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View Full Version : Defrag before install a good idea?


Mark Cherry
September 21st 03, 05:55 PM
Quick questions for you all,


How many of you take the time and trouble to defragment before a major install
like FS?

Have you ever tried deactivating virtual memory, defragging, then re-enabling
virtual memory? (To un-frag the swapfile, in effect)

Ever had any problems specifying a fixed-size swapfile, to stop it from becoming
fragmented?


--
regards,

Mark

Brett Holcomb
September 21st 03, 11:30 PM
I haven't defragged any system. It's not really worth it. Yes, I know
that there will be people who claim a tremendous speed increase - I think
it's mainly psychological <G>. At one point I checked various research on
it and it came out to the same thing - it isn't worth it unless you like to
see the colored boxes lined up in order on the defrag screen. As anon says
- it's snake oil <G>.



wrote:

>
> On 21-Sep-2003, "Mark Cherry" > wrote:
>
>> Quick questions for you all,
>>
>>
>> How many of you take the time and trouble to defragment before a major
>> install
>
> Speed Tips/Speed up software are the new Snake Oil industry.
> Defragging has become one of those things that conventional wisdom says is
> good.
> I would challenge that notion and point to the number of times defragging
> has actually caused file corruption. Why this is not dealt with by the
> text books is beyond me!
>
> Of course a badly defragged system should be dealt with but , if
> fragmentation is slight , I wouldn't bother. Hard drives are amazingly
> fast and accurate at picking up data , so speed improvements are rarely
> noticed.
>
> Don't worry about the swapfile. Again Fixed size or System Managed it's
> had to spot a benefit. Some experts say one thing and others another.
>
> I would leave FS9 as system managed on the basis that it's a Microsoft
> Product and will have been developed with default settings in mind.

--
Brett I. Holcomb

Microsoft MVP
AKA Grunt <><
Remove R777 to email

Mark Cherry
September 22nd 03, 11:39 PM
In ,
wrote:

> On 21-Sep-2003, "Mark Cherry" > wrote:
>
>> Quick questions for you all,
>>
>>
>> How many of you take the time and trouble to defragment before a
>> major install
>> like FS?
>>
>> Have you ever tried deactivating virtual memory, defragging, then
>> re-enabling
>> virtual memory? (To un-frag the swapfile, in effect)
>>
>> Ever had any problems specifying a fixed-size swapfile, to stop it
>> from becoming
>> fragmented?
>
> Speed Tips/Speed up software are the new Snake Oil industry.

Speed Tips? Is this what its called in XP? (I'm still in '98 land until next
week)

> Defragging has become one of those things that conventional wisdom
> says is good.
> I would challenge that notion and point to the number of times
> defragging has actually caused file corruption. Why this is not dealt
> with by the text books is beyond me!

One thing that I've never seen mentioned and would like to see *strongly*
emphasized is that, if you live in an area where power cuts are commonplace,
then you would be better off not defragging at all. A once-a-month defrag is
often more than sufficient but if you've come to expect at least one power cut
per month then sod's law dictates that it will happen in the middle of a defrag.
Like as not at the split second where it's completed a read and hasn't finished
the next write!

I saw a news clip, after the NE USA blackout, where someone from the boondocks
said it was no big thing for them because they get blackouts all the time.
That's the sort of thing I'm on about.

> Of course a badly defragged system should be dealt with but , if
> fragmentation is slight , I wouldn't bother. Hard drives are
> amazingly fast and accurate at picking up data , so speed
> improvements are rarely noticed.

Again, I think it's because I've been plodding along at 400Mhz for so long that
it's become second nature. The new system I'm getting will have a 200Gb drive in
it which, as you say, will be inherently faster. The defrag exercise itself
could be a tedious and time consuming business, relative to the 8Gb unit I have
at the moment but the CPU will be nearly 8 times faster, so I suppose it'll
balance out and take as long as I'm used to.

> Don't worry about the swapfile. Again Fixed size or System Managed
> it's had to spot a benefit. Some experts say one thing and others
> another.

The perceived advantage is that, if the swapfile is kept at a constant size, the
same disk sectors get used for it all the time. Files either side of it can come
and go and defragging leaves it in position. When Windows manages it, it changes
size all the time and that sometimes means that, when it needs to expand, bits
of it are written into the gaps left by files which have been deleted. So the
swapfile fragments and that means it takes fractionally longer to do what it has
to do because the data is no longer contiguous on the disk. Then again, it will
only be during times of large demands on memory that this will noticeably affect
performance. Like as not, this will be while running multiple applications - say
you're running a word processor, spreadsheet or database, downloading something
from the internet and dealing with mail or newsgroups while you wait, not while
you're running FS, where the tendency is to shut down unrequired tasks first.

> I would leave FS9 as system managed on the basis that it's a Microsoft
> Product and will have been developed with default settings in mind.

Good point.

Thanks for replying.

--
regards,

Mark

Peter Duniho
September 23rd 03, 07:51 AM
"Mark Cherry" > wrote in message
...
> > Speed Tips/Speed up software are the new Snake Oil industry.
>
> Speed Tips? Is this what its called in XP? (I'm still in '98 land until
next
> week)

He's referring to general advice that's intended to speed up your computer.
There's no "speed tips" feature in Windows XP.

> One thing that I've never seen mentioned and would like to see *strongly*
> emphasized is that, if you live in an area where power cuts are
commonplace,
> then you would be better off not defragging at all.

Actually, you would be better off spending $50-100 on an uninterruptable
power supply.

Beyond that, while a FAT file system is *very* susceptible to interruptions
during defragmentation, Windows XP allows you to use NTFS which is somewhat
more robust. Corruption is still a possibility, but much less likely.

Of course, the UPS will remove that concern anyway, and should be considered
a *must* if you are at all concerned about data corruption, whether or not
you ever run a defragmentation utility.

> [...] The new system I'm getting will have a 200Gb drive in
> it which, as you say, will be inherently faster. The defrag exercise
itself
> could be a tedious and time consuming business, relative to the 8Gb unit I
have
> at the moment but the CPU will be nearly 8 times faster, so I suppose
it'll
> balance out and take as long as I'm used to.

Actually, the CPU will have very little effect on defragmentation times.
However, it is true that the 200Gb hard drive will be faster. Both because
it's likely to be a faster RPM drive, and also because the data density on
the drive is higher (so more data transferred per rotation).

In any case, defragmentation has always been a time-consuming process,
especially as the data on the drive reaches nears full capacity of the drive
in size. It shouldn't be tedious, since once started you can let the
defragmentation utility run on its own. It's not like you have to sit there
and monitor the movement of every single disk sector.

> The perceived advantage is that, if the swapfile is kept at a constant
size, the
> same disk sectors get used for it all the time. Files either side of it
can come
> and go and defragging leaves it in position. When Windows manages it, it
changes
> size all the time and that sometimes means that, when it needs to expand,
bits
> of it are written into the gaps left by files which have been deleted.

"Perceived" is the right word here. In fact, just because you allow Windows
to manage the swap file, that doesn't mean that it's constantly increasing
and decreasing the swap file's size. That would just be plain dumb, and
whatever you think about Windows, the folks who wrote the virtual memory
subsystem just aren't that dumb.

You can see for yourself. Set the virtual memory settings to allow Windows
to manage the swap file. Run the computer that way for some period of time.
Then boot your favorite defragmentation utility and have it tell you how
many fragments the swap file is in. The number of fragments will be small,
or possibly even just one.

Pete

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