Speed Disk vs Defrag

  • Thread starter Thread starter JCO
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J

JCO

These do different things as far as keeping your harddrive tuned up. Defrag
removes all the pointers by putting entire programs or data together on the
harddrive (in sequence instead of scattered allover the HD). Speed Disk
(Norton) is suppose to reorder the data and stack it up front (sort of
speak) so that all the empty space is together.

If I understand this correctly (or close enough), it seems that you should
use both tools.
My question is this: Which tool is better to use first? Does it matter?
Can one tool undermine the other?

Thanks
 
use either one
at any time because
it "really" makes no
difference to the
"machine".

however, what i do
recommend is to ensure
you do a chkdsk to ensure
that the mft reconciles
with the file system,
before and after defrag-in.
 
JCO said:
These do different things as far as keeping your harddrive tuned up.
Defrag removes all the pointers by putting entire programs or data
together on the harddrive (in sequence instead of scattered allover the
HD). Speed Disk (Norton) is suppose to reorder the data and stack it up
front (sort of speak) so that all the empty space is together.

If I understand this correctly (or close enough), it seems that you
should use both tools.
My question is this: Which tool is better to use first? Does it
matter? Can one tool undermine the other?

Thanks
Click to expand...

First, IMO, the term defrag does not necessarily imply its going to
order anything. Defrag is just the process of joining all the segments
of a fragmented file into one file on contiguous sectors of the HD.
Not necessarily any special place. There are defraggers like O&O
defrag that I like that will let you order them by date used, date
created, name or just do a fast defrag filling holes.
I'm not sure if there is any logic to the built in version in XP.
And I truely can't talk about Norton.

So when you say Speed Disk does an ordering, and stacks it up front,
that's basically the same thing the internal XP one does, maybe not the
ordering, I don't know about XP's logic if any. It does pull all the
files forward (if you wish to use that term) and leaves the remainder of
the drive in the back. I do think however that XP's Defrag does hop
around the NTFS MFT files and any unmovable files. Norton might be
more bold and move a bit more. I've seen utilities that say they do
shuffle and rebuild the registry (which is normally unmovable) and MFT
area but I'm not sure I want those things moved on a running system anyway.

I think just running XP's defrag would suffice most system maintenance
plans.
 
Thanks very much for the info.
Issue with the XP Defrag then is that it will only do one drive (partition)
at a time. I have 8-partitions so it's nice to set them all to Defrag and
go to bed.
 
fyi:

speed disk actually
reorganizes the file
system.

if i recall, it moves
all the system files
to the beginning and
sorts them alphabetically.

but again it really doesn't
make a difference to the
machine because as
you say defrag is simply to
clump files together to
reduce disk access time.

i prefer the windows
defrag method myself.
 
I use Norton's Speed Disk (Version 2006) and it does provide an option to
order files by:
Files First, Files Last and Files at End.
But it takes a lot of trial and error to make these options worth using.

JS
 
JCO said:
These do different things as far as keeping your harddrive tuned up. Defrag
removes all the pointers by putting entire programs or data together on the
harddrive (in sequence instead of scattered allover the HD). Speed Disk
(Norton) is suppose to reorder the data and stack it up front (sort of
speak) so that all the empty space is together.

If I understand this correctly (or close enough), it seems that you should
use both tools.
My question is this: Which tool is better to use first? Does it matter?
Can one tool undermine the other?

Thanks
Click to expand...
Hello,
Do not know if one is better to use then the other.
It would seem using one then the other may be doing the job twice, just a
little differently.
There is a free program.
JKDeFrag
http://www.kessels.com/jkdefrag/
Smalll, easy to use.
It will defrag all drives and partitions.
take care.
beamish.
 
beamish said:
Hello,
Do not know if one is better to use then the other.
It would seem using one then the other may be doing the job twice, just a
little differently.
There is a free program.
JKDeFrag
http://www.kessels.com/jkdefrag/
Smalll, easy to use.
It will defrag all drives and partitions.
take care.
beamish.
Click to expand...


I thought that I had my hard drive defragged and everything working just
fine until I tried to save a document that I made a couple of changes on
while working in Microsoft Word, I got the following messages:

"Unrecoverable disk error on file ~WRL1246.tmp. The disk you are working on
has a media problem that prevents Word from using it."

Also: "Word cannot complete the save due to a file permission error." Since
I also lost the file in its entirety (it had previously been successfully
saved) I am guessing that these messages mean that I have a hard drive
problem and probably need to replace it.

Anyone have any other thoughts on the meaning of these error messages? Thanks.
 
What extra unwanted baggage comes with Speed Disk?


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Yes I understand that. I was referring to the pointers from the end of one
file to the fragmented file at another location (not cluster pointers).
Thanks
 
Leythos said:
My understanding is that file space is allocated in clusters, with
sectors being the smallest space in a cluster, that the File Table
allocates FILES to Clusters, so the unused space in a cluster is wasted.

The cluster points to the next cluster for files that span clusters, the
FAT only points to the first cluster that a file uses, the clusters
point to the next cluster.
Click to expand...

That is how it works with FAT/FAT32 but it doesn't work like that at all
with NTFS. On NTFS that information is all kept as attributes in the
MFT, the file system does not need to flip trough each individual
cluster to find the next one, it's all held in a Virtual Cluster Number
to Logical Cluster map (VCN-to-LCN) in the file's data attribute.

Reader may find the following articles informative:

INSIDE WINDOWS NT DISK DEFRAGMENTING
http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/Content/169/01/17.html

NTFS On-Disk Structure
http://book.itzero.com/read/microso...d.ebook-ddu_html/0735619174/ch12lev1sec6.html

John
 
John said:
That is how it works with FAT/FAT32 but it doesn't work like that at all
with NTFS. On NTFS that information is all kept as attributes in the
MFT, the file system does not need to flip trough each individual
cluster to find the next one, it's all held in a Virtual Cluster Number
to Logical Cluster map (VCN-to-LCN) in the file's data attribute.
Click to expand...

That sounds like a more sensible and robust approach, since you don't have
to go out and read all the disk clusters to find out where the next one is
(and pray that one of them isn't corrupt, breaking the chain).

I assume they didn't do this (or couldn't do something like this) for FAT32,
due to some inherent limitations tracing back to its legacy and
compatibility with FAT16? Like prhaps the limitations of using 16 bit
(i.e. two byte) words to store some of this data, or pointers to the data,
and all of this dating back to FAT16 and its legacy?
 
Leythos said:
There have been a number of times that I've experienced a partition or
drive that was deleted using disk manager, and I've been able to fully
recover all files - so unless it's caching the MFT someplace other than
the drive there must be some way to link each cluster to the next.
Click to expand...

No, NTFS does not "daisy-chain" clusters! It's all held in the file
attributes within the MFT. The MFT has a mirror for error
recoverability, the location of both of those is held in the boot
sector. In addition to those there is a log file that is used for file
recovery.

John
 
Bill said:
That sounds like a more sensible and robust approach, since you don't have
to go out and read all the disk clusters to find out where the next one is
(and pray that one of them isn't corrupt, breaking the chain).
Click to expand...

That is not really how it works, (on FAT) the clusters are daisy-chained
in the FAT, the operating system doesn't open successive clusters to
find out where the next one is, it reads that information in the FAT.
The first cluster information for the file is found in the Directory
entry and the other cluster information along with the last cluster is
read from the FAT. In any case, if a cluster in the chain is corrupt
the whole file is usually unreadable or corrupt anyway, chkdsk can
locate and try to repair these bad clusters but most of the time the
recovered clusters are of much use and the corrupt files are not easily,
if at all repairable.

John
 
These do different things as far as keeping your harddrive tuned up.
Defrag removes all the pointers by putting entire programs or data
together on the harddrive (in sequence instead of scattered allover
the HD). Speed Disk (Norton) is suppose to reorder the data and
stack it up front (sort of speak) so that all the empty space is
together.
If I understand this correctly (or close enough), it seems that you
should use both tools.
My question is this: Which tool is better to use first? Does it
matter? Can one tool undermine the other?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Since they use two different methodologies, each will cause the other to
have a lot of defrag work to do. In general, in my case at least, I've
found that Speed Disk gives me the longest lasting tiem between needs to
defrag. Run defrag multiple times and the latter times will go quickly;
same with speed disk. Run one then the other and you'll be waiting
every single time.

IF you have speed disk and it works well for you, especially if you use
any of its most useful features that defrag doesn't have, you're ahead
of the game. If you're "just a user" then it's not going to matter
much.

But, pick one and stay with it.

HTH
 
JCO said:
First, IMO, the term defrag does not necessarily imply its going to
order anything. Defrag is just the process of joining all the
segments of a fragmented file into one file on contiguous sectors of
the HD. Not necessarily any special place. There are defraggers like
O&O
defrag that I like that will let you order them by date used, date
created, name or just do a fast defrag filling holes.
I'm not sure if there is any logic to the built in version in XP.
And I truely can't talk about Norton.

So when you say Speed Disk does an ordering, and stacks it up front,
that's basically the same thing the internal XP one does, maybe not
the ordering, I don't know about XP's logic if any. It does pull all
the files forward (if you wish to use that term) and leaves the
remainder of the drive in the back. I do think however that XP's
Defrag does hop around the NTFS MFT files and any unmovable files.
Norton might be more bold and move a bit more. I've seen utilities
that say they do
shuffle and rebuild the registry (which is normally unmovable) and MFT
area but I'm not sure I want those things moved on a running system
anyway.
I think just running XP's defrag would suffice most system maintenance
plans.
Click to expand...

You're absolutely right; XPs defrag is fine and there's no reason to
avoid it. Speed Disk is a little better and does allow you to put your
choice of files first, middle, last, next to last, or combinations of
those, on the disk. For one who knows what files he works on the most
and which cause the most fragmantation to occur, those features can be
very handy. Those same features in the hands of a non-thinking
inxperienced person though can slow the machine down as much or more
than normal fragmentation does. Example: Putting all Word docs on the
outer tracks and all temp and .BAK docs on the inner tracks just outside
the system area, would cause a LOT of disk seeking/thrashing every time
you press a key! So, it's like most other things; use your head and
know what they do, then follow the mfgr's advice wherever possible
unless you are certain you know better.

HTH
 
JCO" wrote in said:
Use the Task Scheduler for that. That's what I do. Schedule an event
to run the defrag once per month on each partition. Do NOT have them
all running at the same time. For 8 partitions, have them scheduled
(only an example):

defrag c: - 1st MON of the month
defrag d: - 1st TUE of the month
defrag e: - 1st WED of the month
defrag f: - 1st THU of the month
defrag g: - 1st FRI of the month
defrag h: - 1st SAT of the month
defrag i: - 2nd SUN of the month
defrag j: - 2nd MON of the month

Have them scheduled to run at, like, 3AM in the morning. Of course,
you could write a batch file that used the 'for' command to walk
through a series of drive letters and on each loop run the defrag.exe
with that drive letter as its parameter, and you could even schedule
a single event in Task Scheduler to run that batch file. Depends on
how convoluted you want to go: simple with lots of scheduled event,
or more complicated with a single schedule event.
Click to expand...

But speed disk will do all that pretty much automagically for you. And
monthly isn't always a good schedule. Some drives need it more often,
others less often.
I find it very useful, actually, the way SD implement it.
Unfortunately I'm a video editor so the amount of fragmentation can
be pretty important to me when I have to defrag a drive two or sometimes
three times in a day (after each session) to keep things zipping along.
Once you get used to it, speed disk can work faster and more efficiently
than defrag but, like I said, defrag is also perfectly acceptable when
it's what you have available.
I also find that defragging in the background adds a lot of time
between needing defrags, too. Speed Disk implemented that well and you
never notice it having to pause anything so you can start using the
system again. The inactive period before background defrag kicks in is
also adjustable.
And with either method, it's important to know how to tell whether
you really need to defrag or not. If the fragments are in files you
never use, the defrag can still wait, for example. And I didn't mean to
say schedules arean't useful; they definitely ARE, and monthly is a good
middle of the road schedule to keep the defragging times reasonable.
The more fragmented a drive becomes, the longer it takes to defrag it;
especially the larger drives if you have partitions over say 80 Gig.
For this and other easons I try to keep my partitions at 40 to 80 Gigs
each.

HTH
 
says...

Actually, the pointers remain, that's how the file system works, each
cluster points to the next in line for the file to continue.

What Defrag attempts to do is make the FILE contiguous so that the r/w
heads don't waste time seeking across disk space without reading.

Fragmented file (F = File) . = some other file
FFF...F......FFFFFFFFF.....FFFF

Defragmented
....FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.......

Defragmenting does not always include PACKING the files against each
other.
Click to expand...

Also true; and that's another method of minimizing frequency of degrags
too.
 
What extra unwanted baggage comes with Speed Disk?
Not sure what you mean; none that I know of. But Speed Disk isn't I
don't think, availalble as a standalone. It's part of several other
packages that make up Norton, namely SystemWorks.
 
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