Thoughts on file defrag?

[htewam]

EDIT - See my Nov06 addition to this thread.

Now that I am regularly using gbpvr, I've notice how frag'd my partition is becoming. Some of the suggestions in the forum focus on independent partitions, etc. but I'm trying an alternate route by using contig.exe (http://www.sysinternals.com) to defrag JUST the recorded file and not the whole partition. By putting it in PostProcessing.bat (mypath\contig.exe -v %1 >>postprocessing.log) I find that the partition is staying relatively defrag'd and well-behaved -- since my recorded programs tend to cluster around similar sizes I notice that the partition starts to show fairly regular allocation patterns. My questions are

a) Anyone have any +/- experience with this approach -- what might I be missing?

b) I currently invoke contig AFTER running comskip... is reason to think it would make comskip performance any better/worse if I schedule contig to run BEFORE?

[Pioneer4x4]

Now that I am regularly using gbpvr, I've notice how frag'd my partition is becoming. Some of the suggestions in the forum focus on independent partitions, etc. but I'm trying an alternate route by using contig.exe (http://www.sysinternals.com)

I have never heard of that, but I am going to try it out. It sounds like a great idea. I know I have had shows with as high as 2400 fragments! I have not noticed any performance issues. If you happen to be recording 2 shows, or copying a show while recording another, they will effectively be interleaved.

[-stattik-]

Heh, I just checked out my test PC and found that 4 files were fragmented into more than 16,000 parts... And that's on a dedicated drive..

[weisguy]

My solution is rather un-elegant but pretty easy - Since my PVR machine is running 24x7, I created a scheduled task in windows that runs in the middle of the night and defragments my hard drive daily. You can invoke the defragmenter from the command line using the 'defrag' command. Run it with no options for a run-down of the syntax for specifying the drive, etc.

[gEd]

a) Anyone have any +/- experience with this approach -- what might I be missing?

Well the c: drive would never get defragmented, which it is a good idea to do periodically.

b) I currently invoke contig AFTER running comskip... is reason to think it would make comskip performance any better/worse if I schedule contig to run BEFORE?

that depends on how fragmented the recording is. If it is only split across a few fragments, it will not make any noticable differnce at all. In fact adding defrag will increase the amount of time it takes for the file to be available for viewing. (in the assumption that you do not wish to watch a file that is currenyl being defragged).

i use perfectdisk to automatically defrag c: & d: every other day. seems to work well. I prefer this tool to both the windows defrag and diskkeeper.

[htewam]

Thanks all for the responses so far...

Pioneer4x4 -- The thing that I liked about contig.exe is that it is Freeware, runs from a DOS shell, and seems to be reasonably efficient

Weisguy -- Yeah... I don't have my machine up 24x7 so scheduling defrag was a real bummer -- the version packed with XP tends to really bog down and it makes it tough to do anything else on the machine.

gEd -- I agree... I do use the full defrag approach for all of my partitions every so often. What was bugging me was that the Hauppauge PVR-150 files were SO fragmented even with relatively low partition utilization and things just got worse with every delete & add. It got so that the Win XP defrag seemed to just "give up" and come back immediately without even trying. Using contig.exe seems to take care of the .mpg files and then WinXP defrag can handle the rest (at least I hope so... since I have only been running this way for a couple of weeks). Now if I would just shell out some $$ and get a "real" defrag program (like perfectdisk) than maybe this would be moot :-)

I'll let folks know if anything crashes and burns... it will be interesting to get a couple of months behind me and see if everything is staying nice and clean.





I originally was using the XP defrag program on my partition but noticed that it just was taking way too much time and wasn't doing a very good job with the large mpg files.

[ViperDragon]

I use a program called Power Defrag 3.02a. I have an automated task that starts the program and it reboots the system running defrag before the OS services kick in. It defrags faster this way. You can also setup scandisk tasks to run before defrag. I find it does a really nice job. I just let it run 1 a week or 2x a month during the night when I don't record anything.

[htewam]

Just thought that I would do a follow up since my original Feb06 posting. I've been using contig.exe (freeware - http://www.sysinternals.com) to defrag JUST the recorded file and not the whole partition... putting the command directly within PostProcessing.bat (see my original post).

I must say that this has worked EXTREMELY well for me and highly recommend it to others. Prior to using this, I found that my GBPVR recorded data tended to stripe across the whole disk and that doing a full-partition defrag was an absolute MUST on at least a once a month basis or the rest of my file system acted slow. Now (doing the defrag ONLY on the recorded file-- which just takes a minute or two), I typically don't find the need to do a full defrag but very rarely (just did one after 6 months and XP defrag even suggested it wasn't necessary).

As an interesting aside, the recorded mpg files tend to be similarly sized (or multiples thereof) and tend to cycle in and out of "fixed" areas of the partition rather than scattering all over the filesystem.

[pz1]

I've been using contig.exe (freeware - http://www.sysinternals.com)

You may also consider to use their pagedfrg.exe. At bootup this free utility defrags systemfiles that can't be defragged by the standard defragger.

[bossman9]

I have comkip enabled in the configuration program to run while recording...

I then want to use the postprocessing.bat file to call comclean to remove the commercials and run contig.exe to defrag the files....

Since the comclean will actually generate a new file and rename the original, can I put two lines for contig to execute??

Contig.exe will have two files to defrag

for example movie1.mpg and movie1_original.mpg

Here is what I am trying first which I assume will only contig the one file...

ANY IDEAS???


@echo

c:
cd\
cd "C:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr"

REM comskip.exe %1
REM The following added by LSS 120806 for contig

contig.exe -V %1 >>postprocessing.log

call comclean.bat %1

move "%~dpn1.txt" "%~dpn1_original.txt"

Thanks , Bossman