Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or 500
GB. drive. My system may be a bit slow but the difference in time is
very large (maybe 10 times longer). The cluster size on all my hard
drives is 4KB.

Is it because the NTFS indexes and other system software are so big that
they need a significant amount of processor and I/O time?

As the 1000 Gb fills up will it start to get sluggish? I don't want two
500 GB drives but I'll do that if it prevents a problem.

This is the CHKDSK data:

976751968 KB total disk space.
36065140 KB in 19106 files.
5144 KB in 725 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
154888 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
940526796 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
244187992 total allocation units on disk.
235131699 allocation units available on disk.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, sandot
says...
>
> Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or 500
> GB. drive.

No ****. I'd have never have guessed that.

> My system may be a bit slow but the difference in time is
> very large (maybe 10 times longer). The cluster size on all my hard
> drives is 4KB.
>
Well there you go then. It's got a lot to check.

> As the 1000 Gb fills up will it start to get sluggish?

Yes, the same as any other drive.
> I don't want two
> 500 GB drives but I'll do that if it prevents a problem.
>
It won't.



--
Conor
www.notebooks-r-us.co.uk
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't
looking good either. - Scott Adams

On Jul 30, 3:15*pm, "Ato_Zee" <ato_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or 500
> > > GB. drive.
>
> Get an Intel Extreme processor, up the pagefile, and if it
> is like my 1TB, it is the large files like DVD .iso's that
> slow up the defrag. Not that defrag makes much difference
> to performance.
> With a decent defrag utility there will be a scheduler,
> so run it overnight once a month.
> You don't say how long it takes, and is it a USB
> external, or connected by mobo SATA?
> With a C:\ OS and D:\ data, defrag of D:\ can run
> in the background, with no apparent performance
> hit.
> What you need to worry about is when it goes
> tits up, without a backup.
> I use two different utilities, True Image for the
> OS, Fileback for D:\ data, onto another 1TB.

Many people say that defrag on NTFS is not required.

Personally, I think it has a place, but a fairly long way down the
priority list. Once every month or two sounds about right, and I
doubt you will spot the difference in speed. I agree with Ato_Zee on
this point.

In my experence, the files that become most fragmented are incremental
logs. Large files (GB files) can also become quite fragmented as well.

Ato_Zee also mentioned what happens when the disk 'fails' A good back
up must be stage 1,2,3 and 4, but from a recovery point of view, a
defraged disk is always much easier.

Michael

www.cnwrecovery.com

On 13:13 30 Jul 2009, Conor wrote:

> On 12:56 30 Jul 2009, sandot wrote:
>
>> Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or
>> 500 GB. drive. My system may be a bit slow but the difference in
>> time is very large (maybe 10 times longer). The cluster size on
>> all my hard drives is 4KB.
>>
>> Is it because the NTFS indexes and other system software are so big
>> that they need a significant amount of processor and I/O time?
>>
>> As the 1000 Gb fills up will it start to get sluggish? I don't
>> want two 500 GB drives but I'll do that if it prevents a problem.
>>
>> This is the CHKDSK data:
>>
>> 976751968 KB total disk space.
>
> 36065140 KB in 19106 files.
> 5144 KB in 725 indexes.
> 0 KB in bad sectors.
> 154888 KB in use by the system.
> 65536 KB occupied by the log file.
> 940526796 KB available on disk.
>
> 4096 bytes in each allocatio>n unit.
> 244187992 total allocation units >on disk. 235131699 allocation
> units available on disk.

> No ****. I'd have never have guessed that.
>
> Well there you go then. It's got a lot to check.
>
> Yes, the same as any other drive.
>
> It won't.


Thank you for your views. I think the stats may have been unclear. Only
30 GB of the 1000 GB drive has been used.

"976751968 KB total disk space"
means there's a total of 976,751,968 KB on the drive.

"940526796 KB available on disk"
means 940,526,796 KB free space.

The barely used 1000 GB drive is still much slower to defrag than a much
fuller 200 MB or 500 GB drive.

Larc wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:56:06 +0100, sandot <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>
>> Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or
>> 500 GB. drive. My system may be a bit slow but the difference in
>> time is very large (maybe 10 times longer). The cluster size on all
>> my hard drives is 4KB.
>>
>> Is it because the NTFS indexes and other system software are so big
>> that they need a significant amount of processor and I/O time?
>>
>> As the 1000 Gb fills up will it start to get sluggish? I don't want
>> two 500 GB drives but I'll do that if it prevents a problem.
>
> You have only one partition on the drive? That's like having one
> huge drawer in your house that you keep everything you own in.

Nope, nothing like. We have a funky computer thingo that keeps track of
where everything is in the case of the drive that isnt available with the drawer.

Makes a hell of a lot more sense to organise by folder tree than partition with a drive.

Larc wrote
> Rod Speed <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote
>> Larc wrote:
>>> sandot <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote

>>>> Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or
>>>> 500 GB. drive. My system may be a bit slow but the difference in
>>>> time is very large (maybe 10 times longer). The cluster size on
>>>> all my hard drives is 4KB.

>>>> Is it because the NTFS indexes and other system software are so big
>>>> that they need a significant amount of processor and I/O time?

>>>> As the 1000 Gb fills up will it start to get sluggish? I don't
>>>> want two 500 GB drives but I'll do that if it prevents a problem.

>>> You have only one partition on the drive? That's like having one
>>> huge drawer in your house that you keep everything you own in.

>> Nope, nothing like. We have a funky computer thingo that keeps track
>> of where everything is in the case of the drive that isnt available
>> with the drawer.

>> Makes a hell of a lot more sense to organise by folder tree than partition with a drive.

> Precisely the same management functions are available for smaller partitions.

Wrong. There is no management function that dynamically
adjusts the size of the separate partitions so that they are
big enough for the contents as the contents change over time.

> Plus that would help solve the OP's principal complaint.

You dont know that either. You dont know that that particular
drive wouldnt be just as slow with multiple partitions.

And defragging makes no sense with modern 1TB drives anyway.

chrisv wrote
> Ron Speed wrote
>> Larc wrote:

>>> You have only one partition on the drive? That's like having one
>>> huge drawer in your house that you keep everything you own in.

>> Nope, nothing like.

> Yep. Something like.

Nope, nothing like.

>> We have a funky computer thingo that keeps track of where everything
>> is in the case of the drive that isnt available with the drawer.

>> Makes a hell of a lot more sense to organise by folder tree than partition with a drive.

> Wrong, in many people's situations

Wrong, not one.

> and opinions, and that's all that counts, for them.

The opinion of fools who cant grasp the basics is completely irrelevant.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage chrisv <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Ron Speed wrote:

>>Larc wrote:
>>>
>>> You have only one partition on the drive? That's like having one
>>> huge drawer in your house that you keep everything you own in.
>>
>>Nope, nothing like.

> Yep. Something like.

Good analogy. Actually disk defragging has aspects of a packing problem,
i.e. how to pack the files best with the least moves. These problems
have no fast solutions and approximations will also either grow in
effort much more strongly than linear.

>>We have a funky computer thingo that keeps track of
>>where everything is in the case of the drive that isnt available with the drawer.
>>
>>Makes a hell of a lot more sense to organise by folder tree than partition with a drive.

> Wrong, in many people's situations and opinions, and that's all that
> counts, for them.

It does make sense to organize by both. UNder Unix/Linux doing it
that way is standard, as you can have symbolic links that seamlessly
(well mostly) hook one tree into another across partitions. MS has
overlooked this invention for a few decades and stuck to the
histroic and very, very outdated concept of "drive letters".
(Stupid? Incompetent?) The easiest way under Windows is indeed
separate partitions.

Arno

On 31 Jul 2009 18:35:21 GMT, Arno wrote:

> MS has
> overlooked this invention for a few decades and stuck to the
> histroic and very, very outdated concept of "drive letters".

Arno, you appear to be outdated. NT-derived versions of Windows have had
the ability to mount drives and folder trees into other folder trees since
Windows 2000 - maybe earlier. Try searching on "mount drive as folder ntfs"
in Google.

Arno wrote:
> In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage chrisv <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>> Ron Speed wrote:
>
>>> Larc wrote:
>>>>
>>>> You have only one partition on the drive? That's like having one
>>>> huge drawer in your house that you keep everything you own in.
>>>
>>> Nope, nothing like.
>
>> Yep. Something like.

> Good analogy.

Lousy one, actually. You dont have folders/directorys in a drawer.

> Actually disk defragging has aspects of a packing problem,
> i.e. how to pack the files best with the least moves. These
> problems have no fast solutions and approximations will
> also either grow in effort much more strongly than linear.

Not relevant to the OP's problem with only 30GB on a 1TB drive.

>>> We have a funky computer thingo that keeps track of
>>> where everything is in the case of the drive that isnt available
>>> with the drawer.
>>>
>>> Makes a hell of a lot more sense to organise by folder tree than
>>> partition with a drive.
>
>> Wrong, in many people's situations and opinions, and that's all that
>> counts, for them.

> It does make sense to organize by both.

Nope, no point in farting around with mulitiple partitions with Win.

Too hard to get the sizes right initially, because the size needed
changes over time and too dangerous to resize partitions without
a full backup which that level of user hardly ever has.

> UNder Unix/Linux doing it that way is standard, as you can have symbolic links that seamlessly
> (well mostly) hook one tree into another across partitions. MS has
> overlooked this invention for a few decades and stuck to the
> histroic and very, very outdated concept of "drive letters".

Hasnt been like that with Win for a hell of a long time now, since 2K.

> (Stupid? Incompetent?) The easiest way under Windows is indeed separate partitions.

Wrong. By far the easiest is folder trees in a single partition.

That way the free space isnt scattered across the
partitions and the no folder can ever run out of space.