Why a dumbed down version of defrag ?

[James]

Hello people,

any one know the reason why microsoft had dumbed down DEFRAG ??

 

[Jeff]

Laziness
Jeff

 

[Jill Zoeller [MSFT]]

If you want a little background on the design decisions made for Vista's
defrag, see our blog at
https://blogs.technet.com/filecab/archive/tags/Disk+Defragmenter/default.aspx.

You might find the FAQ useful, as well as the recent chat transcript.

 

[Jeff]

Sorry Jill,
Lotsa people don't like that decision though,
Sorry bout the comment.
Jeff

 

[Jill Zoeller [MSFT]]

No worries--it's not the first time it's come up! A given design won't
always make 100% of users happy, and there are alternatives out there for
folks who like a full-featured graphical defrag. Myself, I like the fact
that I never have to worry about running defrag. And though you might think
I'm biased, it's the truth.



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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Want to learn more about Windows Server file and storage technologies? Visit
our team blog at http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/default.aspx.

 

[Jeff]

Jill,
A quote from the chat; if I may;
"Good question. As far as the user experience changes are concerned, the
decision to simplify the user interface came as a result of usability
research that we did accross various types of users (advanced to novice). "
This is one where your research is wrong.
Lots of people want the UI.
Jeff

 

[Jeff]

Jill,
Sorry bout the last post;I posted it before your response.
But; still stand on the issue. LOTS of people do want the UI.
Personally I use command line if I feel I want to override auto defrag;but
then again;people like to see pretty colors.
Jeff

 

[Guest]

I was just about to ask about this till I found the post. An option to show
the graphical rep. of the drive would be nice tho. I think that for the
business and IT users the one in XP was more professional looking. I am gonna
go read that faq\blog that was posted tho before I say anymore.

 

[James]

Hello, thank for the link ;-) i understand why now...

i have just tested the command line who is great ;-)

cya ;-)

 

[Robert Moir]

Jill,
Sorry bout the last post;I posted it before your response.
But; still stand on the issue. LOTS of people do want the UI.
Personally I use command line if I feel I want to override auto
defrag;but then again;people like to see pretty colors.

I think some kind of progress bar / percentage counter would be very
important, but as for the pretty colours, if you want to see a pretty
picture on your screen that has little to no relation with what is actually
happening while your computer is defragging, why not just watch a DVD?

 

[Jill Zoeller [MSFT]]

The problem is that it's very difficult to judge progress. I'm pasting the
answer from our FAQ (http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/pages/440717.aspx)
below:

Why was the defrag progress indicator removed?
Part of the problem with the Windows XP defrag tool was that percent
complete was not accurate or meaningful. Depending on the phase of defrag,
1% of progress could take from several seconds to minutes, which made the
progress indicator highly unreliable. The difficulty here is that since
defrag is a multi-pass process (multiple iterations of file defragmentation
and free space consolidation) there is no way to accurately predict when
defrag will complete since the number of loop iterations and how long each
takes are highly dependent on the layout of the files on the volume, the
level of file and free space fragmentation, and the other system activity.
While I agree that having no progress is bad, misleading progress I believe
is worse. Also, the idea behind the new automated defrag is that users will
not have to think about it not worry about the progress it is making. With
defrag running regularly, the system will be close to optimal levels of
fragmentation, and subsequent defrag runs should not take long.

 

[Robert Moir]

The problem is that it's very difficult to judge progress. I'm
pasting the answer from our FAQ
(http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/pages/440717.aspx) below:

Yep, I've seen the FAQ. I agree with the "While I agree that having no
progress is bad, misleading progress I believe is worse." comment totally. I
still lament the absence of a progress bar, even though I understand that it
was forced upon you rather than something that you 'just left out'.

 

[Guest]

Thank you for the information. I have been letting Vista's defrag run for
hours and I went back to XP and run my Diskeeper Pro and my system seems to
fly. I was afraid to run defrag from XP until I read the blog.

 

[Robert Blacher]

First, thank you so much for participating in this newsgroup. Whether we
agree with every design decision in Vista or not --- and that would be an
impossible goal --- it's a pleasure to hear them explained lucidly.

A question and a couple of comments:

(1) The default disk defrag schedule in task manager uses an -I switch which
is not documented when you run defrag -?. I am guessing it means "(I)dle"
mode -- I.e. don't run unless computer is idling or give back as much CPU as
possible. ?????

(2) The comments: I liked being fooled by the old progress indicator (lol)
or at least seeing a map of defrag running. We all KNEW the estimates were
hopeless! But, it was comforting to watch the fragments move around --
well, mesmerizing maybe. Maybe for Service Pack 2 (whenever) you can add
back some kind of visual interface for those of us who want to see it.
Download Auslogic's disk defragger (free -- I'm sure MSFT could get it for a
song! ) On top of the MS defrag engine, that would be fine.

(3) For all those who have been complaining, run DEFRAG with the -w switch,
go get a cup of Starbucks (you'll have plenty of time), and then, when it's
done, run Auslogic's or some other defragger that is Vista compatible and
has a visual disk map. You'll be quite surprised and pleased at what a good
job MS DEFRAG did.

Thanks again!

 

[Georgi Matev]

Hi Robert,

These are some good questions. Here is some more information.

1) You are correct. The -i option means that unless the machine is idle
defrag.exe will pause. If the machine is idle (no interactive user input)
for a few minutes defrag will continue. The option is not documented since
it was added late in the Vista development cycle when resource changes were
not possible (otherwise localization will be delayed). The option will be
documented in a KB article once Vista is released. On a similar note, the
scheduled defrag task is configured to only start when the machine is idle.

2) We have heard the feedback on defragmentation progress and are
considering what we can do to provide *reliable* progress indication in a
future version of windows. I believe you have all read my response on the
FAQ that Jill referenced below and understand why the progress was taken out
so I'm not going to rehash it here.

3) Although it is documented, I thought I'd use this post to clarify the
meaning of the -w option. Without the -w option defrag will perform partial
defragmentation which means that it will only try to coalesce file fragments
smaller that 64MB. Further coalescing these extents is expensive both in
terms of defragmentation time and free space requirements while the
performance benefit is small. At 64 MB, the additional seek time associated
with reading 2 disjoint fragments of this size, is negligible compared to
the rotational latency to actually read the contiguous portions of the
extents. The -w option allows you to bypass the partial defragmentation
behavior and try to defragment all extents regardless of size.

Once again, thank you for participating in the Windows Vista Beta program.

Georgi Matev [MSFT]
PM Core File Solutions

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.