defragmenting

On Tue, 24 Feb 2015 19:22:00 -0500, Paul wrote:

The commercial tools also vary in their ability to move
metadata ($MFT or similar) files around. In the newer
versions of Windows, where Disk Management offers a
partition "shrink" option, Microsoft lacks the skill to
move certain metadata files to the left. The end result,

I'm lost.....
I'm guessing MFT means Metadata files, but what are Metadata files?

On Tue, 24 Feb 2015 14:14:32 -0500, "Bill Cunningham"
wrote:


wrote in message
.. .

I always liked the defrag on Win98 better than the one on Win2000 and
XP. That older one always showed all the blocks being moved, and
compacted them all together. The one on 2K and XP always leaves gaps.
I find that really annoying. I've often ran defrag 4 or 5 times in a
row, trying to get rid of the gaps, and it never happens.

I have defraggler by Piriform on my laptop woth XP. It works a little
better than the default one, but still leaves gaps.....

I definately agree with you on 98's defragmenter. It took a while too
but as I remember you knew what was going on. XP just shows lines.

Bill


Win95 and Win98 had really slow Defrag. But if you switched right to
Win2000 or XP, you missed a trick that darn near everyone did back
around 2000. You grabbed a copy of the Defrag from Windows ME, deleted
the one that came with Win98, and replaced the one from Win ME. It
worked flawlessly to make the change. It looked and worked identical,
but the ME version is MUCH faster. If you didn't have a copy of Win ME,
that defrag file could be downloaded on almost any website, (legally or
not). That was one of the really good things that MS improved in Win ME.

On Tue, 24 Feb 2015 16:00:18 -0800, Gene Wirchenko
wrote:

On Tue, 24 Feb 2015 16:37:21 -0700, Ken Springer
wrote:

On 2/24/15 3:31 PM, Dave Doe wrote:

[snip]

A good defragmenter *should* leave gaps. Think about it.

If there is any free space on the volume, they all leave space.
It is just a question of where.

I've always wondered if the MS defragmenters starting with XP left any
space. I've read a couple comments that it did, but nothing definitive.

IIRC, the XP defragger ignores files over 2 GB. I have a few
such files with tens of thousands of fragments.

I just did a defrag, and I was in error somewhat. I have one 2
GB file with about 11,000 fragments. I have a number of files with
size in the hundreds of MB which have thousands of fragments and
defragment stated it could not defrag. Maybe, that ignore limit is
lower than 2 GB.

[snip]

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

wrote:
On Tue, 24 Feb 2015 19:22:00 -0500, Paul wrote:

The commercial tools also vary in their ability to move
metadata ($MFT or similar) files around. In the newer
versions of Windows, where Disk Management offers a
partition "shrink" option, Microsoft lacks the skill to
move certain metadata files to the left. The end result,

I'm lost.....
I'm guessing MFT means Metadata files, but what are Metadata files?


Master File Table is a metadata file. It's not listed
in Explorer, but the file system uses it. The list of
"$" ones is half way down this page. Depending on the
defragmentation product, some have more trouble
moving the "$" ones, than others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntfs

Very few defragmenter products, ever name their nemesis.
So if you wanted those "$" ones to be "precisely labeled"
while defrag is going on, most defragmenters won't
admit they even exist. But the defragmenter is
working around them.

Paul

wrote in message
...
On Tue, 24 Feb 2015 19:22:00 -0500, Paul wrote:

The commercial tools also vary in their ability to move
metadata ($MFT or similar) files around. In the newer
versions of Windows, where Disk Management offers a
partition "shrink" option, Microsoft lacks the skill to
move certain metadata files to the left. The end result,

I'm lost.....
I'm guessing MFT means Metadata files, but what are Metadata files?

Master file table. Mine is usually around 25-30 MB. Part of ntfs's
design. www.ntfs.com is a good site.

Bill

"Dave Doe" wrote in message
...

You've lost me Bill. Are you talking about Crap Cleaner? - ccleaner?

I'm talking about Puran Software's, Puran Defrag...
http://www.puransoftware.com/Puran-Defrag.html

I've never tried any of their other stuff.

I have and use them both. I find with Puran if a clean out some things
too much is cleaned out. CCleaner doesn't do a "good" a job. It doesn't
clean everything. I use defraggler more than anything else for defragging.
Now Puran's defrag looks like it does a much better job. Because there are
things like the registry, pagefile.sys and MFT if using ntfs that can't be
defagged without reboot. Puran defrags the registry it says and restarts the
computer. And it cleans the registry in a very thorough manner I find.

Bill

On Wed, 25 Feb 2015 14:33:07 -0500, "Bill Cunningham"
wrote:


wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 24 Feb 2015 19:22:00 -0500, Paul wrote:

The commercial tools also vary in their ability to move
metadata ($MFT or similar) files around. In the newer
versions of Windows, where Disk Management offers a
partition "shrink" option, Microsoft lacks the skill to
move certain metadata files to the left. The end result,

I'm lost.....
I'm guessing MFT means Metadata files, but what are Metadata files?

Master file table. Mine is usually around 25-30 MB. Part of ntfs's
design. www.ntfs.com is a good site.

Bill


I guess this is not a problem for me, since I only run Fat32 drives. I
want my win98 able to read my Win2000 partition, and all my usb portable
drives. My laptop computer is NTFS (with XP), but thats the way it came
from the factory, and everything on that computer has been copied to a
portable drive with Fat32 formatting.

wrote in message
...

I guess this is not a problem for me, since I only run Fat32 drives. I
want my win98 able to read my Win2000 partition, and all my usb portable
drives. My laptop computer is NTFS (with XP), but thats the way it came
from the factory, and everything on that computer has been copied to a
portable drive with Fat32 formatting.

I am quite fond of fat32 too. I am glad that exfat was created. I was
wondering if someone was going to create a "fat64" well I guess we kind of
have.

Not MFT and it's mirror are kind of like the 2 fat32 file allocation
tables.

Bill