Defragging your machine
NGartplay
Posts: 3,377
in The Commons
I started a defrag of my Windows 7 64 bit machine at 6:30 this morning. It's been 10 hours and it's just at 8% consolidated. How long does it take everyone else? I know you should do this once a month but I never do it because it takes so long.
Could the gazillion megabytes of Daz content be the culprit? Need some help with this. Thank!
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Couple of questions first:
1) What type of HDD is it (SSD, SATA...)?
2) How big is the drive (total, not just free space)?
3) How much free space is available on the drive?
With the size and price of external drives these days, running the defrag program on all of your files is not the best option. The quickest option is to use a cheap external drive and move the files in the "user" folders to it. Then run defrag on the remaining files on the disk. Then copy the user folders back from the external. This kills 3 tasks at once: 1) Creates a backup of your user files, 2) Speeds defrag program by only working on "system" files, 3) defrags the user files by the very act of copying them.
Kendall
Belive it's 1 terrabyte with 233 Gigs free.
What is HDD?....hardrive? If so I'll assume it's SSD. Pretty sure it's not SATA
HDD = Hard Disk Drive. If it's an SSD, stop defragging it immediately! You'll take a couple years off it's life by the time it's done! I learned the hard way you don't need to defrag SSD hard drives (Google it... it's a new mind-set). The way it reads and writes is totally different than the older platter drives (SATA, IDE). It's more like a USB Stick. No defrag necessary.
If there are a LOT of small files (Daz content does have a lot of those, as do other programs), it will slow down the drive whenit reads then writes those files.
But, again, if it's an SSD, STOP the defrag!
STORAGE DEVICE TYPES:
HDD = Hard Disk Drive = recording heads and rotating platters (common storage sizes are 1, 2, 4, 5. And even 10TB are now available at reasonable prices)
SSD = Solid State Drive = memory circuits like a giant thumbdrive (size usually in the few hundred GB range. 1TB size is rare and very expensive)
DATA TRANSFER TECHNOLOGY
SATA = Serial-ATA = Serial Advanced Technology Attachment = defines type of cable needed to connect either an HDD or SSD to the motherboard (uses a small thin connector)
PATA = Parallel-ATA (aka: IDE) = defines connection cable for older HDD (uses a wide thick connector usually with a very wide multiwire single layer flat cable)
Note: these definitions are not exact, but making them so would be more information than you want to know.
If it's an SSD, don't defrag it.
And Windows 7 onwards are pretty reasonable at limiting the amount of defragging required. Or should be.
Thank you all. Will go stop it immediately. It's just been so slow lately that I thought it might need it.
Hugs!
if its 1TB, its likely a regualr HDD and NOT an SSD. There are many good stand alone freeware defragging utilities out there that will defrag a regular hdd faster. I suggest doing some research.
Side note for Windows 7 users who have SSDs, you need to make sure TRIM is enabled so you can SAFELY optimize your SSD - http://www.buildcomputers.net/trim-support.html
Win10 users should already have TRIM enabled.
In Win7 you can enter the defrag utility and ask it to analyze an HDD drive without doing the actual defrag operation. It will tell you if the drive needs to be defragged. SSD drives don't need to be defragged. But unless you ordered your machine specifically with a large SSD it's probably not an SSD. The biggest, cheapest one I could find was 960GB for something like $350.
If your machine is running slow under Win7 I would inspect the fragmentation state but doubt that it is the cause. However, it's possible, and if really really bad could take quite a while if the HDD has a slow rotating platter (5400 RPM vs 7200 RPM) but 10 hours for 8% progress seems too long. If your machine is a laptop then its likely that your HDD is the slow type (they use less power than the fast type) .
There might be other problems like accumulated temp and junk files and cluttered Registry data. There are products to clean up systems and they promise better performance but they are like hand grenades and can blow up in your face. In any case, good backups are a very wise idea and the suggestion above of moving your user data and DAZ files to an external disk, then defragging the now less full hard drive has all the advantages he outlined. And for god's sake don't poke at a strange pop-up or flashing web advertisement or unsolicited email saying your system needs a cleanup or is infected. It's probably a scam.
Oh, and one more thing. If you are like many people and leave your system running for days or weeks at a time, that can cause the system to get slow. Before running major system utilities it's good idea to make sure you do a complete, proper, full shutdown then power up before running your defrag. Leaving a machine on for long periods of time lets system tables and logs grow large and accumulate junk. A clean boot from complete power off makes sure all the cobwebs are out of the brain.
What he said.
I just spent some time for work researching a good defragger that will also optimize the free space, something that has been missing for a very long time. I can recommend about 3 good products that I use regularly at work, depending on the circumstances:
1) Defraggler by Piriform Tools. Some of the best free system tools out there. They also have portable versions that you can put on a USB stick and use anywhere (good for the extensive Virtual Machine work I do).
2) UltraDefrag found at Sourceforge. Portable version available.
3) Smart Defrag by IOBit (available in portable version). This is the only one I found that had the consolidation option. Works very well.
Hope this helps.
Check your hard disk activity in task manager while carrying out your usual tasks. Keep monitoring it over a period of time. If it reaches above 50% most of the time then it (probably) means that your system is spending a lot of time seeking data and therefore need to be optimized. This could be due to several unwanted backgroud tasks or could just be the windows search indexer rebuilding its index. If the disk activity shows idle (less that 5-10% activity) then fragmentation is not the issue.
I use Perfect Disk defragmentor which has an agent (windows service) that keeps running as a low priority thread and monitors and rectifies disk fragmentation in the background while the system is idle. That way I do not have to worry about explicity running defragmentation. (Though some users may argue that latest versions of windows are efficient in managing fragmentation)
Also, you need to consider each of your disk partitions not just total drive capacity. Even if just one of the partition is more than 80% full it could noticably slow down the entire disk even though other partitions remain almost empty. This is a common issue most people overlook.
It's an HDD with those sort of defrag statistics and it's slow because you have hardly have free space for it to work with as it defrags files. You can defrag & trim an SSD in Windows and it doesn't hurt things too much but since access times are so much faster with SSD it makes not a lot of sense to waste purported theorectical maximum number of read/write cycles defragging an SSD when SSD management SW does that for you already during course of normal operation.
If its a 1TB HD then is shouldn't be a SSD. I haven't seen one that big
Oh gosh, more good info, thanks. I just looked up my computer online and it says that it's SATA.
Looks like I need a better defragger. I've heard that the one the comes with MS is very slow.
I use Wise registry cleaner and use a couple of malware programs on a regular basis. Don't click on popups. I've actually pulled the plug on my computer before when a certain popup came up. I didn't want to even click to close it so I killed the machine.
Suggestions for other defraggers is appreciated.
Other defraggers are wasting your money. The one that comes with Windows is plenty good enough. Just start it one day on a week end when you will be out of town and let it run as long as it needs.
Or don't defrag at all as it's not going to be that much of a hindrance if you aren't opening very many files that exceed 1GB in size.
The windows defragmentor is very limited in its functionality. Moreover, it requires several passes/iterations (requires running multiple times) before it can bring down the fragmentation to an acceptable level. Even then, it cannot reliably defragment partitions which are more that 80% full.
In addition, it just defrags the files without consolidating free space. Free space consolidation is also essential post defragmentation as it ensures that subsequent writes are not fragmented. Some disk tools (including Norton System Works, I think) also allows placement of large files towards the end of the disk (i.e. farthest from the spindle) which can further reduce read times.
Those were my impressions before I considered investing in Perfect Disk. But other's impression may vary. I don't really worry about registry as it mostly contains text data which is automatically optimized by windows. Also, the registry is hardly a few MBs in size so optimizing it may not provide any appreciable performance gains (unless you are using a decade old processor). Also, the risks of accidentally deleting important registry entries is far greater than any benefits those registry cleaners may provide.
Before I spent money on SW like a defragger I'd seriously consider instead putting that money to a 2 500GB SSDs or a 1TB SSD which can be had for less than $500. Wasting time & money on a defragger program with 225GB free on a 1TB HDD is a waste of money when most file I/O is far less than the fragment sizes of the remaining free 225GB.
The easy and fastest way to defrag your machine such a that is to image the entire HD and then boot to recovery mode in Windows and do an image restore of the image you just backed up.
The last time I defragged this computer it took about 8 hours and I think at around 15% it started to quickly finish and was done thereafter. It's now been 14 hours and is at 9.76% This machine was bought in March of 2010 and for the last 5 years it's been running 18/day. Maybe it's just tired.
Well I was wrong imaging the machine and restoring from the image would not have defragmented it, when using tools supplied with Windows.
Imaging will just recreate the issue. As I said above, MOVE the user files (C:\users) to an external disk. Then run the defrag on the remaining system files. At this point the system is "clean". Then copy the user files back onto the drive. Windows will try to keep the files from fragmenting during the copy. When done, there is an unfragmented disk as well as a backup of the files.
Kendall
Thanks Kendall, what a great idea! Moving the C:\users could take a while but so does the defrag the way I do it. Would probably be faster your way.
I forgot to mention, there will be registry files that will not copy/move in the users folders. Have explorer "skip" those. When you recopy the files back over, they will be defragged and already in the right places.
Kendall
How do you specify to "skip" those files?
When the Windows explorer hits a file it cannot work with (in use, protected, no permissions, etc) it will normally ask what you want to do. In these options for move/copy is usually a "Skip This File" along with a checkbox for "Do this for all file(s) of this type."
Kendall
Actually, there are 1TB SSD's, 2 TB SSD's, and 4 TB SSD's for laptops, but they are expensive compared to the Desktop SSD's. I installed a 1TB SSD in my laptop (Samsung 850 EVO - 1TB - 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD, $304.00 at Amazon) last year--and saw a big performance boost on my already strong Alienware laptop (i7, 32GB Memory, 2 Nvidia video cards...). There are also some SSHD (Solid State Hybrid Drives) available that are less expensive and can give a performance boost. Desktops have fairly reasonable costing 4TB SSD's available (Seagate, Sandisk, Samsung are among a few of the manufacturers of these). Check NewEgg or Amazon for some fairly good deals occasionally on these drives.
See my thread on the new 60TB SSD.
Kendall
I recommend Perfect Disk too, it's very fast and effective in my experience.
As for the registry, there's something about it here:
http://www.howtogeek.com/171633/why-using-a-registry-cleaner-wont-speed-up-your-pc-or-fix-crashes/
When I had a PC, PerfectDisk was my choice. Now that I have a Mac, it's iDefrag. I believe in defragging. However, I have 2TB & 3TB hard drives that literally take a day to defrag. Somehow I never get around to defragging.