How to Avoid Heavy Fragmentation

[martint123]

....
martin a clicking drive to me noramlly means its about to die so good luck on that

It wasn't the "click of death", I've heard that so often over the years. It was the drive seeking all over the place. What I might try and find is what used to exist in the old days - a cache program and see if it makes a difference, I'm sure 500mb of write cache would stop threshing in it's tracks

[zehd]

What I might try and find is what used to exist in the old days - a cache program and see if it makes a difference, I'm sure 500mb of write cache would stop threshing in it's tracks

That sounds like an idea. Wonder if it still exists for the modern OSes...

[Anthony]

Why the hell are people so worried about fragmentation? I've never had a system slowdown that is attributable to a fragged drive. Do you folks actually see improvement when you defrag?

I consider defragging basic maintenance, like changing the oil and air filter on your car. Even if you don't notice a difference, it can affect the long term stability.

That said, I did notice a "slight" improvement in disk access speed going from a heavily fragmented drive to a defragmented drive. But these days my drive defragments every night, so there's no real change to notice.

Granted, drives are much faster than they used to be, but it still takes more time to move the heads from one sector to another to collect the parts of a fragmented file, than it does to read the data sequentially from a file in one piece. That equates to less wear and tear on the drive, which theoretically should allow the drive to last longer. Of course, I've always upgraded my drives for other reasons (capacity, speed) long before the drive ever wore out.

Again, just basic maintenance, like clearing the browser cache, history, and cookies, deleting unused files, etc.

Anthony

[martint123]

That sounds like an idea. Wonder if it still exists for the modern OSes...

Found http://www.oo-software.com/home/en/produ...evercache/
I might give the demo a try to see what difference, if any, it makes.
30 day demo downloading now.

[zehd]

Found http://www.oo-software.com/home/en/produ...evercache/
I might give the demo a try to see what difference, if any, it makes.
30 day demo downloading now.

I'll tell you what, the reasons to defrag have always been the same. And they are good reasons. It's just something I've never noticed improved anything....

Today I ran DiskKeeper on my drives and cleared up the fragmentation. Then I added contig to my PostProcessing.bat. That looks good, and it's from Microsoft..

Let's all take a moment and collectively bow to the M$ demi-gods

I have been using some registry tweaks for a long while that improves memory handling and reduces disk writes. I'm not sure if I actually need to add write cache software...

Just for an experiment, on my newly rebuilt server, I used a very loud , old drive for the OS partition. It clicked away a lot (not the click of death) After applying the registry tweaks, the clicks went away, mostly. After defragging the OS drive, it went away pretty much altogether...

I can post the tweaks, if anyone is interested... (they're quite safe and considered)

[martint123]

I can post the tweaks, if anyone is interested... (they're quite safe and considered)

I'd be interested in seeing them. I just remembered the settings in system properties to adjust setting for using memory for programs or cache.

[zehd]

I'd be interested in seeing them. I just remembered the settings in system properties to adjust setting for using memory for programs or cache.

There's that. I have my server set to priority for Background services, and run from system cache.

I also have this reg file

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
"ClearPageFileAtShutdown"=dword:00000000
"DisablePagingExecutive"=dword:00000001
"SecondLevelDataCache"=dword:00000200
"LargeSystemCache"=dword:00000001

; if you want 12MB allocated, it’s 12 * 1024 * 1024, or 12582912
; add the value as decimal....
;
;this value is for 12 MB
"IOPageLockLimit"=dword:c00000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"AlwaysUnloadDLL"=dword:00000001


; Disable MFT Fragmentation
;[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
"NtfsMftZoneReservation"=dword:00000004


;The default value for this key is 1. This is good for a drive that will contain relatively few large files. Other options include:

;    * 2—Medium file allocation
;    * 3—Larger file allocation
;    * 4—Maximum file allocation

; Disable TimeStamp
;[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
"NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate"=dword:00000001

(Remember that cut and paste may be skewed from this forum screen)

[K.S.]

I've just installed a 750gb drive. I formatted it to 64kb block size rather than the default 4kb.
I'll see if it makes any difference - it ought to.

Beg to differ, but the block size seems to make a lot of difference. I currently have three tuners and quite often two or more are running.

details please
in theory, it should help but i would like to hear about if it really helps

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
"ClearPageFileAtShutdown"=dword:00000000
"DisablePagingExecutive"=dword:00000001
"SecondLevelDataCache"=dword:00000200
"LargeSystemCache"=dword:00000001

; if you want 12MB allocated, it’s 12 * 1024 * 1024, or 12582912
; add the value as decimal....
;
;this value is for 12 MB
"IOPageLockLimit"=dword:c00000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"AlwaysUnloadDLL"=dword:00000001


; Disable MFT Fragmentation
;[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
"NtfsMftZoneReservation"=dword:00000004


;The default value for this key is 1. This is good for a drive that will contain relatively few large files. Other options include:

;    * 2—Medium file allocation
;    * 3—Larger file allocation
;    * 4—Maximum file allocation

; Disable TimeStamp
;[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
"NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate"=dword:00000001

interesting posting, although i'm not sure if it makes such a difference... there are some interesting settings, but the following 3?

SecondLevelDataCache > to what effect? it's about L2 cache (thats HW?!?)
DisablePagingExecutive > i have disabled pagefile altogether on the server (2GB RAM is more than enough for XP )
IOPageLockLimit > according to some pages out there only works with LargeSystemCache = 0?

[Deusxmachina]

I just don't need one more thing to be paranoid about... :eek:

Not sure why you would be. If your shows don't stutter or anything else, then why worry about it. An HTPC generally isn't too big on needing fast seek times or anything.

[zehd]

Not sure why you would be. If your shows don't stutter or anything else, then why worry about it. An HTPC generally isn't too big on needing fast seek times or anything.

True. I've been struggling getting my initial defrag setup to create a large contiguous space, so 'contig.exe' would work properly. It is proving to be quite an effort.

I remember only a couple of days ago, that I was blissfully unaware of my fragmentation, that I had no stuttering.. Starting to think I'm following a red herring.

Regards the reg file, Honestly, I don't know all the reasons. Ive done most of the research on those keys. All I know is that with these merged, my systems are more stable.

I also have a whack of services I disable, so that's obviously helping too...

I think when I get home tonight, I'll check the fragmentation after having diskkeepr crank all day. If it hasn't created a large contiguos space, then I'm gonna stop caring again...

Disk keepr did report lots of fragmentation though, but when defrag was complete, it reported a 0 % speed/access increase....

Kinda makes you go 'hmmm'