To Defrag or not to Defrag

[Gangsta-Nun]

Ahh cool downloaded it.

[JoCoComputing]

I have been looking for a good defrag program and was always annoyed by the Windows defrag utility and defraggler always reported differing amounts of fragmentation from windows built in one. That always left me to wonder if either were accurate or were even measuring the same thing. Great find...the Auslogics program works great...thanks again.

-Jamie

[so0ky]

Some suggestions and questions.

First, does Vista and Windows 7 automatically write new data defragmented? I ask that because of Dave's post. I haven't really played with Windows 7 at all, I'm going to actually get it this Christmas.

I don't agree on many levels with the original post.

I also agree on the post with data recovery. I kinda had this adventure with Master Partition Tables with my computer last weekend, and as a result learned a lot about data recovery. Just because a file is moved doesn't mean it couldn't be found. You would think the designers would put into their design on this utility that when the data is moved, the new location is recorded in the MPT. But let's say they are complete idiots and don't do that.

You can purchase fairly cheap licenses to programs that can reconstruct the MPT based on the data on the drive. (I haven't found a free utility to do that, as this really isn't my forte.) Meaning, you could get it back anyways, which makes a large part of his argument pretty weak.

Logically defragmentation is easier on the drive in the long run. Especially if it avoids a reformat every 6 months. Plus, who likes doing that? And it does increase performance. I've had countless encounters where a defrag makes my FPS in games go up by at least 20 fps. However, I think it would be really cool if Windows 7 saves the pain altogether with defragging, and writes data in a way so it could be avoided. That's way better on many levels.

All of these arguments pertain to the average users. I can say for not only people like us, but for organizations that need a high end server, less wear and tear is a big deal.

[Dave@Bytes]

Well, there is still a defragmentor in Windows 7. I don't know for sure--I am only speculating because this is something that has never been a major concern of mine--but you have to expect a modern OS to handle data more effeciently with each incarnation, right?

Or

Maybe the drives are getting sooooooo large we don't realize our files are fragmented. You only really notice a performance hit when the drive is struggling to find a place to vomit the data.

[Bama19642]

An odd thing I've noticed with XP is that for some reason System Restore information is always scattered. I can understand how large files, like games and movies, get fragmented. But I've seen times when Auslogics will zip through a defrag until it gets to restore info. I don't know much about how a 'puter works, but it seems like it would be easy to write small files together. But that could be my ignorance showing, which is okay with me. I whip it out like I have no shame anyway. See, somebody just saw it. Maybe it's because I was shakin' it or something.

[so0ky]

But one thing that will revolutionize this is solid state disks.

[Bama19642]

Thats probably true, I can't say because I know nothing about how they work. The little I do know is that they a VERY expensive, especially when comparing GB to GB. I know that the price will go down eventually, I'm just not sure if they will become comparable to the current type. They have learned to squeeze more and more storage on those platters. Luckily, for people like me, a TB can be had for what an 80 GB drive cost just a few short years ago.

Which really brings us back to Daves comment. A drive will expire, so keep data backed up. And the replacement will either cost less or hold more data, so hopefully defragging will be needed less often.

[PC_Repair_Man]

Solid state drives are basically just enormous flash drives.

It seems to me though that it doesn't matter whether it's a SSD or a basic HDD in regards to files becoming fragmented because fragmentation is caused by the file system and not by limitations of the physical drive. As long as we are using file systems that are coded to take advantage of any free space then we will always have defragmentation issues.

It's not always about having files that are too big and need to be broken into chunks BUT more commonly it is about files and directories being deleted and leaving behind free space, the file system sees these open spaces and will typically divert information to them in an effort to take advantage of any available free space EVEN if you have a ton of free space that has never been written to before. This is all about the file system doing it's job to conserve space.

[so0ky]

Absalutely right.

However SSD have no moving parts because they are flash memory like you said.

Therefore, there is less incentive to do defragmentation. So what if files are fragmented? Defragging would probably still increase performance, but by such a small amount. No moving parts means faster performance and no wear and tear.

[PC_Repair_Man]

Ohhh .... I never thought about it like that so0ky, yea you're absolutly right. The drive could become horribly defragmented but it would not matter because you're not waiting on a read/write head to move around and access the information.

I love open discussions like this, it really gets people to thinking and I always end up learning something new or looking at something from a differnent point of view.