Proper defragmentation - Hardware & Software

So i've got this Defraggler magingadic that moves huge files to one end of the drive and small files to another. I'm imagining that the constant changes of position while reading will have the same effect as a normal fragmented file as it would have to access many different huge and small files for games. Will this have a negative impact on my harddrives life expectancy? How would i go about defragging specific folders so their content would be placed closely together rather than all over the place, as it does now? [editline]20th June 2012[/editline] Wow. Wrong subforum. Shouldha been Tech Help.

As far as I know, defragging your harddrive has nothing to do with pairing files together, it's something to you do to protetct your harddrive from fragmentation, not organising files.

[QUOTE=ShinyChrome;36410958]As far as I know, defragging your harddrive has nothing to do with pairing files together, it's something to you do to protetct your harddrive from fragmentation, not organising files.[/QUOTE] Fragmentation causes the data to become disorganized which leads to longer loadtimes, seektimes and so on. Defragmentation organizes data so loadingtimes, seektimes becomes quicker.

If you're on windows 7 you really don't have to worry about fragmentation at all anymore, after 2 years of usage and never caring about fragmentation i ran the tool that comes with windows and it came up with [B]1 percent[/B] of fragmentation Plus, windows has a task enabled by default that runs every week to defragment your harddrive

[QUOTE=DrogenViech;36411194]If you're on windows 7 you really don't have to worry about fragmentation at all anymore, after 2 years of usage and never caring about fragmentation i ran the tool that comes with windows and it came up with [B]1 percent[/B] of fragmentation Plus, windows has a task enabled by default that runs every week to defragment your harddrive[/QUOTE] Try scanning with Defraggler. 3-4 months of unadulterated abuse gives me up to 85% on a fresh install. [editline]20th June 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=SweFox*;36411180]Fragmentation causes the data to become disorganized which leads to longer loadtimes, seektimes and so on. Defragmentation organizes data so loadingtimes, seektimes becomes quicker.[/QUOTE] Which is why i'm looking for a way to physically put files in the same folders and sub-folders together. There really isn't a difference between the abuse from a 1GB file split in 1000 or 1000 1MB files, is there?

[QUOTE=Bomimo;36411751]Try scanning with Defraggler. 3-4 months of unadulterated abuse gives me up to 85% on a fresh install. [editline]20th June 2012[/editline] Which is why i'm looking for a way to physically put files in the same folders and sub-folders together. There really isn't a difference between the abuse from a 1GB file split in 1000 or 1000 1MB files, is there?[/QUOTE] 1000 1MB files would be splattered all over your HDD. The 1GB file would be in one place.

[QUOTE=Chubbs;36414551]1000 1MB files would be splattered all over your HDD. The 1GB file would be in one place.[/QUOTE] Unless there's a way to defrag folders, which is what i'm looking for. My point was that my Black Isle folder with all of those 1-20 MB Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate files are indeed defragmented. But the files are fucking EVERYWHERE on the disc. It's still ripping itself apart tearing around the plates to fetch them. Ergo, Defragmenting is fucking useless unless smaller files are placed together according to folder structure. It would be almost the same as defragging a giant 6.17 GB file. Why has no one written such a defragger?

[QUOTE=Bomimo;36416288]Unless there's a way to defrag folders, which is what i'm looking for. My point was that my Black Isle folder with all of those 1-20 MB Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate files are indeed defragmented. But the files are fucking EVERYWHERE on the disc. It's still ripping itself apart tearing around the plates to fetch them. Ergo, Defragmenting is fucking useless unless smaller files are placed together according to folder structure. It would be almost the same as defragging a giant 6.17 GB file. Why has no one written such a defragger?[/QUOTE] There is, it's called MyDefrag, which is the new JKDefrag although it hasn't been updated in years last time I checked. It's powered by scripts and comes with ones that can sort all files and folders by their complete path. This way, programs, which presumably store all (or most of) their files in one main folder only have one little chunk of disk to work with to read whatever is needed, resulting in as little seeking as possible.

I made this age ago, but it should explain fragmentation to you guys, it was created to prove that copying files from one hard disk to another won't copy over fragments: [IMG]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3901038/Tutorials/fragmentation.jpg[/IMG]

It's very nice of you. But it's not really relevant since i'm not really copying from disk to disk.

It still explains fragmentation. It's also a problem if you have 1-2-3-N-5-6-N-8-9. You have 2N of freespace, but it isn't contiguous. You can't actually save a 2N file.

Yep. Free space plays a huge role in it. If you need to defrag a 3GB file but have only 1GB of free space, then your system is going to be incapable of defragmenting it, as there is no temporary free space to move it to. This brings up a question of my own. Why can't you use 2 hard disks in a defragmentation process? It'd be a lot faster to temporarily move files to another hard disk. I understand how this could be a problem with a sudden power cut. But that could easily be combated by having the system copy the data then verifying it before deleting it off the source hard disk.

[QUOTE=cdlink14;36425826]Yep. Free space plays a huge role in it. If you need to defrag a 3GB file but have only 1GB of free space, then your system is going to be incapable of defragmenting it, as there is no temporary free space to move it to. This brings up a question of my own. Why can't you use 2 hard disks in a defragmentation process? It'd be a lot faster to temporarily move files to another hard disk. I understand how this could be a problem with a sudden power cut. But that could easily be combated by having the system copy the data then verifying it before deleting it off the source hard disk.[/QUOTE] You can defragment a 3GB file with 1GB of free space, it's just going to take a long time, since it'll just vacate chunks of space using the free area and then copy things back into their defragmented place one 1GB chunk at a time.

[QUOTE=mblunk;36427820]You can defragment a 3GB file with 1GB of free space, it's just going to take a long time, since it'll just vacate chunks of space using the free area and then copy things back into their defragmented place one 1GB chunk at a time.[/QUOTE] Hence why you'll want to take care of 85% defragmentation on a 500 GB drive beFORE you only have 5 GB of free space. Heh, that's a nightmare...