John Kelly -OT- Perfect Disk

[Guest]

John,

I've taken your advice in the past and ordered Perfect Disk which has done a
great job in defragging my free space. For MM purposes I usually keep free at
least 30GB of my 60GB drive for capturing etc. When I'm done I move all my
movies/clips to the backup larger drive.

After running PD last night (its been awhile), I noticed I have a large MFT
zone out in the free space, which I never noticed before. Previously PD would
create one large continuous free space. I don't know if thats actually
occupied space or just allocated space. Can you give me any insight into the
MFT zone? Should I run PD again?

Thanks,
Steve

 

[John Kelly]

Hello,

Yes, MFT...would you believe it is a defect in XP. I too came across it
and tried my best to bring it down and failed (almost)

I did some reading and discover that XP can tidy up but cannot remove
redundent entries. The theory is that it should re-use old entries I
guess....pity it does not.

My MFT became huge and represented about 12GB on a 40GB C drive which is
quite bad (yours is worse than mine)...I formatted another 40GB drive and
did a copy across (I did a clone but I can't remember what I used!!!)
anyway, it all worked well.

Once I solved my problem I did not look further. What I read though
indicated that XP cannot of itself reduce the size of the table...poor show
I say.

When the software arrives I am moving to the 64bit version of XP which I
am told is really Server 2003 (lets hope things improve with that) I can try
and find the document I read for you if you wish to read it. I will post it
on my website.

Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org

Trruthfully, I am not an INSTANT EXPERT

 

[John Kelly]

Hello again,

I may have found a solution...check out this link

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prkc_fil_xhpo.asp

it sounds quite interesting

Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org

Truly, I am not an Instant Expert

 

[John Kelly]

Hello again,

I have just found a section on Registry entries. It states that you can
increase the size but NOT decrease the size to less than XP has calculated.
Interestingly it implies that if your files need space XP will allow them to
use free space inside the table. The more I read the more it sounds like a
badly conceived format/method. Here is the relevent text

The default MFT zone is calculated and reserved by the system when it mounts
the volume, and is based on volume size. You can increase the MFT zone by
means of the registry entry detailed in Microsoft Knowledge Base Article
174619, but you cannot make the default MFT zone smaller than what is
calculated. Increasing the MFT zone does not decrease the disk space that
users can use for data files.

and here is the link to the page if you want it...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/fileio/fs/master_file_table.asp

Best Wishes....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org

No, I am not an Instant Expert.

 

[Guest]

John,

Thanks for the replies. I would not call my self extremely computer savvy,
so I tend to be quite conservative with anything I do on the PC. Perfect Disk
claims it will try to reduce the MFT zone down to about 50MB (if I remember
the help file correctly), but it seems like your experience says otherwise.
Are you also saying that this zone is still available for files, that it is
still considered usable space? Is there a way to tell how big the MFT zone
is? You say yours was some 12GB but I can't tell how big mine is. I do know
its now out in the free space where it wasn't before. Don't know why it
moved.

I'll take a look at a few of the links you sent. If you have any other short
term suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks again,
Steve

 

[John Kelly]

Hello,

Thanks for the replies. I would not call my self extremely computer savvy,
so I tend to be quite conservative with anything I do on the PC. Perfect
Disk
claims it will try to reduce the MFT zone down to about 50MB (if I
remember
the help file correctly), but it seems like your experience says
otherwise.

Yes you are right...in fact I have it set to defragment all drives
during the boot period....its slow the first time you do it afterwards
fairly quick...maybe 15 - 20 seconds for three drives and as I am in no
great rush I can afford to wait that much when powering up. It only defrags
the system files during that particular process. I do an online defrag of C
and D: every day (D has some databases on it) and I defrag E as and when I
think I need to...its very fast and is a 250GB drive and I am fortunate to
have them all on a fast machine. I had forgotten all about that feature even
though I see it happen every time I turn it on.

Are you also saying that this zone is still available for files, that it
is
still considered usable space? Is there a way to tell how big the MFT zone
is? You say yours was some 12GB but I can't tell how big mine is. I do
know
its now out in the free space where it wasn't before. Don't know why it
moved.

Thats the way I read it. If I were you I would do an Offline
Deefrag...It actually does it the next time you boot if its the C drive. It
will attempt to do it there and then for the other drives but to do that it
must have exclusive use of the drive and as thats not always possible it
tells you it will do that drive on the next boot sequence.

You can find the size of any file using PD, but you need to know its ID
number. You can work out approx size for the system files by taking the
value for each cell..which is obviously different for each size of hard
drive and multiply it by the number of cells occupied. The table lends
itself to this method bewcause of the way/place it is displayed in PD

I'll take a look at a few of the links you sent. If you have any other
short
term suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

No, your mention of the 50MB reduction reminded me of the best way to do
it...offline defrag....here is one more way of increasing performance ....

I store my pagefile on drive D. It being used for a databse which might not
be accessed by me for several days at a time. I also disable the page file
on Drive C. Because of this XP is forced to use Drive D for storage and that
makes the system a little faster. Would you believe that XP does not delete
the file PAGEFILE.SYS ??? so you have to change the view options to reveal
it and then you can delete it....you can retrieve a lot of space on drive C
and that will have a small positive effect on performance.

Best Wishes.....Jhn Kelly
www.the-kellys.org

Guv, I keep telling you, I am not an Instant Expert...Honest !!

 

[Guest]

Thanks again John. Just so I am sure on this, Offline defrag is a defrag at
boot up?? I assume there is a check box in PD to do this. I am not at my home
PC, so I am just trying to get all possible info before I head home.

Steve

 

[John Kelly]

Hello,

Thanks again John. Just so I am sure on this, Offline defrag is a defrag
at
boot up?? I assume there is a check box in PD to do this. I am not at my
home
PC, so I am just trying to get all possible info before I head home.

The process when you first set it up is to determine if it can do it
right there and then...On drive C that is never true and it is always done
during the boot sequence.

On other drives it will look for something called as handle. It examines the
system iinfo and if it finds a handle to a file on the target drive it will
offer you the option of forcing a closure of all handles (connections to
the file) If you answer yes it will without considering what damage it may
cause close those handles...more on that in a moment. It will then perform
the defrag ONLINE...the result is exactly the same as if it did it offline
as far as I am aware.

If you tell it NO to the close all connection questions it will then ask if
you want it to happen at the next boot sequence. Answering Yes here is not
exactly the same as forcing an offline defrag at avery boot. Answering yes
will only cause it to happen once. (Click on the drive properties to select
defrag at every boot)

Handles. Most of us will know that Windows (of any flavour) can be a right
pain in the rear end when it comes to cleaning up behind itself. Temp files
that should have been removed when a program closes are not cleaned up
either due to proper termination of the program or the program itself does
not do any housekeeping, etc etc etc. For exactly the same type of reasons
your system can consider a file to be in use even when it is not....its
possible that it can believe a file is in use even if the file no longer
exists. Its easy then to see why Perfect Disk and the question about closing
all files is a two edged sword....if you tell it to close the links when
there should be none open, all will be fine. If on the other hand a program
is running that has not yet finished with that file answering Yes stands a
good chance of screwing up the data in that file.

For these reasons I always tell people to reboot twice. Its the same reason
why some programs tell you to close all other programs before
proceeding.....it may not be immediately obvious why....it can mean that
whatever that particular program is going to do it will result in files
being deleted or phyically moved or access is forced even though it should
be exclusive to some other program (databases mostly) You can dream up all
sorts of scenarios...and thats the final problem...there are a lot of
programs around, often free or very cheap, that were not put through a
process us old programmers refer to as Boiler Plating...the program knows
what to do in most if not all conceivable situations and will not just crash
when it can not deal with a problem....and finally thats why it is both
expensive and hard to get Microsoft Certification for a program....Perfect
Disk is the only program in this field that has that certification....even
though one MVP rubbished it and demonstrated he had not got a clue and had
not read the instructions on how to use it.

Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org

No, I keep telling you, I am NOT an Instant Expert

 

[Guest]

John,

Sorry to keep this OT thread going so long but the more you reply, I think
the more I'm getting uneasy. Look for my questions below.

The process when you first set it up is to determine if it can do it
right there and then...On drive C that is never true and it is always done
during the boot sequence.

I might be a little confused by this statement. With this computer (and my
previous), I always did a C: drive fragmentation right there. Are you saying
that even though the defrag tools (Perfect Disk, etc), show the defragged C:
drive, it wont be physically done until a reboot? I think thats what you
mean.

So far I haven't run into any handles situation. I'll tell you what I do.
Usually I do an "analyze" first. Then PD tells me I should usually do a
"Smart Placement" defrag which I assumed was just a live defrag right there
on the C: drive. I haven't done a defrag on my back up drive as of yet. I
have no programs on the other drive and I only back up files there. I think
I've seen it where it recommended a boot defrag but I haven't done that. But
is that what you are calling an offline defrag? Should I try that?

Perfect Disk has two options for defrag. Smart Placement and I forgot what
the other one is. Again I apologize for not being in front of the pc. Are you
saying you shouldn't do a "Smart Placement" on the C: drive? Should I choose
the second option. I am running version 7.0

Hopefully I can spend more time tonight with the help file and your comments.


Thanks for both the patience and help.
Steve

 

[John Kelly]

Hello,

I can see I have made the points in a confusing way...Sorry about
that...see my replies below.

I might be a little confused by this statement. With this computer (and my
previous), I always did a C: drive fragmentation right there. Are you
saying
that even though the defrag tools (Perfect Disk, etc), show the defragged
C:
drive, it wont be physically done until a reboot? I think thats what you
mean.

There are two types of Defrag one of which caan occur on-line (for some
drives) as well as offline (for all drives)

The first type is the standard defrag...it only ever occurs on-line..it
moves "your" files around gets rid of free space pockets etc. It DOES not do
anything with certain system files...Boot, Pagefile, MFT etc.

The second type is the one that defrags Boot, Pagefile etc. for drive C:
it can only be done off-line for other drives it can be done on or off line
dependent on you answering questions put to you by the program. An offline
defrag ONLY defrags the boot where it exists, pagefile where it exists and
MFT and Meta tables (Not certain about Meta files...doing this from memory)

So far I haven't run into any handles situation. I'll tell you what I do.
Usually I do an "analyze" first. Then PD tells me I should usually do a
"Smart Placement" defrag which I assumed was just a live defrag right
there
on the C: drive. I haven't done a defrag on my back up drive as of yet. I
have no programs on the other drive and I only back up files there. I
think
I've seen it where it recommended a boot defrag but I haven't done that.
But
is that what you are calling an offline defrag? Should I try that?

Most of the above you are refering to the type one defrag mentioned
above. A defrag of boot sector will improve your system speed very slightly
and is a type 2 or off-line defrag as desc ribed above

Perfect Disk has two options for defrag. Smart Placement and I forgot what
the other one is. Again I apologize for not being in front of the pc. Are
you
saying you shouldn't do a "Smart Placement" on the C: drive? Should I
choose
the second option. I am running version 7.0

Smart placement is an option within the type 1 or on-line defragment .
It has no effect in an offline defrag

Hopefully I can spend more time tonight with the help file and your
comments.

Go for it....the offline defrag on my system takes only a few
seconds...20 ish because it only defrags the files I mention above.....their
is a consequence that might not be immediately obvious...

In order to defrag the boot sector etc it will most probably have to
move files out of the way...nothing wrong with that. Those files will of
course be those that are normally defraged in an on-line session.....so when
you have completed your first off-line defrag of the system files you should
realy do an on-line defrag of the rest of the drive....because at least one
of "your" files will be in two or more pieces.

File Usage Placement....I use the smart placement option because I do not
want any free space pockets....BUT, thats a waste of time if "my" files are
placed in such a way as to cause those pockets of space to re-appear
straight away because my files are not ordered properly.....So, in the
options I have rarely modified set at 28 days and frequently modified set at
7....thats for drive C....you need to experiment a little (my educated
gueses were not all that educated) to find the best settings for you...your
objective is to have files that are rarely modified to appear at the start
of the disk....there will be less chances of pockets of space appearing at
the begining of the disk that way which means your drive heads will have
less distances to travel...its not an accident that the MFT table is located
in the middle of the drive...te shortest average distance is alwaays from
the middle of the drive....

Hope that clears things up...ifit has not do please ask for further
help...perhaps on my website in the common rooms.

Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org

I am pleased to report that there are no INSTANT EXPERTS in my house.