, if you don't defrag your system. You're not going to gain additional FPS, nor are you going to lessen load times *much*

It's a nice system maintenance tool, and it's good for the health of your PC to do once in a while, but once a week?

Bah.

I'd place a bet on that. <g>

Animl

[Animl]

Matter of fact the HD is the biggest bottleneck\latency in a computer. Everything you can do to bring that latency time down is NOT over-rated.

[Denholm]

...What defrag does is closes the parking lot and moves all the cars back to the closest spaces, and the empty ones further away.  On top of that it will move the cars the come in the most often closer to the store, and the less used cars further away... this way the more frequent 'patrons' have a faster walk to the store, and the people who rarely visit have the longer walk... resulting in a more efficient setup...

If you are referring to the middle (inside) of the HD disc as the store, your example is incorrect. The more frequently used files will run faster if placed further toward the outside of the disc as that is where the disc turns at a faster speed. No, I did not just say that defragmenting your hard-drive will place all your files toward the outside of the disc, I know it doesn't. However defragmenting tools such as O&O will recognize which files are used more frequently taking them out of their current cluster placing them toward the outside of the disc while still packing them in close with the rest of the files.

So your description was almost correct, if I interpreted it correctly.

[Animl]

If you are referring to the middle (inside) of the HD disc as the store, your example is incorrect. The more frequently used files will run faster if placed further toward the outside of the disc as that is where the disc turns at a faster speed. No, I did not just say that defragmenting your hard-drive will place all your files toward the outside of the disc, I know it doesn't. However defragmenting tools such as O&O will recognize which files are used more frequently taking them out of their current cluster placing them toward the outside of the disc while still packing them in close with the rest of the files.

So your description was almost correct, if I interpreted it correctly.

Here's an article on my site

Impact of Disk Fragmentation
http://home.comcast.net/~animl/articles/impactoffrag.htm

WOT to follow.

It's not just that. There are many reasons to defrag. You have large partial files, some parts of that file are placed in a parking spot in the middle and some parts of it in a spot towards the end,...the drive still has to get all the pieces from where ever they are stored before presenting a whole file. And as you say when they are right next to each other as some defraggers will do things happen faster.

Imagine this, if every frame of a movie was a file, it would run MUCH MUCH smoother if the drive was defragged, then if it was fragmented, simply because the head of the HD isn't having to move all over the place to find files. Every movement creates latency time. Heavily fragmented drives can ware out the mechanical parts of the HD. When it has to do all that thrashing work for many fragmented files you will have issues,... period.

Watch the HD activity (the light on your computer) on a fragmented drive, then watch it on a defragged drive,...almost no disk activity, means the head and arm is having to move less, less movement less ware, anmd less latency... anything that moves wares out from friction.

So it's over-rated compared to what>? Office = apples, gaming = oranges
Sure defragging often may be over-rated in an office environment, or simple desktop operations. But when it's constantly calling on files such as in a game we're in a completely different world.

Does it take longer to hand someone a whole piece of paper at once, OR does it take longer to pick up several pieces of the same paper which are located all over the room before handing it all to someone?

Drives can become so fragmented they will barely work at all, in severe cases it will get to a point where it can't even be defragged.

I worked on a friends drive last week, after 1.5 years of never defragging, it was 70% red. It took 6 defragging sessions to get it half way done, because it couldn't defrag it all in one session. It just couldn't deal with it, and that was using Diskeeper. In the end defrag had to be run 16 times before it finally got it right again. All he can talk about is how much it sped up his computer, very noticeable difference with the human eye.

THE biggest bottleneck of ALL computers and the most neglected is the HD. Your system can only be as fast as the HD can present files to memory. When it's fragmented the bottleneck gets bigger, OR in other words machine latency becomes longer time. 150-350ms delays\glitches will irritate you in a game.

Why do you think some suggest turning off using other people's skins to stop glitches? It's not just because of the video card...IMO

Drives you do NOT want to defrag are ones that hold large movies or music files. This is why I keep media (larger files) on separate drives, and games and OS get their own drives. In fact, I run my games off a 8g Fat32 drive because Fat32 is faster on smaller drives, NTFS is faster on larger drives. And NTFS files have to go through more BS when pulled up,..decompessions, encryptions,...etc before they hit memory. NTFS is more secure, and a better filing system....I use it for other things. If you use NTFS, do not compress your files for a game to save space, you just add opening time.

If you only gain 2% here, and 5% there, and you tweak many items it adds up to 60% performance gains. 1-5 tweaks usually doesn't yield much, 10 tweaks it starts adding up. If defragging the HD gains me 5-20% I am happy.

In a nut shell, you can't ware a HD out by defragging, you can ware it out if you don't ever, eventually it will kill it.

Sorry for the WOT, I guess HDs are one of my pet peeves.

Animl

[Masherbrum]

Matter of fact the HD is the biggest bottleneck\latency in a computer. Everything you can do to bring that latency time down is NOT over-rated.

Indeed.

[llama]

Here's the thing about Defrags and gaming performance...

After you do a couple of defrags (or just one with a good commercial defragger), all the files that make up your game are already "in order" and degragmented. Running more and more defrags aren't going to make the files of Aces High (or any other game) any more "in order."

Defragging is especially helpful when you are constantly creating NEW files (or editing existing ones), AND your hard drive is already close to full and therefore new files are being squeezed into any of what little available space remains in little chunks all over the drive.

But in AH and most other games, you really aren't making that many new files, if any, during gameplay. Therefore, it AH isn't getting more and more fragmented the more you play. Therefore, you don't need to run weekly defragments in order to ensure smooth gameplay.

As a professional tester of software, as well as a professional computer consulting who solves real-world computer problems for clients, here's my defragmenting experiences.

On my personal machines with lots and lots of free hard drive space, I'll defragment maybe once a year. I will use a stopwatch and time things like startup time, shutdown time, time to open MS Word, Flash, and FrameMaker, and time to do a compile of something. Then I'll do a defrag. Then I'll time these things again. Generally, a defrag will improve times by less than 2%. Sometimes not at all.

On the other hand, I'll also tend to a client's slow machine. It's hard drive is 80% to 99% full, and it only has 512 MB of ram, and it has a tiny swapfile/pagefile because there's no contiguous space for a bigger one. It hasn't had a defrag in lord-knows-how-long, and the client is either editing videos or hosting a few jillion word files or jpeg photos. In these cases, a defrag or two is very helpful, and I can make a bigger swapfile in the now contiguous free space, plus I'll free up some space to give the drive more breathing room. In these cases, boot times and overall performance really can double with a good defrag.

See the difference in these scenarios?

So the recommendation to do weekly defrags to help with gaming isn't always clear-cut.

-Llama

[Chalenge]

It would seem then that the worse then to do to a game is to update it when a patch is released and what should really be done is have the entire OS reinstalled and the game reinstalled. Adding skins and making films in AH then would also cause fragmentation. I know companies that make defrag programs would have you think just using a program will cause the files to become fragmented and you seem to say no. Just recently I moved films (over 3000) from my film folder to a film cache folder where I do editing but overall system fragmentation did not go up but .01%.