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#16
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Defragging System Volume Information
mick wrote:
I have had numerous computers running XP, Vista and Win 7. On the XP and Vista systems I used Diskeeper for defragging continually in the background. I cannot say whether Diskeepers' claims of using their software gives faster performance or not as I did not experience any slowness of any computers. What I have done on the Win 7 computer is to set it up differently. I have partitioned the hard drive with 100GB for the operating system and programs, and 500GB for personal files, at the moment there is 48 and 350GB of files on these partitions. I have also opted to use free software where possible to cut personal costs. This computer has been running now for just over a year with no Diskeeper installed. I installed Auslogics Disk Defrag after about a month. So far I have not had to defrag either partition, they are currently 2 and 3% fragmented. This computer is used extensively every day for email, newsgroups, downloading and uploading and general office work of image manipulation, word processing and dtp. Synchronising every 2 or 3 days usually indicates about 150 file deletions, 200 file changes and about 300 new files. I always use Ccleaner before every sync or backup to rid the system of junk and temporary files. I would have thought that there would be much more fragmentation than I have got. I am pleased I have saved by not buying Diskeeper again and it also saves the hard disk constantly churning away and (wearing out quicker?), Auslogics will be used instead, probably soon, but once in a year is pretty negligible. Am I experiencing normal fragmented percentages or was Diskeeper over emphasising fragmentation? Sounds like you were using their realtime-when-idle defrag scheme. I don't use Diskeeper but suspect it might be linked to the screen saver which activates after the host has gone idle for awhile. Unless you did something major that would cause severe fragmentation is a very short time, constant defragging gives you no real benefit. It does, however, cause problems if you are trying to run incremental or differential backups. You could pickup every crumb as it falls while cutting slices from a loaf of bread, or you could finish your cutting and then sweep it all up at once. Most users way over defrag their disks because they think the frag count has to be tiny and as close to zero as possible. They'd do much better looking at mobos with better I/O handling and faster hard disks. While I schedule a defrag on the same day but before the full image backup, the scheduled tasks is configured to run after the host has been idle for awhile and will abort if the host becomes non-idle. Although it is scheduled for the wee morning hours, I'm still likely to be using my host at that time. So sometime in a few months there may be a chance that I'm not using my host and the defrag task gets to run and also complete. About the only time that I recall manually running a defrag and letting it complete was when I needed to reduce the size of the partition. |
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#17
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Defragging System Volume Information
On Sun, 11 Sep 2011 01:11:14 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:
Warning: Do NOT run an incremental or differential image backup on the same day you defrag your disk(s). You'll end up with huge backups because all the physical relocation of the files. Incrementals and differentials are used to create small backups and you defeat that purpose if you defrag and then run these backups. Schedule the defrag to run and complete on the same day and before you run a full backup, and do not defrag on the days you run the incremental or differential backups. Hence it is unwise to use on-the-fly defraggers that will defrag when your computer goes idle or to configure boot-time defraggers to run on every boot. That surprises me. I don't see why defragging (which really isn't necessary in the first place) would have any effect on incremental or differential backups. -- Char Jackson |
#18
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Defragging System Volume Information
On Sun, 11 Sep 2011 21:17:17 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:
About the only time that I recall manually running a defrag and letting it complete was when I needed to reduce the size of the partition. I remember running into that situation in the late 90's, but then Partition Magic and its cousins came along, completely eliminating the defrag as a separate step in reducing a partition's size. Those were the days! For the past 10 years or so, most partition managers silently take care of that for you. -- Char Jackson |
#19
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Defragging System Volume Information
Char Jackson wrote:
On Sun, 11 Sep 2011 21:17:17 -0500, VanguardLH wrote: About the only time that I recall manually running a defrag and letting it complete was when I needed to reduce the size of the partition. I remember running into that situation in the late 90's, but then Partition Magic and its cousins came along, completely eliminating the defrag as a separate step in reducing a partition's size. Those were the days! For the past 10 years or so, most partition managers silently take care of that for you. Strictly speaking, defragmentation doesn't have to "move files to the left" in the fragmentation graph. That's part of the many and varied policies on "file positioning". The Sysinternals "contig" program provides a basic defrag function. It does that, by finding the first N sectors of contiguous space big enough to hold the file you want defragged, and moving it there. That causes files to be sprayed all over the disk (I've tried it). But it does achieve the objective, that when you query the moved file, it's all in one piece. A real defragmenter, has additional policies, policies that require moving other files out of the way, to meet the policy objective. On the Windows defragmenter, it may choose to move the prefetch files down near the "left end". On some of the other third party defragmenters, they do things like put the small files on the left and the big files on the right. There are as many variations on file positioning, as there are days of the week. I feel all the more lucky now, when I wanted to shrink my laptop Windows 7 C: partition from 320GB to 30GB, that the Raxco PerfectDisk trial I used for the purpose VanguardLH suggests, actually did the job. I guess there wasn't anything in System Volume Information at the time, to stand in the way. At the time, I was testing the Windows built in partition shrink function, which only shrinks a partition to about 51% of original size, requiring repeated shrinks and defrags to get the job done. Paul |
#20
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Defragging System Volume Information
mick wrote:
I have had numerous computers running XP, Vista and Win 7. On the XP and Vista systems I used Diskeeper for defragging continually in the background. I cannot say whether Diskeepers' claims of using their software gives faster performance or not as I did not experience any slowness of any computers. What I have done on the Win 7 computer is to set it up differently. I have partitioned the hard drive with 100GB for the operating system and programs, and 500GB for personal files, at the moment there is 48 and 350GB of files on these partitions. I have also opted to use free software where possible to cut personal costs. This computer has been running now for just over a year with no Diskeeper installed. I installed Auslogics Disk Defrag after about a month. So far I have not had to defrag either partition, they are currently 2 and 3% fragmented. This computer is used extensively every day for email, newsgroups, downloading and uploading and general office work of image manipulation, word processing and dtp. Synchronising every 2 or 3 days usually indicates about 150 file deletions, 200 file changes and about 300 new files. I always use Ccleaner before every sync or backup to rid the system of junk and temporary files. I would have thought that there would be much more fragmentation than I have got. I am pleased I have saved by not buying Diskeeper again and it also saves the hard disk constantly churning away and (wearing out quicker?), Auslogics will be used instead, probably soon, but once in a year is pretty negligible. Am I experiencing normal fragmented percentages or was Diskeeper over emphasising fragmentation? Sounds like you were using their realtime-when-idle defrag scheme. I don't use Diskeeper but suspect it might be linked to the screen saver which activates after the host has gone idle for awhile. That is correct. Most users way over defrag their disks because they think the frag count has to be tiny and as close to zero as possible. I always thought that too. What I noticed with Diskeeper is that it never reduced the total fragmentation to below 1% -- mick |
#21
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Defragging System Volume Information
"VanguardLH" wrote in message ... Jeff Layman wrote: Probably a silly question, but would it be possible to use a linux live CD to defrag the hard disk - including the SVI file - if such a defrag utility existed on the CD? The act of moving the SVI folder results in losing the System Restore points. So instead of defragging the SVI folder, just turn off SR, lose the restore points, and reenable SR. Since you'll lose the restore points if you move this folder, why bother moving it? Just delete what's inside to recover the disk space. Not sure if that's just an effect of defrag on a 64-bit OS or not, but I used Auslogics on WinXP and Win7 (both 32-bit) to test that, and am happy to report that the SVI was defragged (showing no fragmented files) and that all my SR points are still showing, and the ones from two days ago still worked. Now, whether or not Auslogics moves the folder or not, I don't know, but it did move the fragments in (of?) the folder to make the files contiguous. The only files that show up as fragmented on the entire drive after completion are a couple of files in my temp folder, and one of them is the defrag log file. -- SC Tom |
#22
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Defragging System Volume Information
Char Jackson wrote:
VanguardLH wrote: About the only time that I recall manually running a defrag and letting it complete was when I needed to reduce the size of the partition. I remember running into that situation in the late 90's, but then Partition Magic and its cousins came along, completely eliminating the defrag as a separate step in reducing a partition's size. Those were the days! For the past 10 years or so, most partition managers silently take care of that for you. I have seen info about how to disable the Journal feature of NTFS but running "fsutil usn deletejournal /d C:" so I'm sure a defragger or partition manager could do this, too. Apparently any app (with admin privileges) can enable or disable the NTFS journal (as noted at http://www.microsoft.com/msj/0999/journal/journal.aspx by using the DeviceIoControl function). That would eliminate the otherwise unmovable $LOGFILE files. I don't see that a reboot (restart of the OS) is required after deleting/disabled the USN journal (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...42(WS.10).aspx) but it does mean that you're tossing some state info afforded by NTFS. "fsutil usn queryjournal c:" will tell you some info but I doubt it's of any value to you and it doesn't specify if the $LOGFILE is contiguous or sliced across the partition. My guess is that those running defraggers and partition managers happen to be logged under an admin-level account so those apps could disable journaling. But can you guarantee that all defraggers and partition managers properly nullify features in NTFS so not to cause corruption? I have seen users complain about boot-time defraggers and partition managers that left them with a Stop 7B (inaccessible device) due to NTFS corruption that left their host unusable because they cannot boot from their hard disk. Also, as Paul points out, resizing a partition has that utility moving files at the end of partition to somewhere below the proposed end of the new partition size. That's not the same as defragging a partition. Do you know that defraggers and partition managers disable the NTFS journal so their boot-time operation won't have any exclusively locked system files to contend with? I've seen several users of various defraggers complain that $UsnJrnl is huge and won't defrag. If the defragger could simply delete it then why didn't the defragger do it? If there were no consequence of deleting the change journal, why didn't the defragger just go ahead and do it rather than make the user run the fsutil program to do it manually? From what I've seen so far, safe defraggers use the ioctrl call in Windows but that won't let you defrag the usn journal because it is locked for exclusive access. I've also seen it claimed that deleting the usn journal causes no problems. It could have records of changes made months ago on old files and is really a recovery mechanism (but then I'm not an expert on NTFS). The file can get huge and waste a lot of disc space (I think there is a registry setting on its max size) and this is a rollover logfile: old entries get pushed out as new ones get pushed in. However, I've seen it mentioned with use of the replication service which could affect operation of other services (e.g., servers hosting the fault-tolerant DFS for root or child node replicas); see http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...ervice/5053993. So there appears some problems with just blowing away the usn journal (but may be a concern mostly just for server versions of Windows). Although you can delete the usn journal using fsutil, it appears that it just momentary. It is an auto-created file so more changes means the file gets created to record those changes. Maybe that's why you must do a boot-time defrag to delete the journal along with keeping the OS somewhat quiescent to prevent generating a journal file (or limit its initial occupation to the first few unused clusters in the file system as it begins to grow). By the way, I have used partition managers that were updated in the last decade and still ran into errors during their resize operation. Alas, they provide so little info on why they failed to perform the resize that the user doesn't know how to resolve the problem. Also, despite the "silent" (requiring reboot) pseudo-defrag (move files away from end of partition to get them under the boundary for the new end of partition), users have ended up with unusable partitions due to NTFS corruption. Just because a partition manager makes it look easy doesn't mean resizing isn't without its gotchas. The user easily makes their choices, the program does it thing (perhaps requiring a reboot), and then there's a failure which sometimes is not recoverable or causes lots of problems thereafter. If you're lucky when the partition manager fails to complete the resize, nothing got changed and you're still in business or you lost little and what you lost wasn't critical. http://www.google.com/search?q=%2Bpa...ize+error+fail. It happens and with partition managers created/updated in the last decade. While I mentioned doing my own defrag before a partition resize (since that'll tell me if there might be problems due to unmovable files), I failed to mention that I also save an image backup unless there's nothing critical in the partition(s) or it's of little value or it can be recreated. Resizing isn't the ever-safe operation you make it out to be just because the utilities make it easy to make changes. Easy to select doesn't make the operation safe or provide complete or even partitial recovery after a failure. I consider partition resizing a hazardous operation. |
#23
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Defragging System Volume Information
Char Jackson wrote:
VanguardLH wrote: Warning: Do NOT run an incremental or differential image backup on the same day you defrag your disk(s). You'll end up with huge backups because all the physical relocation of the files. Incrementals and differentials are used to create small backups and you defeat that purpose if you defrag and then run these backups. Schedule the defrag to run and complete on the same day and before you run a full backup, and do not defrag on the days you run the incremental or differential backups. Hence it is unwise to use on-the-fly defraggers that will defrag when your computer goes idle or to configure boot-time defraggers to run on every boot. That surprises me. I don't see why defragging (which really isn't necessary in the first place) would have any effect on incremental or differential backups. I'm not talking about logical file backups (where the file is read as a long string through the file system, a new backup file is created with its content, and the file gets restored through the file system which is very similar to you running the 'copy' command in a command shell). That's like what you get with the NT backup or Xcopy programs. It's probably been 12-15 years since I did the old logical file backup method ever since I went to paid/free imaging backup solutions. Since I haven't done it that way for so long, it's not the default scheme I think about. A defrag doesn't change the content of the file (other than perhaps what's in its slack space but which is not normally accessible via typical file I/O calls) so a backup method that merely uses normal file I/O calls to read the file, store it, and then restore it will result in the same file content wherever its clusters happen to be inside the partition. Sorry, but I failed to mention that I was talking about *image* backups (and also not physical sector-by-sector exact image backups). Due to the physical relocation of files caused by a defrag, all those moved files become eligible for inclusion in an incremental or differential *image* backup. Defragmentation changes the file locations on the disk, and image backups reflect those changes. Say you do a full image backup one day and the next day you do an incremental image backup but in between you ran a defrag. Your incremental image defrag will be far larger than expected (as you remember only moving the files and not modifying their content) and could be nearly as large as your full image backup. If you read the FAQ or support pages for image backup programs, they'll [should] tell you that a defrag will affect incremental and differential backup size. |
#24
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Defragging System Volume Information
On Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:44:57 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:
Char Jackson wrote: VanguardLH wrote: About the only time that I recall manually running a defrag and letting it complete was when I needed to reduce the size of the partition. I remember running into that situation in the late 90's, but then Partition Magic and its cousins came along, completely eliminating the defrag as a separate step in reducing a partition's size. Those were the days! For the past 10 years or so, most partition managers silently take care of that for you. I have seen info about how to disable the Journal feature of NTFS but snipped unrelated info My guess is that those running defraggers and partition managers happen to be logged under an admin-level account so those apps could disable journaling. But can you guarantee that all defraggers and partition managers properly nullify features in NTFS so not to cause corruption? I wasn't claiming to guarantee anything. I was simply saying in my experience the two-step "defrag then resize" operation was obsolete. I haven't run into a partition manager that required it since the late 1990's. Then again, most of my experience in the last 20 years has been with Partition Magic until about 2002/2003 (?) and with Acronis Disk Director since then, but there have been a few others used along the way when I didn't have access to my primary tools. None required me to use a separate tool to move data before allowing me to resize a partition. I have seen users complain about boot-time defraggers and partition managers that left them with a Stop 7B (inaccessible device) due to NTFS corruption that left their host unusable because they cannot boot from their hard disk. Users complain about a lot of things that won't happen to most people. The Internet is a big place. We don't know the details of those anecdotes. Also, as Paul points out, resizing a partition has that utility moving files at the end of partition to somewhere below the proposed end of the new partition size. I thought it was me who pointed that out, but maybe I just silently agreed and moved on. That's not the same as defragging a partition. Actually, it has very little to do with defragging, and maybe nothing at all. It's simply a process of moving data from one place to another. No attempt needs to be made to defrag anything. Do you know that defraggers and partition managers disable the NTFS journal so their boot-time operation won't have any exclusively locked system files to contend with? Don't know, don't care, never had a problem and don't expect to. Any decent partition manager will know how to take care of data that would otherwise fall outside of the newly proposed partition boundaries. If it can't do that, dump it ASAP and get another (better) tool. There are many to choose from. snipped multiple paragraphs of unrelated info Resizing isn't the ever-safe operation you make it out to be just because the utilities make it easy to make changes. Easy to select doesn't make the operation safe or provide complete or even partitial recovery after a failure. I consider partition resizing a hazardous operation. I think you're putting words in my mouth. -- Char Jackson |
#25
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Defragging System Volume Information
Char Jackson wrote:
On Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:44:57 -0500, VanguardLH wrote: Char Jackson wrote: VanguardLH wrote: About the only time that I recall manually running a defrag and letting it complete was when I needed to reduce the size of the partition. I remember running into that situation in the late 90's, but then Partition Magic and its cousins came along, completely eliminating the defrag as a separate step in reducing a partition's size. Those were the days! For the past 10 years or so, most partition managers silently take care of that for you. I have seen info about how to disable the Journal feature of NTFS but snipped unrelated info My guess is that those running defraggers and partition managers happen to be logged under an admin-level account so those apps could disable journaling. But can you guarantee that all defraggers and partition managers properly nullify features in NTFS so not to cause corruption? I wasn't claiming to guarantee anything. I was simply saying in my experience the two-step "defrag then resize" operation was obsolete. I haven't run into a partition manager that required it since the late 1990's. Then again, most of my experience in the last 20 years has been with Partition Magic until about 2002/2003 (?) and with Acronis Disk Director since then, but there have been a few others used along the way when I didn't have access to my primary tools. None required me to use a separate tool to move data before allowing me to resize a partition. I have seen users complain about boot-time defraggers and partition managers that left them with a Stop 7B (inaccessible device) due to NTFS corruption that left their host unusable because they cannot boot from their hard disk. Users complain about a lot of things that won't happen to most people. The Internet is a big place. We don't know the details of those anecdotes. An opinion from one user regarding their personal use has some but little value when making blanket statements. Perhaps you haven't needed to fix computers for other users. Actually, it has very little to do with defragging, and maybe nothing at all. It's simply a process of moving data from one place to another. No attempt needs to be made to defrag anything. But moving files with a partition manager that are exclusively locked still runs into the same problems with defraggers moving those same files. So basically the issues with defraggers are the same as for partition managers when moving around the files to different clusters. Don't know, don't care, never had a problem and don't expect to. Yes, got that, you haven't run into the problem with a non-bootable partition after using a boot-time defragger or a partition manager that reboots and then proceeds to move about the system files along with those within the NTFS file system. By the way, you (and I) really didn't mention if you/me use NTFS. I use it exclusively except for USB flash drives. You haven't run into a non-bootable partition after a resize, I have, so the voting on personal experience is even; however, other users do encounter problems so to dismiss them simply because you haven't encountered them doesn't make them non-existent or impossible and not even improbable. Any decent partition manager will know how to take care of data that would otherwise fall outside of the newly proposed partition boundaries. If it can't do that, dump it ASAP and get another (better) tool. There are many to choose from. If defraggers cannot move around the unmovable files, just how is any partition manager going to do it? Some defraggers can do it (at boot time) but some users HAVE encountered problems thereafter. I'm not saying it's a prevalent problem but it does happen. When it happens to you (or you're stuck having to repair someone else's computer where it happens), it suddenly isn't such rare a problem. It hasn't happened to you. Good for you. It has happened to me. When you get burned, you figure out how to prevent it, not just wait to see if it happens again. Pain is an excellent learning motivator. |
#26
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Defragging System Volume Information
Char Jackson wrote:
Any decent partition manager will know how to take care of data that would otherwise fall outside of the newly proposed partition boundaries. That was my point, of what I was doing with the Windows 7 built-in "shrink" function. Unlike the third party competition, Microsoft didn't bother moving everything that could possibly be moved (which is why is stops at 51%). I found a defragmenter with the required capability and file movement policies (ability to move metadata files to the left a bit). And by using multiple passes of the two tools (defragmenter + Microsoft "shrink" function), I got the job done. I presume a purpose built partition manager tool, would have to do something similar, have the ability to move metadata around. Otherwise it would get stuck like the Microsoft implementation. In the picture here, I think it was the two block "grey thing" at around the 50% mark, that causes the problem. I didn't keep any screenshots of what mine was doing. The defragmenter won't push it all the way to the left either, so they're following some rule about its position. http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/7...01111431pm.png ******* I found a utility which might have some fun value. It was mentioned in the Wikipedia article on NTFS. (This is for if you don't own a commercial defragmenter, and want to know where things are. It also demonstrates fragmentation, in that fragmented files have more than one group of sectors listed.) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/253066/ http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...s/oem3sr2s.zip It's got a copy of nti.exe in it. If I run that on a NTFS (data) partition here on my WinXP machine, it gave about a 4MB dump, similar to this. The "two grey blocks" in the middle, could be $MftMirr. File 0 Master File Table ($Mft) $STANDARD_INFORMATION (resident) $FILE_NAME (resident) $DATA (nonresident) logical sectors 32-25087 (0x20-0x61ff) $BITMAP (nonresident) logical sectors 16-23 (0x10-0x17) File 1 Master File Table Mirror ($MftMirr) $STANDARD_INFORMATION (resident) $FILE_NAME (resident) $DATA (nonresident) logical sectors 428670424-428670431 (0x198cfdd8-0x198cfddf) .... File 12441 \27a368f93559180042cd5c7058f99841\Setup\custsat_x8 6.dll $STANDARD_INFORMATION (resident) $FILE_NAME (resident) $FILE_NAME (resident) $DATA (nonresident) logical sectors 421623008-421623087 (0x192174e0-0x1921752f) So if nothing else, you can use it as a file listing tool :-) The volume I tested that on, is 857340855 sectors, and it's only about half full. One peculiarity, is not every "File" is listed, and the file numbering skips at one point. The volume has 11097 files and 1311 directories or 12408 objects. So the count is roughly in the right ballpark. Still, pretty damn good for a program which is only 21,744 bytes in size. Good things come in small packages :-) Paul |
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