Still Defragging

I

Inglo

Way overkill. The only time you should ever really need to defrag is
after a big application purging session. Failing that, once every
couple of weeks IMO.

I use a program called Perfect Disk, it's set to run defrag every
morning at 4 am, if there isn't anything to defrag or if fragmentation
level hasn't reached a certain point it doesn't do anything.
 
J

JLC

Trout said:
NTFS doesn't fragment as much as FAT32. I only defrag about once a
month or after uninstalling/installing lots of games.

For me it's the opposite. When I used to run FAT I only had to defrag twice
a month. With NTSC my drives get heavy fragmented in one week. If you
install or deal with large files NTFS fragments just as bad or worse then
FAT32.
JLC
 
S

Son of Blahguy

BAMMO said:
I forgot to check that before I started, but I remember my last attempt
was
more than a month ago and it failed because I didn't scandisk first.
Before
that, probably August. I've been installing/uninstalling crap like crazy
too.


Yup, I've gotten mixed information as to the hazards and benefits of third
party defraggers.


Windows defrag is usually fast enough. Usually it defrags this drive in an
hour or two. I'll have a look at that program though. Cheers.

It was very discouraging to finally get HL2 installed and playable, only
to
see corrupted textures everywhere. If the defrag doesn't work I'll try
reinstalling. If that doesn't work, I give up for now.

The more often you defrag the less time it takes. Mine rarely takes more
than 30 minutes for 40 GB drive.
Didn't catch what OS you were using, but you can do other things in XP while
it defrags (Pro at least)
 
P

Patrick Vervoorn

I did try changing drivers. Problem exists no matter which drivers I use.

The textures have to be fetched from the HD. They exist inside large
archived files (The HL2 archive file is almost 1GB), and so I'm guessing
that certain textures inside the archive file are broken up across my HD,
and so the HD is failing to retrieve the entire texture file when it's
called.

Total nonsense. If this is happening, no amount of defragging is going to
help because your harddrive has faulty sectors. If you think _that_ is the
case, you should go to the website of the manufacturer of your Harddrive,
and download a 'check' utility there, and do a complete scan of your
harddrive.

A fragmented partitition might cause longer load times for HL2 levels, but
not missing/damaged textures.

Good luck and best regards,

Patrick.
 
S

SteveK

BAMMO said:
I'm hoping that this defrag allows me to play HL2 without pink and black
checkerboard textures everywhere. Longest defrag I've ever done: After 11
hours, I'm at 87%. It's only a 40gb drive... guess it'll be another hour
and a half.

There is a large thread at driverhaven forum about that - many people having
the same or similar problems. Many fix this problem by disabling Catalyst's
AI
 
T

Trout

For me it's the opposite. When I used to run FAT I only had to defrag twice
a month. With NTSC my drives get heavy fragmented in one week. If you
install or deal with large files NTFS fragments just as bad or worse then
FAT32.
JLC
That's not what MS says about NTFS.
 
T

Trout

LOL!! That's a good one!
Maybe you need to do some homework, hmmm?

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/ntfs/relFrag-c.html
The NTFS file system handles the storage of files and directories in a
very different way than the FAT file system does. FAT is a very
simple, and relatively "unintelligent" file system, that pays little
attention to how much fragmentation will result from how it operates.
In contrast, NTFS is smarter about how it manages the storage of data.
For example, NTFS reserves space for the expansion of the Master File
Table, reducing fragmentation of its structures. Overall,
fragmentation is less of a concern in NTFS than it is under FAT.

The superior disk management capabilities of NTFS mean that
fragmentation is reduced compared to FAT. Unfortunately, this led to a
popular myth--that NTFS volumes have no fragmentation, and therefore
never need defragmentation. Microsoft unwittingly exacerbated this
problem by not providing any utility to defragment NTFS partitions in
Windows NT, implying that defragmentation was unnecessary. But this is
simply not the case: NTFS partitions definitely are subject to
fragmentation. Many users of NTFS have never defragmented their
partitions at all, leading to avoidable performance slowdowns over
time.
 
J

JLC

Trout said:
Maybe you need to do some homework, hmmm?
I already know all that about NTFS. What I'm telling you is that on my
machine, which has both FAT32 & NTFS, NTFS fragmentes just as bad or worse
then FAT32. Plus if NTFS is such a great file system why is FAT32 the
default for XP Home? JLC
 
D

Denston Degare

I already know all that about NTFS. What I'm telling you is that on my
machine, which has both FAT32 & NTFS, NTFS fragmentes just as bad or worse
then FAT32.

You are misreading what you are seeing.
Plus if NTFS is such a great file system why is FAT32 the
default for XP Home? JLC

It isn't. NTFS is.
 
J

JLC

Denston Degare said:
You are misreading what you are seeing.


It isn't. NTFS is.
No it's not. XP Home defaults to FAT32. XP Pro default to NTFS. Check MS
site, you'll find out for yourself. JLC
 
S

Son of Blahguy

JLC said:
No it's not. XP Home defaults to FAT32. XP Pro default to NTFS. Check MS
site, you'll find out for yourself. JLC

I think it depends on the size of the disk it is being installed on.
Over 32 GB usually NTFS is selected.
 
D

Denston Degare

No it's not. XP Home defaults to FAT32. XP Pro default to NTFS. Check MS
site, you'll find out for yourself. JLC
Anytime I've installed XP Home it's always wanted to format with NTFS.
As the other person says it may have to do with disk/partition size.
XP Home also recommends converting your FAT partitons to NTFS so I
really don't know why you would ever see it want to use FAT32. When I
first used XP I stuck with FAT32 but I now use NTFS exclusively.
 
P

pickle

BAMMO said:
I'm hoping that this defrag allows me to play HL2 without pink and black
checkerboard textures everywhere. Longest defrag I've ever done: After 11
hours, I'm at 87%. It's only a 40gb drive... guess it'll be another hour and
a half.

That won't solve the problem. Your hard drive is going up.
No way it should take 11 hours to defrag a 40gb drive.
 
A

Andrew

That won't solve the problem. Your hard drive is going up.
No way it should take 11 hours to defrag a 40gb drive.

The old 5200RPM drives could take ages to defrag with Win9x, I would
leave them to run overnight. I agree it won't solve the problem
though.
 
D

DaveL

I have to agree with the previous poster. 11 hours is too long. You might
have something else going wrong. Kill all processes and apps and do a full
scan disk. Then retry the defrag.

DaveL
 
T

Tweek

pickle said:
That won't solve the problem. Your hard drive is going up.
No way it should take 11 hours to defrag a 40gb drive.

It was just really, really fragmented. Since running that long one, I can
defrag the drive in about 1/2 hour. It' a 7200 RPM Maxtor Quantum.

It didn't solve the problem, but I fixed it by deleting local content and
allowing Steam to re-acquire (sp?) it.
 

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