Some Problems While Defragmenting (Help?)

[Cavouku]

I was running my defragmentor, trying to get everything in order on the old C drive, but there's been one very picky piece of data that's not getting itself in line, and taking up 4GB that I don't think it needs to in the process. Heres what I can tell you;

1. I'm running Windows 7, on an Asus netbook
2. Using Defraggler program
3. The Filename is {61e188df-2df9-11e0-ab66-1c4... (I think it just doesn't fit after this point)
4. The path is C:\System Volume Information\
5. 8 Fragments

Oh, and an additional note: this problem is most likely because I was fucking around with programs, and probably uninstalled something I shouldn't have. I used to be able to use Fn+F10/F11/F12 and play with the volume, but now I have to go to the speaker in the taskbar an change it there (or, you know, mess with the audio of the source, i.e., Youtube). I am also aware, I think, that the System Volume Information is in System Restore, correct?

So, anyone have any ideas on what the problem is? I would've posted this in the IIRC, but I was having a problem there, too, and now I figured out why, and I can run it, but I already made this big post, and... Any help on the matter would be appreciated, thanks for your time, sorry to be a bother.

(Gone to watch movie, check back later)

 

[BlueberryMUNCH]

Hope you're enjoying your movie:].

I sadly cannot help you, but this isn't a discussion and you should probably ask a mod to more it to the Advice Forum; someone with the know-how will be much more willing to help, and people will be more likely to check this thread:].

 

[evilgenius134]

If the filesystem you are using is NTFS defragging the disk is pointless. There is no real reason to defrag modern systems.

 

[Darth Crater]

It is, in fact, a file created by System Restore. You can probably remove it if you really need to, but only if you're hurting for space and don't expect you'll need to restore. I found this link containing instructions for changing the size, which may prove helpful: http://indrajitc.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/reclaiming-disk-space-from-system-volume-information/

It's certainly alright to leave this fragmented; it shouldn't slow anything else down, and you're not going to be reading from it often.

This is unrelated to any uninstalling you may have done. You probably removed some software or driver that handled special keyboard functions.

 

[Cavouku]

Hope you're enjoying your movie:].

I sadly cannot help you, but this isn't a discussion and you should probably ask a mod to more it to the Advice Forum; someone with the know-how will be much more willing to help, and people will be more likely to check this thread:].

Ah, I didn't even think about that. Though I suspect this thread won't be busy enough to warrant any such trouble, but thanks for the heads up.

It is, in fact, a file created by System Restore. You can probably remove it if you really need to, but only if you're hurting for space and don't expect you'll need to restore. I found this link containing instructions for changing the size, which may prove helpful: http://indrajitc.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/reclaiming-disk-space-from-system-volume-information/

It's certainly alright to leave this fragmented; it shouldn't slow anything else down, and you're not going to be reading from it often.

This is unrelated to any uninstalling you may have done. You probably removed some software or driver that handled special keyboard functions.

It's sort of bugging me on a personal level, but I'm only taking up 19% percent of my hard drive (100 GB), so it's really not a huge issue.

Oh, by the way, do you know why when I'm defragmenting, a lot of the time it'll take away space to my drive? It was down to 17% before I ran Defraggler a few times, and it makes me concerned for if I'm stressed for space in the future.

 

[Worgen]

If the filesystem you are using is NTFS defragging the disk is pointless. There is no real reason to defrag modern systems.

yeah.... thats bullshit, a fragmented drive really slows things down, defragging it can really help with speed

 

[JezebelinHell]

You may want to try a different program. The defrag included in Windows is like a freeware version of a commercial software product. I believe it is a Lite version of Diskeeper. I have had issues with it not dealing with things in the past and I have used trial versions of other programs to do the job instead.

 

[evilgenius134]

yeah.... thats bullshit, a fragmented drive really slows things down, defragging it can really help with speed

Not on a modern filesystem such as NTFS, on old systems that use FAT16/FAT32 fragmenting can affect drive speeds and response times, but NTFS removed that issue.

Modern systems never need to be defragmented, since there are ways to speed a system up more than defragging will ever do.

 

[Mumonk]

Use Perfect Disk, its awesome and can move anything easily.

 

[Worgen]

yeah.... thats bullshit, a fragmented drive really slows things down, defragging it can really help with speed

Not on a modern filesystem such as NTFS, on old systems that use FAT16/FAT32 fragmenting can affect drive speeds and response times, but NTFS removed that issue.

Modern systems never need to be defragmented, since there are ways to speed a system up more than defragging will ever do.

your still wrong, ntfs still benefits from defragging, just not as much as a fat16/32 file system but every bit of performance boost you can get helps and it all adds up. 1% here 1% there, pretty soon you have a 10-15% boost and thats not half bad

 

[evilgenius134]

1% here 1% there, pretty soon you have a 10-15% boost and thats not half bad

That 1% will not affect you until you have performed multiple other tasks that exponentially decrease in efficiency. And multiple hours of defragging for a 1% boost is pointless, since mechanical hard disks are conceptually slow anyway.

Defragging is pointless on a NTFS drive that is above 50% full and does not move files to the physical outer sectors, it's even more pointless with a system that has a swap file since that negates any benefit.

This is why defragging on modern systems is useless, and will remain useless forever since SSD do not require it.

 

[Worgen]

1% here 1% there, pretty soon you have a 10-15% boost and thats not half bad

That 1% will not affect you until you have performed multiple other tasks that exponentially decrease in efficiency. And multiple hours of defragging for a 1% boost is pointless, since mechanical hard disks are conceptually slow anyway.

Defragging is pointless on a NTFS drive that is above 50% full and does not move files to the physical outer sectors, it's even more pointless with a system that has a swap file since that negates any benefit.

This is why defragging on modern systems is useless, and will remain useless forever since SSD do not require it.

are you kidding? there are so many things you can do to speed up your comp its stupid and defragging will certainly give you more then just a 1% boost, defragging is an important part of regular maintenance and it will sure as hell give your comp a bit of a boost even if it is ntfs.

you better believe you will have to defrag a drive that you use for page files, nothing fragments a hd like that does, hell its best to keep that to its own partition

 

[evilgenius134]

are you kidding? there are so many things you can do to speed up your comp its stupid and defragging will certainly give you more then just a 1% boost, defragging is an important part of regular maintenance and it will sure as hell give your comp a bit of a boost even if it is ntfs.

you better believe you will have to defrag a drive that you use for page files, nothing fragments a hd like that does, hell its best to keep that to its own partition

Not for NTFS, the fact of using a mechanical hard disk outweighs the benefit of performing a defrag, due to that being the bottleneck in your system above any 'fragmentation' that occurs

A properly set up system with minimal startup programs, no more than 50% of the drive used and enough RAM and that is pretty much the end of what can be done.

Putting page files on a partition is a really terrible idea. Page files do not increase fragmentation since they remain static and are placed on the outer clusters to reduce the speed impact of reading from disk.

Modern mechanical hard disks using NTFS naturally place files on the outer blocks and the limits of mechanical hard disks means that you can only improve performance by buying a SSD.

 

[Worgen]

are you kidding? there are so many things you can do to speed up your comp its stupid and defragging will certainly give you more then just a 1% boost, defragging is an important part of regular maintenance and it will sure as hell give your comp a bit of a boost even if it is ntfs.

you better believe you will have to defrag a drive that you use for page files, nothing fragments a hd like that does, hell its best to keep that to its own partition

Not for NTFS, the fact of using a mechanical hard disk outweighs the benefit of performing a defrag, due to that being the bottleneck in your system above any 'fragmentation' that occurs

A properly set up system with minimal startup programs, no more than 50% of the drive used and enough RAM and that is pretty much the end of what can be done.

Putting page files on a partition is a really terrible idea. Page files do not increase fragmentation since they remain static and are placed on the outer clusters to reduce the speed impact of reading from disk.

Modern mechanical hard disks using NTFS naturally place files on the outer blocks and the limits of mechanical hard disks means that you can only improve performance by buying a SSD.

how many users do you know that properly setup their systems? most pc users have tons of extra crap and bloat ware and all sorts of things that just fill up the drives and fragment the fuck out of them and they dont know about defragging so things just get more and more fragmented and they get a slower and slower computer

 

[evilgenius134]

how many users do you know that properly setup their systems? most pc users have tons of extra crap and bloat ware and all sorts of things that just fill up the drives and fragment the fuck out of them and they dont know about defragging so things just get more and more fragmented and they get a slower and slower computer

This problem is due to it being a mechanical hard drive, not fragmented. Mechanical hard drives suffer from an issue of physical placement, where if any file is placed inwards of the disk (in other words beyond 50% full) it experiences very poor performance in comparison to the poor performance hard drives have anyway. This is irrelevant to whether the file is fragmented.

NTFS naturally ensure that files are placed in locations that reduce fragmentation, so deleting data is the only way to help performance and ensuring it doesn't go much above 50%.

Defragging on FAT32 had noticeable performance boosts, but doing the same on NTFS has no benefit, since the hard drive by design is slow.

 

[Worgen]

how many users do you know that properly setup their systems? most pc users have tons of extra crap and bloat ware and all sorts of things that just fill up the drives and fragment the fuck out of them and they dont know about defragging so things just get more and more fragmented and they get a slower and slower computer

This problem is due to it being a mechanical hard drive, not fragmented. Mechanical hard drives suffer from an issue of physical placement, where if any file is placed inwards of the disk (in other words beyond 50% full) it experiences very poor performance in comparison to the poor performance hard drives have anyway. This is irrelevant to whether the file is fragmented.

NTFS naturally ensure that files are placed in locations that reduce fragmentation, so deleting data is the only way to help performance and ensuring it doesn't go much above 50%.

Defragging on FAT32 had noticeable performance boosts, but doing the same on NTFS has no benefit, since the hard drive by design is slow.

ok, your very wrong about how file placement on a harddrive works, the hard drive will place data on a disk where it can, if you delete a file it will fill that space in with other stuff and chances are it wont be big enough for a nice simple puzzle piece fit, it will put some of it there and some of it in other areas etc etc, defragging moves all those files into much neater areas together (well thats a very simple explanation for it but essentially how it works) ntfs will get fragmented and will need defragging, its not as bad as a fat 32 but it still needs it

 

[evilgenius134]

ok, your very wrong about how file placement on a harddrive works, the hard drive will place data on a disk where it can, if you delete a file it will fill that space in with other stuff and chances are it wont be big enough for a nice simple puzzle piece fit, it will put some of it there and some of it in other areas etc etc, defragging moves all those files into much neater areas together (well thats a very simple explanation for it but essentially how it works) ntfs will get fragmented and will need defragging, its not as bad as a fat 32 but it still needs it

I don't know how you came to the conclusion I didn't know how fragmenting happened.

NTFS will focus on placing files sequentially on the disk, this means that fragmenting will never occur until you have basically filled the disk up and delete stuff.

You can check this by seeing any NTFS disk in a physical disk visualizer and you'll notice it's been filled sequentially inwards.

The issue of fragmenting on modern hard disks rarely gives a performance hit since you'll get better improvements buying an updated hard disk or an SSD. This is because FAT32 was designed for disks up to about 40GB. This small size and the advent of large mp3 sharing meant that for a period hard disks were filling up, resulting in fairly heavy fragmentation.

With NTFS and disks above 240GB fragmenting rarely occurs and barely impacts performance, especially when you take into account the time required to defragment a 240GB+ disk way over 50% full, many, many hours for a non-noticeable boost. Data densities, speeds and filesystems like NTFS etc have come to a point that the limits of a mechanical hard disk are the bottleneck, not fragmenting.

 

[Worgen]

ok, your very wrong about how file placement on a harddrive works, the hard drive will place data on a disk where it can, if you delete a file it will fill that space in with other stuff and chances are it wont be big enough for a nice simple puzzle piece fit, it will put some of it there and some of it in other areas etc etc, defragging moves all those files into much neater areas together (well thats a very simple explanation for it but essentially how it works) ntfs will get fragmented and will need defragging, its not as bad as a fat 32 but it still needs it

I don't know how you came to the conclusion I didn't know how fragmenting happened.

NTFS will focus on placing files sequentially on the disk, this means that fragmenting will never occur until you have basically filled the disk up and delete stuff.

You can check this by seeing any NTFS disk in a physical disk visualizer and you'll notice it's been filled sequentially inwards.

The issue of fragmenting on modern hard disks rarely gives a performance hit since you'll get better improvements buying an updated hard disk or an SSD. This is because FAT32 was designed for disks up to about 40GB. This small size and the advent of large mp3 sharing meant that for a period hard disks were filling up, resulting in fairly heavy fragmentation.

With NTFS and disks above 240GB fragmenting rarely occurs and barely impacts performance, especially when you take into account the time required to defragment a 240GB+ disk way over 50% full, many, many hours for a non-noticeable boost. Data densities, speeds and filesystems like NTFS etc have come to a point that the limits of a mechanical hard disk are the bottleneck, not fragmenting.

dude, you keep changing what your saying, first you say you get no boost from defragging, then you say only a little then your back to no, and now your back to only a little
how big the hd is doesnt matter, and how its supposed to work doesnt matter either, they still get fragmented and the only way to fix that is by defragging
go buy a 500gig hd and let it get nice and fragmented then see how much faster it works once you defrag it

 

[evilgenius134]

The boost you get from defragmenting is negated by the inherent problems with mechanical hard disks. You get no overall boost on large disks.

NTFS prioritizes placing files fully, this means it does not fill little gaps that have been left by small files being used, otherwise you would take a massive performance hit and write issues with other files.

You only experience degradation of performance when your disk is getting full, this is common to all systems and not a problem of fragmentation but instead a problem of the system finding full space to put files

http://img585.imageshack.us/i/25115448.jpg/

Notice how the red lines ('fragmented') appear on the same ring? This means there is no performance boosts to defragmenting them since the head doesn't have to move.

Notice how there is white in the centre? That is due to NTFS filling sequentially, this is on a system that I move a lot of files around to and from and NTFS has kept any issues to a minimum. This means that any boost that defragmenting may give will be negated by the time it takes to move all the data around and the deficiencies of mechanical hard disks.

Also since system files are written first they are always present on the outermost rings, any small temporary files will also be written to the outside first due to NTFS, meaning NTFS will by concept keep your HD running as fast as it can.

 

[TeeBs]

Use a Falcon Punch!!!