When should I really defrag

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

I have a Dell Dim 2400 with XP Home.

When I run the analyze part of the defrag program, it says I should defrag.

It gives a total frag of 11% and file frag of 22%.

Just curious what others do and do you really see a big improvement (in
speed).

Mel

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

With those numbers, defragging will help. How much? It depends on which files
are fragmented and whether or not they are heavily used by your programs. It
also depends on how effective the brain-dead XP defragger is at compacting the
files, i.e. shoving them all close together at one "end" of the hard disk.

I've often wanted to try to run the Win 2000 defragger on an XP computer to see
if it will run at all and to get the effect of a much better file compacting
process.

Of course, there are third-party defraggers like Executive Software's Diskeeper,
which was altered (like some animals are neutered) by agreement with Microsoft
before it became the XP defrag. Makes you wonder though. The XP defrag is a
poor ad for Diskeeper... Ben Myers

On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 02:22:05 -0500, "MB_" <mel@prodigy.invalid.net> wrote:

>I have a Dell Dim 2400 with XP Home.
>
>When I run the analyze part of the defrag program, it says I should defrag.
>
>It gives a total frag of 11% and file frag of 22%.
>
>Just curious what others do and do you really see a big improvement (in
>speed).
>
>Mel
>
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Ben:

Are there some free defraggers that are better??

Mel
<ben_myers_spam_me_not @ charter.net (Ben Myers)> wrote in message
news:4242bb9b.613303@nntp.charter.net...
> With those numbers, defragging will help. How much? It depends on which
> files
> are fragmented and whether or not they are heavily used by your programs.
> It
> also depends on how effective the brain-dead XP defragger is at compacting
> the
> files, i.e. shoving them all close together at one "end" of the hard disk.
>
> I've often wanted to try to run the Win 2000 defragger on an XP computer
> to see
> if it will run at all and to get the effect of a much better file
> compacting
> process.
>
> Of course, there are third-party defraggers like Executive Software's
> Diskeeper,
> which was altered (like some animals are neutered) by agreement with
> Microsoft
> before it became the XP defrag. Makes you wonder though. The XP defrag
> is a
> poor ad for Diskeeper... Ben Myers
>
> On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 02:22:05 -0500, "MB_" <mel@prodigy.invalid.net> wrote:
>
>>I have a Dell Dim 2400 with XP Home.
>>
>>When I run the analyze part of the defrag program, it says I should
>>defrag.
>>
>>It gives a total frag of 11% and file frag of 22%.
>>
>>Just curious what others do and do you really see a big improvement (in
>>speed).
>>
>>Mel
>>
>>
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

SysInternals also has a free and very specialized defragger. It defragments the
swap file and registry. These cannot be handled by a normal defragger, which
operates under the premise that it cannot defrag a file in use by another
application or the OS.

Somebody else may know of a free general purpose defragger. I don't.

.... Ben Myers

On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 13:41:25 -0500, "MB_" <mel@prodigy.invalid.net> wrote:

>Ben:
>
>Are there some free defraggers that are better??
>
>Mel
><ben_myers_spam_me_not @ charter.net (Ben Myers)> wrote in message
>news:4242bb9b.613303@nntp.charter.net...
>> With those numbers, defragging will help. How much? It depends on which
>> files
>> are fragmented and whether or not they are heavily used by your programs.
>> It
>> also depends on how effective the brain-dead XP defragger is at compacting
>> the
>> files, i.e. shoving them all close together at one "end" of the hard disk.
>>
>> I've often wanted to try to run the Win 2000 defragger on an XP computer
>> to see
>> if it will run at all and to get the effect of a much better file
>> compacting
>> process.
>>
>> Of course, there are third-party defraggers like Executive Software's
>> Diskeeper,
>> which was altered (like some animals are neutered) by agreement with
>> Microsoft
>> before it became the XP defrag. Makes you wonder though. The XP defrag
>> is a
>> poor ad for Diskeeper... Ben Myers
>>
>> On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 02:22:05 -0500, "MB_" <mel@prodigy.invalid.net> wrote:
>>
>>>I have a Dell Dim 2400 with XP Home.
>>>
>>>When I run the analyze part of the defrag program, it says I should
>>>defrag.
>>>
>>>It gives a total frag of 11% and file frag of 22%.
>>>
>>>Just curious what others do and do you really see a big improvement (in
>>>speed).
>>>
>>>Mel
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Ben Myers wrote:
> SysInternals also has a free and very specialized defragger. It defragments the
> swap file and registry. These cannot be handled by a normal defragger, which
> operates under the premise that it cannot defrag a file in use by another
> application or the OS.
>
> Somebody else may know of a free general purpose defragger. I don't.
>
I generally turn off my swap file for defrags (actually I leave it off
most of the time anyway, 1GB of RAM is enough for most of my purposes in
Windows). Another trick for Win9X/ME machines is to edit the system.ini
and change the line shell=explorer.exe to shell=defrag.exe so you
directly to defrag before other processes start; I don't beleive that
this possible under XP.

 

[nick]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 19:13:46 GMT, in alt.sys.pc-clone.dell,
ben_myers_spam_me_not @ charter.net (Ben Myers) wrote:

>SysInternals also has a free and very specialized defragger. It defragments the
>swap file and registry. These cannot be handled by a normal defragger, which
>operates under the premise that it cannot defrag a file in use by another
>application or the OS.

Diskeeper's boot-time defragmentation will defragment the swap file on
WinXP, and probably on other Windows versions.

From looking at the drive map display during manual defragmentations, I
don't think I've ever seen the swap file in more than two fragments. So I
don't see paging file fragmentation as a significant issue, at least not for
my system.

--
Nick <mailto:tanstaafl@pobox.com>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Nick <tanstaafl@pobox.com> wrote in
news:in5941d8hq95i4o91e3jekhn6trghmj2ep@4ax.com:

> Diskeeper's boot-time defragmentation will defragment the swap file on
> WinXP, and probably on other Windows versions.
>
> From looking at the drive map display during manual defragmentations,
> I don't think I've ever seen the swap file in more than two fragments.
> So I don't see paging file fragmentation as a significant issue, at
> least not for my system.


Another alternative is to automatically delete the swapfile at shutdown,
then you don't have to worry about it fragmenting over time. Takes a few
extra seconds to shutdown, and a few extra seconds to rebuild it a boot,
but worth it (and good security too).

It's in the registry at hklm/system/current control set/control/session
manager/memory management/ClearPageFileAtShutdown=1

Personally, I've also always put the swapfile on a drive of it's own, on
systems where I've had room for a second drive. All the 'experts' have told
me it's bad for Windows to not have the swapfile on c:, but have never
given me a coherent explanation why. Yes, I know it means you can't do a
memory dump on critical error, but so what ? I've never needed to do a core
dump on a windows system, and even if I did, I wouldn't know what to do
with it anyway.

- FM -

 

[Guy]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

"MB_" <mel@prodigy.invalid.net> wrote in message
news:yUt0e.8365$4t4.1824@fe03.lga...
>I have a Dell Dim 2400 with XP Home.
>
> When I run the analyze part of the defrag program, it says I should
> defrag.
>
> It gives a total frag of 11% and file frag of 22%.
>
> Just curious what others do and do you really see a big improvement (in
> speed).
>
> Mel
>
There has been some discussion (PC mag?) that defragmenting the drive on a
modern computer (1-2 years old) has little effect. I think they benchmarked
some PCs before and after defrag and saw little effect.

Guy

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Yes, but fragmentation depends very much on individual patterns of use of the
computer. Regardless of benchmarks by PC Mag, I find it difficult to
generalize. With today's modern hard drives (7200 to 10K RPM and sub-10ms seek
times) compared to an old Seagate ST251 clunker in my old AT clone (3600 RPM and
30+ ms seek times, IIRC), defragmentation has less benefit nowadays compared to
the bad old days of DOS 3.1. Still, there are times when it helps, and
defragging when out to lunch or overnight certainly cannot hurt.

The biggest quick and dirty performance improvement comes from clearing out all
the dandruff, belly button lint and toejam that accumulates in the over-abused
%temp% folder... Ben Myers

On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 07:21:28 -0500, "Guy" <guy@somewhere.net> wrote:

>
>"MB_" <mel@prodigy.invalid.net> wrote in message
>news:yUt0e.8365$4t4.1824@fe03.lga...
>>I have a Dell Dim 2400 with XP Home.
>>
>> When I run the analyze part of the defrag program, it says I should
>> defrag.
>>
>> It gives a total frag of 11% and file frag of 22%.
>>
>> Just curious what others do and do you really see a big improvement (in
>> speed).
>>
>> Mel
>>
>There has been some discussion (PC mag?) that defragmenting the drive on a
>modern computer (1-2 years old) has little effect. I think they benchmarked
>some PCs before and after defrag and saw little effect.
>
>Guy
>
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

"Nicholas Andrade" <sdnick484@nospam.yahoo.com> wrote in message news:QYp1e.3131$zl.2462@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...

> Having a specific partition for the page file on the same disc as your
> root directory can be beneficial in at least one way. If you create a
> small partition (generally 3/2*your RAM, so let's say 1.5GB) and tell
> Windows to put the pagefile there at the partition's maximum capacity
> (be sure to disable capacity warning for the partition), you'll never
> need to defrag it.

That wording is throwing me. Are you simply describing a case where
the pagefile is 1.5GB and fills its own partition? If so, I'd be interested to
know the advantage in comparison to setting min size = max size = 1.5GB
and putting the pagefile on the system/boot partition. The later approach
should prevent fragmentation, assuming there was none at pagefile creation
time or it was defragged just that once.

> In general Windows does a good job of not letting
> the pagefile become overly fragmented, but if you manually set it at
> different sizes frequently, it's very possible for fragmentation to
> occur.

Using a dedicated pagefile partition is advantageous in scenarios where
the user wants the pagefile to be resized without fragmentation. But
having that partition on the same drive as the boot partition brings with
it the potential for increased seeking and reduced performance.

> Generally the largest benefit for paging times will occur if
> this small partition is the first one on the disc (the one closest to
> the center), although the difference is relatively trivial.

If you meant closest to the center of the drive (spindle), I'd be interested
to know why you think the first partition would be likely to be located
there and why you would want it there.