beating a dead horse - was "Disk defragmentation - is it worth it?"

[Curious George]

Yes the imager "debate" is a joke but I think it's good to discuss the
behavior of 3rd party PC tools, esp of benefit of those looking to
buy.

Since some seem to have found the topic interesting, the following
wintel disk imaging utilities pass the "defrag test" cited in the
above mentioned thread. They are clear-cut sector imagers whose
default behavior on unresized restore result in original file
positions, original fragmentation, and no space consolidation. They
also all come with utilities to view and extract individual files from
their sector-based images. Testing was with NTFS Partitions.


- Drive Snapshot 1.3
http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/index.htm

- PowerQuest Drive Image vers 3,4,5,6 (2002), & 7
http://www.driveimage.com/

- Powerquest/Symantec V2i Protector (AFAIK Uses DI7 engine)
http://www.driveimage.com/

- R-Drive Image 3.0 (Has "Sector by Sector backup" or "Backup Actual
Data" options however "Backup Actual Data" results in a sector backup,
i.e. no defrag, same file positions)
http://www.r-tt.com

- Terabyte Image for Windows 1.61
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/


Acronis Trueimage is another major sector imager that has been beaten
to death her ein the last week. Tests reveal it restores original
fragmentation but consolidates space even if you are restoring to an
identical sized partition. It also can see & extract individual files
from images. My testing was on almost all releases of 6x, 7x, & 8x.
According to Acronis nothing low-level has changed for 9 Home ed.


Symantec Ghost is different. Ghost is by default a file-level tool
that _interprets_ boot track & partition information. Yes it can do a
sector backup, but basically it can only do _either_ a sector backup
of the boot sector _or_ the whole disk. If you want to do a sector
backup of a data area - you can neither backup individual partitions
nor (I believe) resize the restore. Furthermore when using the -IA,
-ID, or -IR, the resultant images are not accessible in Ghost
Explorer. Therefore this is a restricted, troubleshooting mode only.
It's slower and not really how you normally want to use it.



I'd be interested in feedback on how the following tools work:

Paragon Drive Backup 7.0 Server Edition
http://www.drive-backup.com/

the related Paragon Exact Image
http://www.exact-image.com/

& Active@ Disk Image
http://www.disk-image.net/


as well as any further feedback from anyone whose used the tools
mentioned here or other similar apps.

Of course we all expect Roddie won't be able to resist the urge to act
juvenile and make a fool of himself while trying to hijack the topic-
but that's a matter of routine & has been for quite some time.

 

[Rod Speed]

Yes the imager "debate" is a joke

You're the joke, stupid.

but I think it's good to discuss the behavior of 3rd
party PC tools, esp of benefit of those looking to buy.

Pity that few are actually stupid enough to bother with
defragging anymore, and even fewer who are that
stupid actually use an imager to do the defragging.

Since some seem to have found the topic interesting, the following
wintel disk imaging utilities pass the "defrag test" cited in the
above mentioned thread. They are clear-cut sector imagers

You clearly wouldnt know what a 'clear-cut sector imager'
was if it bit you on your lard arse. You were stupid enough
to claim that Ghost doesnt do sector imaging. WRONG.

Acronis Trueimage is another major sector imager
that has been beaten to death here in the last week.
Tests reveal it restores original fragmentation

You aint even tested 9, you pathological liar.

but consolidates space even if you are
restoring to an identical sized partition.

Pathetic, really.

It also can see & extract individual files from images. My
testing was on almost all releases of 6x, 7x, & 8x. According
to Acronis nothing low-level has changed for 9 Home ed.

Pity that the Snap Restore MUST be file based, ****wit.

Symantec Ghost is different. Ghost is by default a file-level
tool that _interprets_ boot track & partition information. Yes
it can do a sector backup, but basically it can only do _either_
a sector backup of the boot sector _or_ the whole disk.

Not a ****ing clue, as always.

If you want to do a sector backup of a data area - you can neither
backup individual partitions nor (I believe) resize the restore.

Not a ****ing clue, as always.

Furthermore when using the -IA, -ID, or -IR, the resultant
images are not accessible in Ghost Explorer. Therefore
this is a restricted, troubleshooting mode only.

Not a ****ing clue, as always.

It's slower and not really how you normally want to use it.

Not a ****ing clue, as always.

And there is a hell of a lot of difference between
Ghost 8 and 9 and the Ghost prior to that too.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Yes the imager "debate" is a joke but I think it's good to discuss the
behavior of 3rd party PC tools, esp of benefit of those looking to
buy.

Since some seem to have found the topic interesting, the following
wintel disk imaging utilities pass the "defrag test" cited in the
above mentioned thread. They are clear-cut sector imagers whose
default behavior on unresized restore result in original file
positions, original fragmentation, and no space consolidation. They
also all come with utilities to view and extract individual files from
their sector-based images. Testing was with NTFS Partitions.

Since I use 'dd'/'cat'/'dd_rescue' under Linux as my sector imager
and Gnu 'tar' as file imager, I cannot really comment on the Windows
options. But maybe one remark: Atrue sector imager should be able
to backup _any_ type of partition. That comes in handy when you
want to add other than your primary OS to your system. Be it Linux,
FreeBDS, Solaris x86, or whatever. You can just stick with your normal
backup process if you have a true sector imager.

Arno

 

[Jonny]

Yes the imager "debate" is a joke but I think it's good to discuss the
behavior of 3rd party PC tools, esp of benefit of those looking to
buy.

Since some seem to have found the topic interesting, the following
wintel disk imaging utilities pass the "defrag test" cited in the
above mentioned thread. They are clear-cut sector imagers whose
default behavior on unresized restore result in original file
positions, original fragmentation, and no space consolidation. They
also all come with utilities to view and extract individual files from
their sector-based images. Testing was with NTFS Partitions.


- Drive Snapshot 1.3
http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/index.htm

- PowerQuest Drive Image vers 3,4,5,6 (2002), & 7
http://www.driveimage.com/

- Powerquest/Symantec V2i Protector (AFAIK Uses DI7 engine)
http://www.driveimage.com/

- R-Drive Image 3.0 (Has "Sector by Sector backup" or "Backup Actual
Data" options however "Backup Actual Data" results in a sector backup,
i.e. no defrag, same file positions)
http://www.r-tt.com

- Terabyte Image for Windows 1.61
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/


Acronis Trueimage is another major sector imager that has been beaten
to death her ein the last week. Tests reveal it restores original
fragmentation but consolidates space even if you are restoring to an
identical sized partition. It also can see & extract individual files
from images. My testing was on almost all releases of 6x, 7x, & 8x.
According to Acronis nothing low-level has changed for 9 Home ed.


Symantec Ghost is different. Ghost is by default a file-level tool
that _interprets_ boot track & partition information. Yes it can do a
sector backup, but basically it can only do _either_ a sector backup
of the boot sector _or_ the whole disk. If you want to do a sector
backup of a data area - you can neither backup individual partitions
nor (I believe) resize the restore. Furthermore when using the -IA,
-ID, or -IR, the resultant images are not accessible in Ghost
Explorer. Therefore this is a restricted, troubleshooting mode only.
It's slower and not really how you normally want to use it.



I'd be interested in feedback on how the following tools work:

Paragon Drive Backup 7.0 Server Edition
http://www.drive-backup.com/

the related Paragon Exact Image
http://www.exact-image.com/

& Active@ Disk Image
http://www.disk-image.net/


as well as any further feedback from anyone whose used the tools
mentioned here or other similar apps.

Of course we all expect Roddie won't be able to resist the urge to act
juvenile and make a fool of himself while trying to hijack the topic-
but that's a matter of routine & has been for quite some time.

Well, just gotta say from the outset, this appears to be a farce. I've
owned all but version 5.0 of DI. The link is a joke and link to brokenware
(Symantec).

Gotta agree with Rod if he's talking XP regarding any need of defragmenting.
Other OSes not sure about. Prior MS OSes, depends. Which leads the
question, which OS are you speaking of, and which of 3 versions of NTFS are
you referring to?

 

[Curious George]

Well, just gotta say from the outset, this appears to be a farce. I've
owned all but version 5.0 of DI.

& in that time did you ever perform the "defrag test" in question?

The link is a joke and link to brokenware
(Symantec).

Symantec is dumping DI 7 & V2i in favor of Ghost 10 (big surprise).
There are broken links or links to DI leading you instead to Ghost 10
everywhere you look. However there is absolutely no doubt what
product I'm talking about- which is the sole purpose of all the links
I provided in that post.

Gotta agree with Rod if he's talking XP regarding any need of defragmenting.
Other OSes not sure about. Prior MS OSes, depends. Which leads the
question, which OS are you speaking of, and which of 3 versions of NTFS are
you referring to?

There were some old tests on 3.0 but all results posted here were done
originally or redone using 3.1 (with an XP SP2 workstation).

But if these were file-level utilities, that by default defragmented
on restore - these results shouldn't occur regardless. But you're
suggesting that I've skewed the results by using an incompatible
filesystem that forces a raw sector-reading troubleshooting mode - but
I haven't, & even if I did I would likely have lost some functionality
- which I didn't.

The best way to tell if I'm bullshitting is to try it. You have most
of the PQDI releases and many of the other apps mentioned have free
trials where you can test restores.

 

[Curious George]

Since I use 'dd'/'cat'/'dd_rescue' under Linux as my sector imager
and Gnu 'tar' as file imager, I cannot really comment on the Windows
options. But maybe one remark: Atrue sector imager should be able
to backup _any_ type of partition. That comes in handy when you
want to add other than your primary OS to your system. Be it Linux,
FreeBDS, Solaris x86, or whatever. You can just stick with your normal
backup process if you have a true sector imager.

Arno

That's a point that strongly attracts someone to a sector-based
imager. I think you're right that some products mentioned may not be
true sector imagers in the strictest sense. One example is "Snapshot
Backup".

In the FAQ:
"SnapShot relies on the operating system to support a drive. All file
systems known to Win2K(FAT16, FAT32, NTFS) are supported; no LINUX
file systems (yet)."

Yet surprisingly the specs also claim:
"supports Linux EXT2/3/Reiser"


However I believe some of them are true sector imagers, or at least
have such a mode. Ostensibly the issue of filesystem compatibility
for some has more to do with taking advantage of the full feature set
including things like resizing upon restore & reading & extracting
files from the image.

There are a couple of *nix based disk imagers. A comparison of some
kind might be interesting in a future thread.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Since I use 'dd'/'cat'/'dd_rescue' under Linux as my sector imager
and Gnu 'tar' as file imager, I cannot really comment on the Windows
options. But maybe one remark: Atrue sector imager should be able
to backup _any_ type of partition. That comes in handy when you
want to add other than your primary OS to your system. Be it Linux,
FreeBDS, Solaris x86, or whatever. You can just stick with your normal
backup process if you have a true sector imager.

Arno

[/QUOTE]

That's a point that strongly attracts someone to a sector-based
imager. I think you're right that some products mentioned may not be
true sector imagers in the strictest sense. One example is "Snapshot
Backup".

In the FAQ:
"SnapShot relies on the operating system to support a drive. All file
systems known to Win2K(FAT16, FAT32, NTFS) are supported; no LINUX
file systems (yet)."

Yet surprisingly the specs also claim:
"supports Linux EXT2/3/Reiser"

Well, that is a reson to stay away from it: The documentation
has critical errors. It does not really matter whether it does
or does not support ext2/3 and ReiserFS. Documentation errors
of this magnitude are unacceptable in a mission-critical pice
of software.

However I believe some of them are true sector imagers, or at least
have such a mode. Ostensibly the issue of filesystem compatibility
for some has more to do with taking advantage of the full feature set
including things like resizing upon restore & reading & extracting
files from the image.

That would be ideal: Sector imager for all it does not know how
to hable (One important example I forgot is an encrypted partition),
file imager for things it does know. For me the most important
advantage of a file imager is that the images are smaller, depending
on how full the filesystem was.

There are a couple of *nix based disk imagers. A comparison of some
kind might be interesting in a future thread.

Well, the only imager I know is partimage. Not too good, since it
does not have a verify function. I would stay away from it.
The rest is sytem tools that can be used to make sector images
or file backup. None are really large. Writing your own small
secotr imager could probably be done in less than 200 lines of "c"
code (or 50 lines Perl if you do not care about speed).

Sector imaging is not complicated under Unix. It is just
the general obscurity of the Windows kernel interface that
justifies larger applications for this task.

Arno

 

[Eric Gisin]

What a clueless ****. Why do keep posting on topics you don't understand?

WinNT disk I/O is pretty much the same as UNIX raw I/O.
The only reason more UNIX freeware doesn't get ported it sux.

 

[Curious George]

Well, that is a reson to stay away from it: The documentation
has critical errors. It does not really matter whether it does
or does not support ext2/3 and ReiserFS. Documentation errors
of this magnitude are unacceptable in a mission-critical pice
of software.

No it isn't a serious contender. But it's out there.

That would be ideal: Sector imager for all it does not know how
to hable (One important example I forgot is an encrypted partition),
file imager for things it does know. For me the most important
advantage of a file imager is that the images are smaller, depending
on how full the filesystem was.

Yes encryption too. Though even these sector images tend to be
compressible.

Well, the only imager I know is partimage. Not too good, since it
does not have a verify function. I would stay away from it.
The rest is sytem tools that can be used to make sector images
or file backup. None are really large. Writing your own small
secotr imager could probably be done in less than 200 lines of "c"
code (or 50 lines Perl if you do not care about speed).

Well by now you mentioned 2 options. Also There's g4u. I wouldn't be
surprised if there was 1 or 2 more. Some of the other ones we've
talked about have linux versions like Acronis TI Server.

Sector imaging is not complicated under Unix. It is just

It isn't complicated under "anything" when the volume(s) aren't in
use. Once they are in use, you are dealing with a moving target which
complicates things a bit. It gets even more complicated when you
demand the full feature sets available in some of these fancy
backup/restore/deployment tools.

the general obscurity of the Windows kernel interface that
justifies larger applications for this task.

Arno

I don't know about that. I thought there were ports of dd that could
do block devices under NT/2k, etc. Certainly, though, The kernel &
other complexities of a live OS is irrelevant from restore media,
acronis secure zone, or other boot disk - or as a native app before
bootup completion. This is how many releases of these programs avoided
those complexities altogether. So they were not always large for that
reason.

These 3rd party wintel apps are big for the most part because they
have a large array of features and flashy UI. dd_rescue in a lot of
respects is a different animal. I don't know it's fair to compare it
to say Acronis 9 to determine how NTx works low-level. But that's
just me.

 

[Arno Wagner]

On 27 Feb 2006 17:27:59 GMT, Arno Wagner <[email protected]> wrote:

No it isn't a serious contender. But it's out there.

Yes encryption too. Though even these sector images tend to be
compressible.

It depends. Only if there are areas that have never been written.
Encrypted sectors are completely uncompressible.

Well by now you mentioned 2 options. Also There's g4u. I wouldn't be
surprised if there was 1 or 2 more. Some of the other ones we've
talked about have linux versions like Acronis TI Server.

Oh, yes. There are many more. But I have never used one of the
others. Sorry, if "I know" was not too clear. I meant "have
personal experience with".

It isn't complicated under "anything" when the volume(s) aren't in
use. Once they are in use, you are dealing with a moving target which
complicates things a bit. It gets even more complicated when you
demand the full feature sets available in some of these fancy
backup/restore/deployment tools.

I don't know about that. I thought there were ports of dd that could
do block devices under NT/2k, etc. Certainly, though, The kernel &
other complexities of a live OS is irrelevant from restore media,
acronis secure zone, or other boot disk - or as a native app before
bootup completion. This is how many releases of these programs avoided
those complexities altogether. So they were not always large for that
reason.

These 3rd party wintel apps are big for the most part because they
have a large array of features and flashy UI. dd_rescue in a lot of
respects is a different animal. I don't know it's fair to compare it
to say Acronis 9 to determine how NTx works low-level. But that's
just me.

Oh, the comarison is not fair at all. It compares the "flashy" against
the "functional". Unix utilities thend do have a minimal user
interface and a richs et of features. Often they come with the OS and
do not cost extra. But you usually have to use the commandline and
read the man-page. And they expect you to know what you are doing.

Windows utilities focus on a nice GUI that expects zero competence
from the user and makes everything as simple as possible. There
lies the limitation: If you want to do something the designers
have not antivipated, then there is no button to click on and
you are screwed. You are also often expected to pay for these and
they do not come with the OS.

In short: Minimalistic, powerful and often dangerous if misused
expert tools against safe, well-documented, but limited tools for
non-experts.

Being an expert and having personally experienced the frustration when
some Windows app did not let me do what I wanted to do or not giving
me useful information numerous times, I understandably prefer the
expert stuff. I don't mind people using the Windows stuff. As long as
I do not have to and as long as they understand that the cyshy view of
the system they are getting of is not the reality and that some things
need expert access.

Arno