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?

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

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

To: Ken Blake
Defragmentation and RAM question
By: Ken Blake to alt.comp.os.windows-10 on Sun Nov 19 2017 12:02 pm


Then you probably have more RAM than you need. Buying more would be a
waste of money.


Interestingly, Elder Scrolls Online requires a minimum of 18 GB to run.Maybe
the future has arrived?

Mick


Central Ontario Remote BBS
Fidonet 1:249/307 fsxNET 21:1/156
--- Synchronet 3.16c-Win32 NewsLink 1.103
Central Ontario Remote BBS - telnet://oxfordmi.synchro.net

On 11/19/2017 8:15 PM, Mickey wrote:
To: Ken Blake
Defragmentation and RAM question
By: Ken Blake to alt.comp.os.windows-10 on Sun Nov 19 2017 12:02 pm


Then you probably have more RAM than you need. Buying more would be a
waste of money.


Interestingly, Elder Scrolls Online requires a minimum of 18 GB to run.Maybe
the future has arrived?

Mick


Central Ontario Remote BBS
Fidonet 1:249/307 fsxNET 21:1/156
--- Synchronet 3.16c-Win32 NewsLink 1.103
Central Ontario Remote BBS - telnet://oxfordmi.synchro.net



18GB! could you tell us where you got that info or give us a link.

Rene

Mickey wrote:
To: Ken Blake
Defragmentation and RAM question
By: Ken Blake to alt.comp.os.windows-10 on Sun Nov 19 2017 12:02 pm


Then you probably have more RAM than you need. Buying more would be a
waste of money.


Interestingly, Elder Scrolls Online requires a minimum of 18 GB to run.Maybe
the future has arrived?

Mick


Central Ontario Remote BBS
Fidonet 1:249/307 fsxNET 21:1/156
--- Synchronet 3.16c-Win32 NewsLink 1.103
Central Ontario Remote BBS - telnet://oxfordmi.synchro.net

You were probably seeing comments about some
patcher download. The patcher download might be bigger
or smaller than the quantity on disk.

The requirements for the game itself, there's
an example here. You can see they didn't want to
move the user population "to the future". This
is kind of a yesterday spec. This is a minimum
requirement.

https://www.geforce.com/games-applic...m-requirements

"Minimum System Requirements

Operating System: Windows XP 32-bit
Processor: Dual Core 2.0GHz or equivalent processor
Memory: 2GB System RAM
Hard Disk Space: 60GB free HDD space
Video Card: DirectX 9.0 compliant video card
with 512MB of RAM (NVIDIA GeForce8800 / ATI Radeon 2600)
Sound: DirectX compatible sound card
"

When a game has textures, they don't all have to be
loaded at one time. They can be paged in, as you
change levels or move your physical location on
the map.

Microsoft Flight Simulator does that. It has a process
that "looks ahead" in the direction you are flying, and
reads the hard drive for map info to make terrain with.

Paul

On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 21:15:41 -0500, "Mickey"
-pf3-this wrote:


To: Ken Blake
Defragmentation and RAM question
By: Ken Blake to alt.comp.os.windows-10 on Sun Nov 19 2017 12:02 pm



Then you probably have more RAM than you need. Buying more would be a
waste of money.



Interestingly, Elder Scrolls Online requires a minimum of 18 GB to run.Maybe
the future has arrived?




I never heard of Elder Scrolls, but as I said, there are some very
specialized programs that require more RAM.

8GB is more than most home users need.

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.

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

On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 21:53:51 +0100, "s|b" 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?

What's your external drive? For instance, I have a LaCie Rikiki which
doesn't have any moving parts.

Did you replace the HD with a SSD?

AFAIK there's no point in trying to
defragment it, just like you wouldn't defragment a USB flash drive.

Defragmenting an SSD would shorten it's life.