shakermaker Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 This months' PC Pro has a free (older) version of Acronis on the cover. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
esme Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 This months' PC Pro has a free (older) version of Acronis on the cover. last months has (issue 161), didn't spot it on this months, worth a look tho Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ken1 Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 on modern multi-tasking operating systems, there are constantly many different files open, spread across the hard drive. so the difference defragging makes is negligible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defragmentation Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
esme Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 on modern multi-tasking operating systems, there are constantly many different files open, spread across the hard drive. so the difference defragging makes is negligible. which are mapped into virtual memory and those pages which are referenced most frequently are kept in main memory the rest are swapped out to the swap file, actual references to files on disk are kept to a minimum, now those files which are open for writing cannot be easily moved by a defragmentation pass so they get left but running a periodic defrag in the background will eventually catch most of them as some get closed and others opened however running the defragmentation tool in safe mode bypasses this as there are no files open for writing and the ones needed to run the system have been read into memory as I said according to Microsoft an NTFS based system loses 10% of it's performance per year due to fragmentation, thats the system drive on a server that's suffering there and the main file activity that would cause fragmentation on a server should be the growth and trimming of log files, data files should really be on a different disk, so if you lose 10% on a server in a year where the only fragmentation is caused by log files what would a workstation suffer ? especially as most users shove everything on the C: drive further I have been presented with systems which take several minutes to boot and the user complains of it being slow, on asking the question I usually get the answer "whats a defrag?", so I defragment them, every one has booted in 50% or less of the original time, then I go on to do other things malware, temp files and so on actually .... let me think about this ..... no you continue telling people defragmentation is a waste of time please, no I'm serious here please do so and I'll keep charging them for setting off a defrag and wandering off to do something else while it makes their system faster Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ken1 Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 if you can get people to pay you to defrag their hard drives, then its a great idea. bootvis is the tool to speed up xp boot times. file systems such as NTFS (and most Unix/Linux filesystems) are designed to decrease the likelihood of fragmentation.[4][5] Improvements in modern hard drives such as RAM cache, faster platter rotation speed, and greater data density reduce the negative impact of fragmentation on system performance to some degree after about a year, most windows systems are ready for a format anyway. as long as you keep a reasonable amount of free space on your drives, fragmentation isn't too much of a problem. many files are open at the same time, those files are spread out across the hard drive, whether its defragged or not, so the hard drive head is constantly reading different parts of the hard drive anyway. it'd make more difference if you were just reading a single file, from start to finish (as you would, if you used dos), then accessing another file in the same way. modern multi-tasking operating systems don't work like that. file accesses tend to be much more random. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sccsux Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 after about a year, most windows systems are ready for a format anyway. Now that I know for a fact to be complete rubbish. I had (until last year) a box that had Win 98 running on it. Never needed formating since first install (during this time - about 8 years - many pieces of software were installed/uninstalled/written/tested). If you look after any OS, there should be no need to format after first install. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ken1 Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 most people dont look after their os, thats why i said 'most' & not 'all'. if you install & uninstall lots of different software packages (including ones of questionable quality), its bound to accumulate some crud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
esme Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 cool, I can charge people for a format as well then, keep these ideas coming I'm liking them don't agree with any of them mind, but carry on Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sccsux Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 if you install & uninstall lots of different software packages And how many people do you know who never install anything on a Windows box? I know of none! its bound to accumulate some crud. Which is why you defrag the HD (see the logic?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ken1 Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 defragging doesnt remove anything, it just re-arranges it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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