How's the defrag tool in Wndows 7?

[N2RJ]

Originally Posted by KF7AYS

I haven't defragged in 10 years. no need. My system is still fast. My linux system is faster.

My ubuntu desktop at work got progressively slower and slower over the course of 2 years. I have no idea why. I upgraded it to 4GB RAM and a faster C2D processor and it was still slow. I ended up rebuilding it completely. It works fine for now but we'll see.

[KA5S]

Originally Posted by KF7AYS

MS Defraggers are worthless. In fact, less than worthless. They do nothing more than spin your drive and wear out your equipment.

if you want a defrag that will actually do something worth while, use the one in Norton Utilities.

Personally, I don't defrag. Ever. Haven't needed to since Windows 98SE.

Cheers

Had a coworker once complain about how the computer ran slower after a defrag. Advised her, go to the Micro$oft site and DL their "Refrag" utility.

Never heard another complaint about it.

Heh!

Cortland
KA5S

[KD0DKI]

To understand why defragmenting data on a hard disk is important you need to understand how the data is written.

When a file is written it starts in the next available sector for the write, it is determined if there is space in that sector, if not it writes what it can in the first sector then moves to the next largest available sector. If that is filled it moves to the next.
I think I got that correct, it's been a while sense I read on file systems.
Each part of the file (scattered all over the disk) has a link, if a link is broken you get a corrupt file.
Defragmentation checks all the links of a file, if it is determined it is fragmented (number of links used) it is moved from all the scatter to a contigous place on the disk.
All the fragmented files are moved to this contigous place then rewritten with as few links as possible.

All modern file systems are databases if the search in the database has to look all over the disk it will be slow.
Hard disks will have multiple platters in them so the search is 3D (up and down as well as accross). When the search spans platters it takes a long time to move the read heads back and forth, slowing the reads.

The pagefile can become fragmented when set to grow at will. Setting a static pagefile size can improve performance. We have placed the Pagefile on it's own partition for years, reducing the fragmentation. A corrupt page file is not fun to fix if the machine will not start, you get to explain the $3000 bill from Ontrack.

The trick to defraging is to use it until it only takes a moment to run.

[KD0DKI]

Originally Posted by N2RJ

My ubuntu desktop at work got progressively slower and slower over the course of 2 years. I have no idea why. I upgraded it to 4GB RAM and a faster C2D processor and it was still slow. I ended up rebuilding it completely. It works fine for now but we'll see.

OH now you need to understand swap space.

Swap space is the UNIX form of the pagefile it's used for swapping unused code from memory to disk for later use. It's pushed over the edge if it doesn't get used or a program is closed (in theory).

Just like windows if you change the amount of memory you may need to change the swap space. The swap space partition should be expandable if more memory will be added in the future, large changes in general.

Rule of thumb is about the same as windows RAM x 1.5 = swap/page
Not a hard fast rule but it works.