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#1
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Defragmentation and RAM question
My external drive used for Acronis backups is taking about a day to
defragment using Norton. 1. Is there any point in defragmenting such a disk at all if it is only a backup? 2. Would doubling the RAM to 16GB make a significant difference? |
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#2
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Defragmentation and RAM question
Scott wrote:
My external drive used for Acronis backups is taking about a day to defragment using Norton. 1. Is there any point in defragmenting such a disk at all if it is only a backup? 2. Would doubling the RAM to 16GB make a significant difference? If a backup file has a small number of fragments (say "7"), it makes not a bit of difference to the restore time. I have backup drives here that show as "all red blocks", meaning the huge files each have a few fragments. And it doesn't affect performance. I would never consider defragmenting such a drive. If a drive had a zillion tiny files, then I might consider it. But then that's no longer an imaging drive, and the drive is "mixed usage". Defragmenting those might help with any sort of procedure that "scans" the drive. ******* And extra RAM has surprisingly few good uses. It's EXCELLENT when an object you're working on, must fit in RAM for the computer to have any speed. Like, if you're working on a wall poster with four billion pixels, and the photo editor insists on holding the whole image in RAM. Then the RAM helps. But that happens, like, one day out of each year. I use excess RAM as a RAMDisk, on both of my main machines. But even that isn't awe-inspiring. Certain kinds of operations seem to be faster on an SSD. But in general, NTFS still has too many bottlenecks, to really make any sort of fancy hardware worthwhile. To get blistering speed, try testing the TMPFS RAMDisk on Linux. The TMPFS on the Ubuntu Studio LiveCD, has lots of inodes, so you can do file creation tests (5 microseconds per file). That shows how good the speed can be, when the software doesn't get in the way. But for extreme amounts of RAM, there's a kind of scaling issue. For example, say you need to initialize a 1TB set of RAM sticks. The CPU might only be able to do that at 1GB per second, and that then works out to *16 minutes*. It doesn't take very much sub-optimal software, to make a really really big RAM into a boat anchor. On my other machine for example, it was taking five minutes for OpenOffice to crash :-) Some inevitable failures, just end up taking longer to manifest themselves, depending on what you're doing. In my estimation, 16GB is the "sweet spot" for a home user, with a home user motherboard. A little more than that, still isn't too irritating, but the bigger it gets, the more often you'll be wishing you hadn't. For example, you might end up disabling hibernation on the computer, because it could take 8 minutes to shut down the computer, and 8 minutes to start up the computer (read/write hiberfile from disk at 100MB/sec). Not every hibernation writes that much data, but you should work out the worst case, to get some idea how long you will be a hostage. Even sleep could be bad, if you happen to have hybrid sleep turned on. And these annoyances begin to gnaw at you after a while. You spent a lot of money for the RAM, and most of the time you're hauling it around like excess luggage. RAM is both good and bad. Paul |
#3
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Defragmentation and RAM question
On 11/19/2017 8:22 AM, Wolf K wrote:
Defrag reads and write file fragments repeatedly. That's much slower over USB than over the internal SATA bus. I would defrag before backup. As to whether defrag is a good idea, there's mixed opinions. Modern file systems (file structures on disk) and file management tends to minimise fragmentation. I had always thought that copying a file defragmented it. So does not the very fact of copying a file to back up defragment it? -- 2017: The year we learn to play the great game of Euchre |
#4
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Defragmentation and RAM question
On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 09:14:03 -0500, Keith Nuttle
wrote: On 11/19/2017 8:22 AM, Wolf K wrote: Defrag reads and write file fragments repeatedly. That's much slower over USB than over the internal SATA bus. I would defrag before backup. As to whether defrag is a good idea, there's mixed opinions. Modern file systems (file structures on disk) and file management tends to minimise fragmentation. I had always thought that copying a file defragmented it. So does not the very fact of copying a file to back up defragment it? Does this not assume contiguous space on the destination disk for the whole file, which if the file is a full backup may well be unlikely. |
#5
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Defragmentation and RAM question
Keith Nuttle wrote:
On 11/19/2017 8:22 AM, Wolf K wrote: Defrag reads and write file fragments repeatedly. That's much slower over USB than over the internal SATA bus. I would defrag before backup. As to whether defrag is a good idea, there's mixed opinions. Modern file systems (file structures on disk) and file management tends to minimise fragmentation. I had always thought that copying a file defragmented it. So does not the very fact of copying a file to back up defragment it? If you copy files to a freshly formatted disk, then the usage pattern is sequential, until you hit the MFT reserved area or something. You'll notice a bit of fragmentation as you get closer to filling the disk up. In such a case, the files should not fragment if the disk is only 20% full. But you may see reports that "a directory is fragmented". This would be a function of the directory size, and is unavoidable if files are added incrementally to a directory. (A directory is just a file with a certain kind of metadata inside it.) However, if you copy files to a disk which is in an unknown state, there are still plenty of opportunities for a copied file to end up fragmented. If you just freshly formatted the destination, it's easier to give some kind of (weak) guarantee. If you don't fill the partition full, then you might actually remove all the file fragments during the copy. ******* Imaging programs (Macrium) tend to preserve fragmentation. But one little trick you can try on Macrium, is to resize the partition during the restore (there's a dialog box for that). It seems to remove a good deal of fragmentation if you make the partition smaller. It does more file movement than is absolutely necessary to achieve the resized target size. You'll have to play with that a bit, to figure out the best size setting for the partition. Paul |
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Defragmentation and RAM question
On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 09:12:19 -0500, Paul wrote:
In my estimation, 16GB is the "sweet spot" for a home user, with a home user motherboard. For most home users, I'd even step that down to 8GB. OTOH, on my newest work machine, a Lenovo laptop with 64GB, I can finally run more than 3 or 4 VMs at once, meaning I can finally mock up customer networks in order to validate their reported issues and demonstrate that the proposed fixes properly do the job. I can do a lot of my work with just two VMs, assuming I can use resources located on the Internet to augment my lab, but in some cases I can't use Internet resources, so I need a pair of app servers, a pair of load balancers, one or more router/firewall devices, and sometimes a completely separate set of everything to simulate a second datacenter. In that last case, I also need a global DNS so that I can direct traffic to the proper datacenter, based on criteria that I select and control. So in extreme cases, I might need 10-15 VMs running simultaneously. I used to have to set that up in the corporate lab on an as-needed basis, but now I can set it up on my laptop and just leave it all in place. It's a lot easier to tweak it for each customer than to set it up from scratch every time. Most home users won't have similar requirements, of course. |
#7
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Defragmentation and RAM question
On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 09:37:47 +0000, Scott
wrote: [snip] Thanks for the replies. As I am just a basic home user I think I shall just leave well alone. I have 8GB installed RAM. What I think I should be doing is to leave plenty of space so that the full backup that Acronis makes ever six times does not have to be squeezed into limited space. |
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Defragmentation and RAM question
On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 09:37:47 +0000, Scott
wrote: My external drive used for Acronis backups is taking about a day to defragment using Norton. 1. Is there any point in defragmenting such a disk at all if it is only a backup? How long do the backups take? Unless they are taking too long for you, I wouldn't bother. And if you do defragment it, I wouldn't be surprised if it made little of no difference in the backup time. If you do defragment it, don't do it often. 2. Would doubling the RAM to 16GB make a significant difference? No. The reason to get more RAM is that you are running application programs that run slowly because they are doing a lot of paging to disk. Unless you are running very specialized programs, doing things like a lot of video editing, or running some games that need a lot of memory, it's unlikely that going to 16GB would make any difference at all. I have 16GB of RAM on my machine, and I almost never use as much as 8GB, even though I do a lot on it. The reason I got that much was to prepare myself for the future, when newer applications are likely to need much more (even though I'm aware that by the time that happens, I might have gotten a whole new machine). |
#9
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Defragmentation and RAM question
On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 11:18:58 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote: On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 09:37:47 +0000, Scott wrote: My external drive used for Acronis backups is taking about a day to defragment using Norton. 1. Is there any point in defragmenting such a disk at all if it is only a backup? How long do the backups take? Unless they are taking too long for you, I wouldn't bother. And if you do defragment it, I wouldn't be surprised if it made little of no difference in the backup time. The full backups take under 90 minutes, incremental far shorter. The time is not really an issue. I just thought they might be safer if files were not fragmented all over the place. Last time Norton said the disc was 44% fragmented, which seemed a bit scary. If you do defragment it, don't do it often. Is that because of disc wear? What is the optimum 'headroom' to leave? I've heard discs should not be filled beyond 75% or 80% but would a self-imposed limit of 50% be of benefit? This would be easy to achieve, just by deleting older backups more quickly, if I thought it would help. 2. Would doubling the RAM to 16GB make a significant difference? No. The reason to get more RAM is that you are running application programs that run slowly because they are doing a lot of paging to disk. Unless you are running very specialized programs, doing things like a lot of video editing, or running some games that need a lot of memory, it's unlikely that going to 16GB would make any difference at all. I have 16GB of RAM on my machine, and I almost never use as much as 8GB, even though I do a lot on it. The reason I got that much was to prepare myself for the future, when newer applications are likely to need much more (even though I'm aware that by the time that happens, I might have gotten a whole new machine). None of that applies to me. Mostly word processing, emails and surfing the net. |
#10
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Defragmentation and RAM question
On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 18:55:18 +0000, Scott
wrote: On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 11:18:58 -0700, Ken Blake wrote: On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 09:37:47 +0000, Scott wrote: My external drive used for Acronis backups is taking about a day to defragment using Norton. 1. Is there any point in defragmenting such a disk at all if it is only a backup? How long do the backups take? Unless they are taking too long for you, I wouldn't bother. And if you do defragment it, I wouldn't be surprised if it made little of no difference in the backup time. The full backups take under 90 minutes, incremental far shorter. The time is not really an issue. I just thought they might be safer if files were not fragmented all over the place. Last time Norton said the disc was 44% fragmented, which seemed a bit scary. No, defragmenting has nothing to do with safety. It's has to do with reducing the time it takes to use the drive. If you do defragment it, don't do it often. Is that because of disc wear? No, it's because it's just a waste of time. What is the optimum 'headroom' to leave? I've heard discs should not be filled beyond 75% or 80% but would a self-imposed limit of 50% be of benefit? This would be easy to achieve, just by deleting older backups more quickly, if I thought it would help. 2. Would doubling the RAM to 16GB make a significant difference? No. The reason to get more RAM is that you are running application programs that run slowly because they are doing a lot of paging to disk. Unless you are running very specialized programs, doing things like a lot of video editing, or running some games that need a lot of memory, it's unlikely that going to 16GB would make any difference at all. I have 16GB of RAM on my machine, and I almost never use as much as 8GB, even though I do a lot on it. The reason I got that much was to prepare myself for the future, when newer applications are likely to need much more (even though I'm aware that by the time that happens, I might have gotten a whole new machine). None of that applies to me. Mostly word processing, emails and surfing the net. Then you probably have more RAM than you need. Buying more would be a waste of money. |
#11
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Defragmentation and RAM question
On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 12:02:31 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote: On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 18:55:18 +0000, Scott wrote: On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 11:18:58 -0700, Ken Blake wrote: On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 09:37:47 +0000, Scott wrote: My external drive used for Acronis backups is taking about a day to defragment using Norton. 1. Is there any point in defragmenting such a disk at all if it is only a backup? How long do the backups take? Unless they are taking too long for you, I wouldn't bother. And if you do defragment it, I wouldn't be surprised if it made little of no difference in the backup time. The full backups take under 90 minutes, incremental far shorter. The time is not really an issue. I just thought they might be safer if files were not fragmented all over the place. Last time Norton said the disc was 44% fragmented, which seemed a bit scary. No, defragmenting has nothing to do with safety. It's has to do with reducing the time it takes to use the drive. I hope never to have to restore a backup and if I do time will not be my biggest concern so I'll stop bothering. If you do defragment it, don't do it often. Is that because of disc wear? No, it's because it's just a waste of time. Okay, thanks. What is the optimum 'headroom' to leave? I've heard discs should not be filled beyond 75% or 80% but would a self-imposed limit of 50% be of benefit? This would be easy to achieve, just by deleting older backups more quickly, if I thought it would help. 2. Would doubling the RAM to 16GB make a significant difference? No. The reason to get more RAM is that you are running application programs that run slowly because they are doing a lot of paging to disk. Unless you are running very specialized programs, doing things like a lot of video editing, or running some games that need a lot of memory, it's unlikely that going to 16GB would make any difference at all. I have 16GB of RAM on my machine, and I almost never use as much as 8GB, even though I do a lot on it. The reason I got that much was to prepare myself for the future, when newer applications are likely to need much more (even though I'm aware that by the time that happens, I might have gotten a whole new machine). None of that applies to me. Mostly word processing, emails and surfing the net. Then you probably have more RAM than you need. Buying more would be a waste of money. This seems to be the consensus. I'll leave well alone. |
#12
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Defragmentation and RAM question
On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 18:55:18 +0000, Scott
wrote: On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 11:18:58 -0700, Ken Blake wrote: On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 09:37:47 +0000, Scott wrote: My external drive used for Acronis backups is taking about a day to defragment using Norton. 1. Is there any point in defragmenting such a disk at all if it is only a backup? How long do the backups take? Unless they are taking too long for you, I wouldn't bother. And if you do defragment it, I wouldn't be surprised if it made little of no difference in the backup time. The full backups take under 90 minutes, incremental far shorter. The time is not really an issue. I just thought they might be safer if files were not fragmented all over the place. Last time Norton said the disc was 44% fragmented, which seemed a bit scary. There's nothing scary about file fragmentation. Every file, if it's big enough, gets stored in segments. If those segments are contiguous, the file is said to be not fragmented. If they are not contiguous, the file is said to be fragmented. Neither scenario is more scary than the other. Unless you've been reincarnated as a head assembly in a disk drive and you're averse to travel, file fragmentation is a complete non-issue. The only impact that it has to us users is that, if you're using a spinning disk, the head seek time is not zero. If you're using an SSD, file fragmentation is pretty much a non-issue, although recent reporting has indicated that some edge cases can have measurable 'seek' times. Still, nothing to worry about, and certainly nothing that could be called scary. |
#13
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Defragmentation and RAM question
On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 09:37:47 +0000, Scott wrote:
My external drive used for Acronis backups is taking about a day to defragment using Norton. 1. Is there any point in defragmenting such a disk at all if it is only a backup? What's your external drive? For instance, I have a LaCie Rikiki which doesn't have any moving parts. AFAIK there's no point in trying to defragment it, just like you wouldn't defragment a USB flash drive. -- s|b |
#14
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Defragmentation and RAM question
On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 09:37:47 +0000, Scott wrote:
2. Would doubling the RAM to 16GB make a significant difference? I've always been told: more RAM is interesting if you have a lot of programs open at the same time (or programs that use a lot of memory). If you want speed, invest in a better/faster CPU. -- s|b |
#15
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Defragmentation and RAM: My Dumb Question
On 11/19/2017 3:56 PM, s|b wrote:
On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 09:37:47 +0000, Scott wrote: 2. Would doubling the RAM to 16GB make a significant difference? I've always been told: more RAM is interesting if you have a lot of programs open at the same time (or programs that use a lot of memory). If you want speed, invest in a better/faster CPU. Why does a thumb drive or other solid state drive not need defragmenting? It seems like it would be subject to the same forces that cause fragmentation in the first place. : -- 2017: The year we learn to play the great game of Euchre |
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