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#1
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Defragger and SSD defrag ?
1) what is the best defragger that will handle Win XP with HDD ? 2) does a laptop with a SSD ever need defragging ? When ? |
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#2
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Defragger and SSD defrag ?
NoonName
1) what is the best defragger that will handle Win XP with HDD ? I don't know about the *best*, but XP carries its own program for it. Aptly named "defrag.exe" (\windows\system32) 2) does a laptop with a SSD ever need defragging ? When ? Although I'm far from an athority on this matter, SSDs randomize the actual physical blocks the sectors are written in (to even-out wear-and-tear over the whole SSD memory). Defragging therefore should not mean anything to such a drive (you would just move data from one unknown-placed block to another as-unknown placed block)*. Besides, SSDs are (AFAIK) random access, and (again) should not benefit from having sectors placed sequentially (where classical spinning disks certainly would). *I could imagine that the SSD recognises a sector-to-sector copy, and will actually ignore the write (and just point the second block to the first. In other words, de-duplicate). Regards, Rudy Wieser |
#3
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Defragger and SSD defrag ?
NoonName wrote:
1) what is the best defragger that will handle Win XP with HDD ? 2) does a laptop with a SSD ever need defragging ? When ? I don't know why this question is cross-posted to the Win7 group, as you're not asking about Windows 7. 1) The built-in WinXP defragmenter is pretty good. It packs to the left, and tries not to leave gaps. I've seen worse defragmenters. And nobody wants to pay $39.95 for some piece of crap they can't transfer to a second computer. 2) This was answered by a Microsoft employee. Normally an SSD does not need to be defragmented, because it has zero seek time. But there is at least one corner case, where it *might* need to be defragmented. https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheRe...YourSS D.aspx "... Storage Optimizer will defrag an SSD once a month if volume snapshots are enabled. This is by design and necessary due to slow volsnap copy on write performance... " When the file system takes shadow copies into consideration, the performance of the file system can be degraded with time, unless the Storage Optimizer "does something" :-) If you don't use shadow copies, then it should not need to do anything. WinXP isn't likely to know what an SSD is, so don't defragment an SSD on purpose there. Later OSes, the ones that prepare partitions on megabyte boundaries (Vista+) are more likely to have some logic to identify an SSD and behave responsibly towards it. WinXP is too old to handle such a situation well. As well, if you clone WinXP from a HDD to a new SSD, you should "re-align" the partition. This improves performance by putting clusters on flash block boundaries. It's a bit easier on the drive. I don't use SSD for WinXP, and wouldn't even think of doing that. To me, Win10 absolutely needs SSD for the boot drive, because Win10 is such a maintenance pig (it's scanning, scanning, scanning all the time). Save your SSD for the OS that really needs it. HTH, Paul |
#4
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Defragger and SSD defrag ?
On 5/8/2018 12:32 PM, NoonName wrote:
1) what is the best defragger that will handle Win XP with HDD ? 2) does a laptop with a SSD ever need defragging ? When ? Two actions are really meaningless for SSDs. As Wieser describes, defragging an SSD will not accomplish anything. By writing unnecessarily to the SSD, defragging can actually shorten the useful life of an SSD. The other action that is meaningless is erasing files. The writing needed to erase a file might fail to over-write that file. While the pointer to the file might be erased, the file contents remain untouched. Only a total erasure of the entire device could have any meaning. Details about this are at http://eraser.heidi.ie/. -- David E. Ross http://www.rossde.com/ First you say you do, and then you don't. And then you say you will, but then won't. You're undecided now, so what're you goin' to do? From a 1950s song That should be Donald Trump's theme song. He obviously does not understand "commitment", whether it is about policy or marriage. |
#5
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Defragger and SSD defrag ?
On Tue, 8 May 2018 22:01:27 +0200, R.Wieser wrote:
Besides, SSDs are (AFAIK) random access, and (again) should not benefit from having sectors placed sequentially (where classical spinning disks certainly would). It actually has a benefit, albeit micro or even nano - depending on the CPU and RAM speed. Non fragmented files don't have the overhead of determining the next cluster number in order to read data which spans to other fragment. Imagine an ideal storage where it virtually has zero seek time and has no wear-and-tear, and it contains 2 files occupying the same number of clusters. One file is not fragmented, and the other has 1 million or more fragments. Obviously, the one which is fragmented, would take longer to read the whole file data. |
#6
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Defragger and SSD defrag ?
On Wed, 9 May 2018 04:52:58 +0700, JJ wrote:
It actually has a benefit, albeit micro or even nano - depending on the CPU and RAM speed. Non fragmented files don't have the overhead of determining the next cluster number in order to read data which spans to other fragment. Imagine an ideal storage where it virtually has zero seek time and has no wear-and-tear, and it contains 2 files occupying the same number of clusters. One file is not fragmented, and the other has 1 million or more fragments. Obviously, the one which is fragmented, would take longer to read the whole file data. I'm not saying that SSDs should be defragged. It's just that defrgragging SSD has very little benefit considering that SSD has pretty high wear-and-tear. So, defragging SSD is more of harming than making it better. |
#7
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Defragger and SSD defrag ?
On 08/05/2018 22:57, JJ wrote:
So, defragging SSD is more of harming than making it better. Very good news!!!!!. You can sell more HDs and make more profit. Please don't apologize for asking people to waste time defragging their HDs. We love them if they do more of it. /--- This email has been checked for viruses by Windows Defender software. //https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/comprehensive-security/ -- With over 600 million devices now running Windows 10, customer satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows. |
#8
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Defragger and SSD defrag ?
NoonName wrote:
1) what is the best defragger that will handle Win XP with HDD ? ^^^^^^ You cross-posted in the wrong newsgroup (Windows 7) If you choose a 3rd-party defragmenter (e.g., Piriform Defraggler), you need to disable the boot-time and idle-time execution of Windows own defrag tool. Defragging with one tool and then with another means they will keep battling on what they consider the best layout. No defraggers agree on what is the best layout. You run one and it choose its layout, then you run another and it changes that layout to what it likes best. You end up defragging an already defragged drive because the two, or more, defraggers keep competing with each other. As I recall (I do not have a Win XP host to check), the idle-time defrag gets added as a scheduled event in Task Scheduler. The boot-time defrag must be disabled in the registry. You don't want to be using Windows' defrag and also some 3rd party defrag only to have them keep undoing what the other did. https://tweaks.com/windows/37055/ena...e-boot-defrag/ So what's wrong with using the defrag already included in Windows? The other layouts preferred by other defraggers is just their arbitrary choice based on their opinion of what they like and may not be the best layout for your scenario. While I used Defraggler for awhile (and keep it installed as an alternative although I haven't used it in years), I just used the one that comes with Windows. Only if you have some very special needs, like moving huge-sized files to the "end" (inside and slower cylinders) of the disk which are rarely ever modified does some 3rd-party layout make sense; however, those probably shouldn't be wasting space on your OS+app partition and be in their own "data" partition. You don't defrag SSDs. There is no advantage but there is one big disadvantage: accelerated wear on the SSD. Due to oxide stress, there are a limited number of writes that an SSD can sustain. It uses various methods, like wear-levelling, in trying to prevent one block of flash from getting a huge number of writes, like rewriting the same file over and over. 2) does a laptop with a SSD ever need defragging ? When ? Is Windows XP or 7 running on that laptop? Windows XP does not support automated TRIM but Windows 7 does. Did you actually yet get an SSD to put in your laptop? If so, make sure it comes with a utility that lets you use it to run TRIM on the SSD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_(computing) You might be able to schedule the utility to run TRIM; however, many such included tools do not have a CLI (command-line interface), so you'll have to set a reminder for you to periodically (perhaps monthly) run the utility to exercise its TRIM function. I don't know the prevalence but due to the lack of TRIM in Windows XP and other operating systems, and because TRIM will pend until the OS considers the device as sufficiently idle, SSD drives have their own in-built GC (garbage collection) to do the TRIM on their own (if idle long enough). Either the OS can issue an ATA command to tell the drive to start a TRIM operation or the SSD itself using its firmware can decide to perform a TRIM operation. However, what I've seen with firmware-based TRIM is that it is slow to act. That is, it doesn't run too often. Your SSD will get slower until you leave it idle (which means leaving your computer powered up and NOT have it go into standby or hibernate mode so the drive remains up) long enough for the drive itself to decide it is time for GC. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015...ed-trim-right/ So are you sticking with Windows XP on that laptop or did you cross-post to the Windows 7 newsgroup because you are contemplating upgrading from Windows 7? I prefer doing fresh installs of a new OS version rather than upgrade and lug along the pollution from the old setup, but some folks want easy and quick (and why fast-food restaurants thrive). |
#9
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Defragger and SSD defrag ?
JJ,
Obviously, the one which is fragmented, would take longer to read the whole file data. Not quite obviously I'm afraid. I think we may assume that an SSD is random access. That means that the time between reading two sectors next to each other does not take more time than reading two sectors far apart. ... has zero seek time ...and it contains 2 files occupying the same number of clusters. One file is not fragmented, and the other has 1 million or more fragments. That depends: Are you requesting the sectors one-by-one, or are you doing a bulk request ? You see, in the first case any kind of SSD-induced delay will be rather unnoticable even in regard to the request itself - let alone in regard to the ammount of returned data. In the second case you are cheating, as there AFAIK is no way for the computer to request a non-sequential set of records. :-) Besides that, what do you think is the chance that the SSD will try to predict the next sector you will want to fetch and pre-cache (into RAM, because SSD storage memory is rather slow) ? In short, while its busy returning the requested sector it will also be busy pre-resolving the most likely next requests - effectivily reducing the delay you're referring to to zero for whomever is looking at the returned sectors. Regards, Rudy Wieser |
#10
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Defragger and SSD defrag ?
On Wed, 9 May 2018 10:04:34 +0200, R.Wieser wrote:
JJ, Obviously, the one which is fragmented, would take longer to read the whole file data. Not quite obviously I'm afraid. I think we may assume that an SSD is random access. That means that the time between reading two sectors next to each other does not take more time than reading two sectors far apart. ... has zero seek time ...and it contains 2 files occupying the same number of clusters. One file is not fragmented, and the other has 1 million or more fragments. That depends: Are you requesting the sectors one-by-one, or are you doing a bulk request ? You see, in the first case any kind of SSD-induced delay will be rather unnoticable even in regard to the request itself - let alone in regard to the ammount of returned data. In the second case you are cheating, as there AFAIK is no way for the computer to request a non-sequential set of records. :-) Besides that, what do you think is the chance that the SSD will try to predict the next sector you will want to fetch and pre-cache (into RAM, because SSD storage memory is rather slow) ? In short, while its busy returning the requested sector it will also be busy pre-resolving the most likely next requests - effectivily reducing the delay you're referring to to zero for whomever is looking at the returned sectors. Regards, Rudy Wieser I think you misunderstood. I'm not talking about the storage device, storage controller, or bus speed, here. I'm talking about the file system. If the file is not fragmented, the system doesn't need to determine the next cluster number, when reading a file for e.g. copying. i.e. when reading data, it only need to increase the next cluster number by one, each time. If the file is fragmented, it needs to determine the next cluster number from the cluster allocation list of the file (if NTFS, otherwise from FAT). |
#11
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Defragger and SSD defrag ?
"David E. Ross" wrote in message
news Two actions are really meaningless for SSDs. The other action that is meaningless is erasing files. The writing needed to erase a file might fail to over-write that file. While the pointer to the file might be erased, the file contents remain untouched. Only a total erasure of the entire device could have any meaning. Details about this are at http://eraser.heidi.ie/. As with any storage device (whether SSD or HDD), when you erase or overwrite a file, you are not deleting the contents at that time; instead you are returning the "sectors" (to use HDD terminology) to a pool which can be used for a new/updated file at some time in the future. It still makes sense to erase files that are no longer needed, so as to free up space and for general housekeeping. But unless you overwrite all the unused sectors that are not allocated to files/folders (or erase the whole device, as you say), then there is the possibility that someone may be able to undelete the file - that applies to HDD as much as to SSD. So I'd say that defragging an SSD doesn't make sense, but erasing a file makes as much or as little sense for both HDD and SSD. |
#12
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Defragger and SSD defrag ?
"Paul" wrote in message
news NoonName wrote: 1) what is the best defragger that will handle Win XP with HDD ? 2) does a laptop with a SSD ever need defragging ? When ? I don't know why this question is cross-posted to the Win7 group, as you're not asking about Windows 7. 1) The built-in WinXP defragmenter is pretty good. It packs to the left, and tries not to leave gaps. I've seen worse defragmenters. And nobody wants to pay $39.95 for some piece of crap they can't transfer to a second computer. Assuming it works on XP (and I've not tried it) Piriform's Defraggler is a good alternative to the built-in defragger for XP. It has the advantage that you can choose whether to: 1. defrag the whole drive, eliminating any gaps 2. just defrag the fragmented files, leaving gaps 3. defrag the free space which eliminates most but not all gaps I tend to do 2 then 3 which leaves as much contiguous free space as possible at the end of the drive, without taking as long as 1. As long as there is plenty of contiguous space, you can probably get by with just doing 2. The XP defragger only does the whole lot - the equivalent of 1 - so it is slow. |
#13
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Defragger and SSD defrag ?
On 05/09/2018 08:39 AM, Wolf K wrote:
On 2018-05-09 04:04, R.Wieser wrote: [...] In the second case you are cheating, as there AFAIK is no way for the computer to request a non-sequential set of records.:-) [...] The PET/VIC-20/Commodore-64 did. In fact, to read/write you had to specify whether the data file was serial or random access. I have no idea how the disk drive handled these differences. The disk drive was a smart device, seen as destination and source of data by the OS, not as resource to be managed. Best, IIRC, random files (not supported by BASIC except in the C128 and I think some later PETs) used additional sectors (called "side sectors"?) to store pointers to the actual data. File types were "P" (used by save/load), "S", "U", and "L". All except the last (I don't remember why it was called "L") were actually the same type. I don't remember why "L", but to open one you had to specify record length (according to the C128 documentation). -- Mark Lloyd http://notstupid.us/ "Put your trust in Allah, but tie up your camel first." -- Arab proverb |
#14
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Defragger and SSD defrag ?
Posted in Win 7 because there is more activity there/here and most of
you in the Win 7 group have or once had Win XP so are very knowledgeable regarding Win XP. Win XP group gets little attention. Read my original post. Defragger for HDD ! Answered: Piriform. Would defrag help for SSD ? Answered: minimally and possible too much wear. You all must be non native Martian speakers. So, SSD degree of success depends more on the PC chip set ! I have several Win XP Pro laptops that have Samsung SSDs installed. Samsung Magician tests and sets them up. It also identifies that capabilities of the SDD depending on the laptop's chip set. The same SSD will run much faster with "better" chip sets. These laptops are the same manufacturer, Fujitsu. No way of telling without just trying. In any case, all laptops with the model Samsung SSD run much better, faster and are reliable. (Plug for Samsung SSD) If interested, get the Samsung with the lifetime warranty, by paying a little more. One package includes a cable to do the HDD to SSD transfer. I am not in any way affiliated with Samsung, just a very happy Samsung SSD owner (installed in three laptops). |
#15
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Defragger and SSD defrag ?
JJ,
If the file is not fragmented, the system doesn't need to determine the next cluster number, when reading a file for e.g. copying. i.e. when reading data, it only need to increase the next cluster number by one, each time And in the other case it uses the current sector # and uses it as an index in a look-up table. I don't think you will notice the difference. Not even when retrieving a million sectors. strikethru But yes, when you define the the time consumption of everything else as being zero - meaning you do not allow something as common as a second thread/background process - and jack up the ammount of sectors that you are going to retrieve I guess you could get an actually measurable time consumption somewhere along the line ... .... but it would be be devoid of any meaning. /strikethru Hold the presses: I thought that MOVing a register from a table would cost at least double the cyles of in INC (on an X86) but some googeling seems to show they cost the same ammount ... So, the answer is: No difference. (but I left my origional answer there as "strikethru"). Regards, Rudy Wieser |
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