Program that optimizes your hardrive?

Does anyone know of a free program that optimizes your hardrive. I remember back in thee day Norton security came with such a program.

 

i got a defragger...windows defragger blows. i use defraggler from piriform. I am talking about a program that places programs you use most frequently at the outer edges of the platter on purpose. Outer edge is faster and inner edge is slower. So I was hoping to get a program that can put my OS on the outer edge and on my game/storage drive put my games of the outer edge and my movies on the inner edge.

my game hardrive has 130+MBps on the outer part but only 70-80MBps on the inner part.

 

Auslogics Disk Defrag has an option in the settings menu that will move startup OS items to the beginning of the disk.

Otherwise, if you are using Windows 7, the built in defragmenter is actually superior to anything you can buy. If you leave your computer idle for a few hours every night, it will also defragment the files used during the boot process. Otherwise, a forum member has written a simple batch script to force the defragmenter to do this.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/429792-defragmenting-boot-files-under-win7.html

The Windows XP defragmenter is basically a defragmenter Microsoft purchased in the 90s with minimal modification.

 

Can they do that for my Steam folder too? and movie files?


EDIT:Windows defragger left 20% of one of my drives fragmented so i dont use it.


EDIT:I posted on that thread asking if thats possible. Thx for the link Plus rep for storm effect ^^

 

The first partition which is usually C is going to start from Track 0 (outermost edge) and each following partition is going to be further in. You can optimize your harddrive if you partition it properly.
Let's say I have a 500Gb drive and I've allocated 60Gb for the first partition, 150Gb for the second and left the remaining for the last partition. Defragging doesn't help too much on your project.

 

I think that the free Puran Defrag is the best one, give it a go.

Puran Defrag Free Edition - Reviews and free Puran Defrag Free Edition downloads at Download.com

 

btw tinder nice pic lol ^^ I see i never knew that. I just reinstalled my windows. Is there a way to partition my hardrive without reinstalling windows?

 

You can use "disk management" to shrink the size of your c partition and then create an d partition in the empty space.

Backup any data before you do this though, and make any recovery disks in case you have problems.

 

alright thx i'll do this for sure. Does anyone have a source that shows that first partition is on the outer part? I would like to read up on this

 

ntfs does not need to be defragged.....

that such programs exist, and some sell for $$$, does not mean that they are an effective spend of $$ or time.

there is plenty of literature on the web talking about why ntfs does not need to be defragged.

Yes, it is possible to actuall run a defrag on ntfs, but other than a ONE TIME defrag of page space and the hibernation/sleep files, you'll not see any benefit.

 

NTFS does not need to be defragged? serious? Mine gets all messed up all the time lol. I defrag it once every few weeks. Maybe because i constantly delete install and move files... Also there is a huge differance in performance between each side of the drive. My internal is almost 100MBps on outer and 50MBps on inner. My external is 133MBps on out and 70MBps on inner. That is nearly double the speed or half....depending where the file is. Thats a huge differance. Especial for game and OS loads

 

Yeah, because the people who designed the operating system have now idea how to maintain it... leave that to 3rd party developers who want your money.

 

I took a couple screen shots after defragging my hardrive from windows and than scanning with defraggler. it has files that are fragmented with fragments smaller and bigger than 64mb lol so that whole thing about it doesnt defrag fragments that are larger than 64mb i think is bogus

EDIT:I'll be making 2 partions on my os drive and my external. OS will have like 50gig for OS/programs and the other 270gig will be for nothing lol ^^ Than my external will have like 400gig for games and the rest will be 600gigs for my movies and iso files. I am archiving all my games and movies lol. Need to get a 2TB hardrive because i am ripping all my DVDs so when i get out I can throw them on a network drive ^^

 

No problem, it's possible that other defragmenters will report large amounts of fragmentation after a Windows 7 defragmentation if the files are in very large fragments.

For instance, I do not believe Windows 7 will defragment fragments over a certain size (e.g. a 4GB World of Warcraft Data file split into 4 1 GB fragments). If your hard drive was only 32GB, for example, then a 3rd party defragmenter might state that 12.5% of the drive is fragmented. 12.5% comes from having 4GB of 32GB fragmented in some way.

With regards to the built-in Windows 7 defragmenter, I think this article posted by Microsoft during the development of Windows 7 should be required reading: Disk Defragmentation ? Background and Engineering the Windows 7 Improvements - Engineering Windows 7 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Here is a quote from the article:

This article from MaximumPC shows that, even in 2008 compared to the Windows Vista defragmenter, 3rd party defragmenters yield almost no benefit: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/the_disk_defrag_difference?page=0,0

 

windows left 20% fragmented on a 320 gig drive. It consisted of liek 2k fragments. I did a new test and it took 23% fragmentation to 2% and left many fragments ranging from 200k files with fragments to 700mb files with fragments. I dont remember the number of fragments but i took a screen shot so i'll post that in a little. I personally like using the 3rd party defragmentor once every 2-4 weeks to make sure the stuff windows misses doesnt get out of control. I think thats a reasonable blend.


Does anyone have a source that proves that the first partition is on the outer plater of the drive? I would like to clarify it for this thread i am making.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...rmance-boosts-solid-programs.html#post6745839



EDIT: http://img299.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=fragmentsl.png

this is a link to defraggler showing all that windows defragger missed. Also i added screenshots of my speeds for my internal and external hardrive. You can see the difference from the outer part and inner part on why its important to optimize it ^^ Look at the difference for latency from outer to inner...its huge

Note:ignor the flate line on hdtune. HD tune is wrong. I made a thread to talk about it but no one was interested lol

http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...hdtune-hdtune-pro-inaccurate.html#post6744790

 

You should probably read up on the diskpart command and disk geometry in general. One link probably won't contain all the info. I'm not why you have small file fragmented after a defrag. Was steam still open during the defrag or something? Or between the two measurements? Note: quitting a program doesn't always release the files properly, so you might need to reboot without Steam on autorun to defrag those files.

 

not sure woofer but all i know defraggler did it in one try and windows defragger said 0% fragmentation. I honestly don't care i am just glad i got defraggler. In my opinion it would be a decent idea to use defraggler or something like that once a month...to get what windows misses.

 

I knew this information already from like 1994. I've seen harddrives running even without a cover, some had a transparent cover and stripped in RAID. I know that one big partition is not the best choice but it's up to you really. It's my fault I assumed you were familiar with the hard drive internals and how it works. Do read up some more, it's good to know.

Here's a pretty good info site about HDD I found for you to read:
Radified Hard Drive Partitioning Strategies

I linked into page two because it answers your main question.

 

alright thx. i'll check this out. Only know the basic mechanics of it ^^

 

how do you KNOW for a FACT that your ntfs is 'messed up' every few weeks?

Because some pretty picture generated by a defrag program tells you so?

Measuring 'fragmentation' on a drive and assuming that it is somehow bad while at the same time admitting that you really don't know the behind the scenes technologies involved or how ntfs really works is kind of silly........

 

Try a program called mydefrag. Thing is free and amazing. You'll see your boot time improve by 15sec +. Love it. Have it on all my work computers too

 

I have used both auslogics disk defrag and perfect disk 11
for me i like auslogics more but you have more control with pd11 but it is payware.
my boot times and programs were much snappier with auslogics but with pd11 i got better performance from my hd media files especially while torrenting and multitasking. pd11 obviously put my media in the fastest part of the hdd, but i couldnt get it to put my programs there instead. i didnt play around with it much though and may have missed a few settings that would allow me to do such.

 

Jesus, when did defragging a drive become so complicated? Just use the built-in Windows utility.

 

a good defragger does make a big difference

 

It's not. Performance hounds also water-cool their desktops. It's absolutely unnecessary, but gets you that extra fps. There are discernible benefits to defragging every last tiny file, but they depend. Simple suggestions for beating defrag at its game

- Make a separate OS partition, set it first on track 0. That's the fastest partition.
- Separate your media/data files to another partition, as high/inner as you can. If they're mostly static, they won't get fragmented.
- If you torrent, set up a partition just for pointing those downloads to. Torrents cause more fragmentation than any other given program or action.
- Maybe install your programs to the OS drive, maybe not. If you don't install much, it's not a bad idea. If you install/uninstall a ton of stuff, throw it on its own partition. Note: Steam falls under the category of torrents for me, don't mix with Windows.

Now, is this all really necessary? No. Just let the built-in defragger do its thing once a week. But it'll emulate most of the benefit 3rd party defraggers claim to give you.

 

I know how hardrives work. I was stating i don't know every little new ounce about them. And yes there is a huge difference. ASUS shipped my laptop with a blank partition that had 15gigs of data on the outer edge. Something i would like to use for my OS because its the fastest part of the drive. Also i know th defragger is accurate because i cant shrink the partition because it has s files on the every inner part so my partition is stuck ad 280gig. So i will have to back up my OS and reformat the whole OS drink and remake the 2 partitions. was up until 2am trying to get it to work but it just refuses to cooperate :/

EDIT:read the hardrive section. it will explain the importance and the dramatic difference between a drive that is optimized and one that is not....it can be easily a 50% increase in speed. http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...rmance-boosts-solid-programs.html#post6750686

 

If that partition was previously shrunk and your current end is somewhere near the original middle, those files are probably the MFT (I can't recall why MFT fragments gets placed in the middle by default). Getting any defrag is a real pain in the , regardless of whether it's 3rd party or native. I've pulled it off in the past using alternative serial passes of the native defrag, Auslogics defrag, and defraggler, but the MFT really never wants to move. It takes a weird combination of reboots and consecutive sweeps between reboots to get the damn thing to become cohesive again. Even on a fresh install, it's a pain, took more than half the night to shrink past 250GB to 60, starting from 500. Easier way is just to use GParted to shrink and move, then rebuild/repair with the OS CD afterwards, or clean install to a small partition.

BTW, if your drive is over 500GB, moving your OS in by just 15GB brings the data less than 1% closer to the spindle by radius. To bring it 10% of the radius closer, you'd have to jump by 90GB or so on a 500GB drive. Maybe then more of a performance benefit is visible.

 

MFT and their copies are deliberately spread around a hard drive for redundancy and rapid access. Using a defragger to push them around (especially to push them next to each other) isn't recommended.......

Defragging has ***nothing*** to do with hard drive tech. It's all about the filesystem and ONLY about the filesystem. Problem is, the way ntfs works is it will constantly spread files around your disk. Constantly. No way to stop it. Nor, if you read the microsoft ntfs documentation (and not third-party web pages that are XP and fat32 centric) will you really want to.

If you are going to use a tool to illustrate things, you can't come back and say that certain output of the tool is inaccurate. Either the tool is accurate or it is not.

If you are so very concerned about inner-middle-outer platter placement of certain files, the only way you can guarantee this is to grab a linux-based disk partition tool and set up multiple ntfs partitions in the inner-middle-outer regions. This will work and you won't have to manipulate a defragger every day to move files around. Once a partition is set up it stays there. Unlike files.

And now you've added to the complexity of your system layout.

 

well the easiest way for me right now is to just back up windows format my first 320gig drive and make 2 partitions of 40gig and 280gig.....and how is it faster to have files spread around? why would MFT perform slower if in one location.....one location reduces latency and seek times....having it on the inner and outer part all randomly thrown around is not logical for performance. But i do say its worth while backing up my windows and formating and partitioning to those settings. With how windows decided to throw my whole OS over 280gigs of space is stupid

 

Multiple MFTs are there for both performance and redundancy. On Server 2008 there is a little-used option to have up to five copies but I've never seen people run with more than three. The default on both Server and workstation (XP, Vista, Win7) is to have a pair of MTFs.

Do be aware that if you lose the MFT, you lose access to all of your data and will require some really significant luck and a set of third party tools to recreate/recover things. The multiple copies are deliberately planted across the disk so that even if there is physical damage to a disk platter, another MFT will probably be available to assist in recovering as much data as possible.

The filesystem drivers know where the MFTs are located, will always use the closest one, and then go to the copies to write changes. If there are discrepancies between the copies of the MFT, an activity journal is kept and can be replayed to synchronize things then required. Of course all of this is cached at the OS level by the filesystem drivers so it's really transparent to the user/computer.

This probably appears to be not logical to you because you aren't familiar with the multiple layers of caching and virtualization in a modern journaled filesystem. Read up on the how/why of ntfs and why it really wants to use the entire disk drive. Things might shift from looking like a stupid way of doing things to your having an ah-ha!! moment. Don't fall in love with the pictures defrag software will draw for you until *after* you understand how ntfs works.

Why is spreading things across your disk 'stupid'? You still have 100% access to that free space, yes?

Ntfs has been around for more than 15 years. It's one of the top journaled filesystems out there with only the JFS/JFS2 from IBM (used on their unix and mainframe systems) being better. Both ntfs and jfs are quite well respected for maintaining data integrity under all conditions.

A lot of what happens behind the scenes on ntfs is for safety/security of your data. Ntfs also enables things like in-line disk/file encryption, ability to easily recover from power loss or controller/driver errors, etc, etc.

If you don't care about any of that, and are willing to accept that there is usually no recoverability with fat32, go ahead and reformat your disk to fat32.

But then you'd lose the ntfs performance/caching, access controls, and recoverability. There are plenty of current web documents out there that talk about journaled filesystems (ntfs in particular) and comparisons to fat32. Don't depend on quickie docs that you can breeze through in a few minutes. Filesystems are pretty complex.

 

i will still use NTFS but i want to force it to use the first 40-50gigs on the outer platter. If it has a greater chance of crashing than so be it....doesnt bother me. I rather have the performance

EDIT: i dont care about the so called pretty pictures of defrag apps you talk about...i care about my os being on the outer platter so it runs smoother

 

You will have to manually create a partition on the outer edges of a platter. The windows OS installer will not let you do that.

Grab yourself a linux-based partition manager that can speak ntfs. Most of them can these days.

rough layout. from the physical to the logical to the file data

disk drive -> platter -> partition -> filesystem -> file data

The fragmentation you are worried about happens at the filesystem and file data level.

Once a partition is set up, the filesystems are created inside the partition. Any filesystem 'scattering' of disk files will be contained to the partition.

Another thing to worry about is the tendency of modern disk drives to toss another level of virtualization/abstraction at the head/track/sector/platter. This is done to manage bad sector reassignments. You are going to need to read up on the technical specifics of your disk drives to see how they handle bad sector reassignment/remapping. If your drive is really aggressive about it, then there may be no way to set up partitions that are guaranteed to use any particular region of the disk drive.

Most disk drives these days have one or two active platters each with a read/write head. But to maintain compatibility with the widest possible number of disk controllers, operating systems, and filesystems, the disk drive will emulate up to 8 platters with 16 emulated read/write heads. In the face of that kind of emulation, how can you be sure where your data really resides on the drive?

This is one of many reasons why the makers of big disk arrays (EMC, NetApp, IBM, Hitachi) all write their own firmware for disk drives. It lets them manage the placement of data on the disk platters just like in the olden-days.

Yes, what you want to do might not be possible. At all. The only way to be sure is to read the documentation on your disk drives and learn a lot about partition managers and filesystems.

It's a lot more complicated than you anticipated.

 

so than what he said about the first partition always being on the outer part is not true?

 

On a brand new, perfectly functional disk it is true on a very simple level. However, if you had a bad sector, the hard drive will remap that sector to spare space that can be located outside of the physical partition concept. Bad sectors rarely occur one at a time, so a small block will probably get moved. You cannot access that space by traditional means. It exists to compensate for the occasional bad sector in an otherwise flawless drive.

The Windows OS installer is a little to dumb to let you control partitioning the way you'd like. It's better to use a partition like GParted to set up the partitions before starting the install process. You can control partitioning down to the physical attributes in GParted once you dig into it.

 

It's true enough. The first partition will be on the outer part of the disk drive as it is seen (this is important!) by the windows installer. But the windows installer just doesn't know or care about the layers of emulation and virtualization that are in place below what it 'sees' as the disk drive.

And for 99/100 (999/1000??) of people and users, this is good enough. Understand that what you want to do is well beyond what ordinary users and a lot of enterprise/corporate users want to do. The good news is that, assuming that you understand your disk drive and the filesystem, it is a lot easier to do with one disk drive than with many.

At the enterprise level and with the kind of storage used there, disk arrays can be set up to deliberately provide storage that is pre-placed in certain disk regions. Then the OS (or database or whatever) is loaded. But even that kind of config flexibility is going away. Some disk arrays have 2000 and more disk drives all linked up. How do you guarantee placement of data on specific disk regions when you are running multiple raid arrays scattered across so many disk drives?? Now multiply that complexity by the constant replacement of individual drives as they fail and multiply again by real and virtual raid arrays as they get rebuilt.

Not enough people are aware of or talk about all of the virtualization/abstraction layers that have slipped into modern higher performance hardware including disk drives.

Disk drive tech at the hardware, controller, and driver level has changed a lot in the past 18 months. And over the next 18 it will change again once the price of high-speed long-life flash memory comes down. At that point we can finally stop worrying about inner-middle-outer issues. But we will have to worry about all kinds of new issues not the least of which is the life expectancy of individual memory cells and whatever disk interface will replace sata and sas.

The problem is not that tech changes, it's that people have a huge tendency to hold on to old information and try to apply it to modern systems. And once 'config guides' are published on the 'net, they stay there.

There is always a lot to learn and re-learn.

 

so than lets say i back up my windows how would i back it up and do this partition stuff. My 2 hardrives are the exact same so could i just take my second hardrive make the 40/280 partitions and migrate my OS to the 40gig on the second drive? BTW i would have set this thing up in raid but this laptop does not have raid controls grrrr ^^


EDIT: plus rep for all

 

The hard part is getting the partitions physically laid out (and it's not all that hard). Once that is done, it's just drive letters.

I wouldn't bother with trying to transfer an OS image from one disk to another. Win7 installs so damned fast that it's hardly worth the hassle. Just use your original disk as a source and fail-safe backup as you get things laid out on the new disk.

Go get yourself a usb to sata/pata adapter cable like this one: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0315702. Costs about $20-. You can boot your laptop from one of the linux distros like clonezilla or gpartd or pmagic and practice setting up partitions on your spare drive without being destructive to your primary drive. Once you're happy with how things get set up, commit yourself to the changes........

 

like i said i got 2 320 gig hardrives in my laptop. so i will just make the second drive be 40/280 since its empty than how to i migrate my windows to the 40 gig partition? than i'll wipe the first drive and just pull them out and switch them

 

I use an Apricorn version of the same, makes life so easy.

Clone it. But imo, takes too long to clean up to be worth it. Do a clean install. Your AppData and Program Files will be in shambles if you try to extricate the programs from the OS. It takes about as long to install Windows and all your drivers/programs as it does to hunt down leftover files. 40 might be a bit tight for Win7, but it could work. Not much overhead though.

 

its 32 gig now and i already reinstalled windows 5 days ago :/ took 3 days to reinstall everything....took 3 days to install all my steam games. Is it possible to lets say make an iomage of my windows or a back up and than transfer it or lets say install windows and than load the image on it? i already reinstalled like 40 programs and i really dont want to have to re d/l my steam stuff....165gig of games is a

 

You could take a look at O&O Defrag: With it's Zone Defragmentation method it gives you a very significant amount of control over where files are placed. Essentially, it divides up the partition (or whole drive, if you omly have one partition) into three zones, and you can decide which zone you want what folders to go into. It takes quite a bit of thought, though, to tweak this approach to your own purposes, and the program isn't free. Apart from that, however, this would probably come closest to what you want, while still giving you the flexibility that comes with not having to have fixed partition sizes.

 

thx prix i'll check into that and i'll just reinstall windows to D and remove drive and replace it to C slot in drive...sucks i just finished installing everything...took days lol. I'll do it on a 96 lol. Maybe thanks giving 96 lol.

EDIT:my drives have like 30ish bad sectors from my last look at S.M.A.R.T.