Hard drive scanning software?

  • Thread starter Thread starter phillr
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phillr

Hello. This may be a bit of an urban legend, but lately i've heard/read from
an increasing number of seminars and hardware vendors about hard drives
losing their magnetic signal over time. The fix that they suggested was to
conduct a 'hard drive scan', where in doing so, any fading magnetic signals
would get replenished as it was scanned by the read head.

I'm wondering if there's any software that would do a simple but
complete/thorough scan, but NOT a defragment. I do video editing, and my
software requires that no defragmenting ever takes place. Do you think
Windows Defragmenter would do the trick?
 
Backup all your files to another hard drive. That's always a good idea. Then
copy the files back overwriting the old files.
 
phillr said:
Hello. This may be a bit of an urban legend, but lately i've heard/read from
an increasing number of seminars and hardware vendors about hard drives
losing their magnetic signal over time. The fix that they suggested was to
conduct a 'hard drive scan', where in doing so, any fading magnetic signals
would get replenished as it was scanned by the read head.

I'm wondering if there's any software that would do a simple but
complete/thorough scan, but NOT a defragment. I do video editing, and my
software requires that no defragmenting ever takes place. Do you think
Windows Defragmenter would do the trick?
Click to expand...

I'd rather know why a software package cares to know you have
defragmented a drive. What is in that application that is so touchy, or
did someone misquote something? Files are files. The OS delivers them
to the software, its not the software application moving the heads, its
the OS or BIOS doing the dirty work.
 
Alot of professional video editing software work efficiently and quickly
because they put the file data onto the hard disk in a pre-fragmented state.
For whatever reason, taht's how the software most effectively accesses the
data. Thus using a defragmenter would reduce the overall effectiveness. Clear
recommendations directly from the software development teams.
 
phillr said:
Alot of professional video editing software work efficiently and quickly
because they put the file data onto the hard disk in a pre-fragmented state.
For whatever reason, taht's how the software most effectively accesses the
data. Thus using a defragmenter would reduce the overall effectiveness. Clear
recommendations directly from the software development teams.
Click to expand...

Good to know. I'm not discounting your info, just never ran across
anything like that. I have an application that creates files that
heavily fragment just due to excessive updates. Database application.
I have finally put it on a small 10 gig partition so it fragments there
and thus the remainder of the drive can be defragged and not effect the
application data. I don't defrag only since its a waste of time. It
frags heavily in 2 days, so whats the value... Its not a spec of
the software, just something I deal with.
 
Big_Al said:
Good to know. I'm not discounting your info, just never ran across
anything like that. I have an application that creates files that
heavily fragment just due to excessive updates. Database application.
I have finally put it on a small 10 gig partition so it fragments there
and thus the remainder of the drive can be defragged and not effect the
application data. I don't defrag only since its a waste of time. It
frags heavily in 2 days, so whats the value... Its not a spec of
the software, just something I deal with.
Click to expand...


Sounds like its function is similar to the "interleave" we used to low
level fomat the old drives with before IDE came along.
 
phillr said:
Hello. This may be a bit of an urban legend, but lately i've heard/read from
an increasing number of seminars and hardware vendors about hard drives
losing their magnetic signal over time. The fix that they suggested was to
conduct a 'hard drive scan', where in doing so, any fading magnetic signals
would get replenished as it was scanned by the read head.

I'm wondering if there's any software that would do a simple but
complete/thorough scan, but NOT a defragment. I do video editing, and my
software requires that no defragmenting ever takes place. Do you think
Windows Defragmenter would do the trick?
Click to expand...

"losing their magnetic signal over time"

Rubbish.

Why ?

The disk uses embedded servo, to stay on track. The servo is a
pattern recorded between sectors. If the magnetic signal was
lost in the servo area, you'd be in serious trouble.

The servo pattern is written at the factory, and must last
for the entire life of the drive. It cannot be rewritten by
any end user operation. So that is an example of a part
of the disk, that never gets a refresh. And it is between
sectors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_servo

Paul
 
I'd rather know why a software package cares to know you have
defragmented a drive.  What is in that application that is so touchy, or
did someone misquote something?  Files are files.   The OS delivers them
to the software, its not the software application moving the heads, its
the OS or BIOS doing the dirty work.
Click to expand...

Software packages do not care if the drive is fragmented or not. It
is just us Windows "users" who notice that we can access files faster
on a "defragmented" drive compared to a fragments one.

Defragmenting a drive can be risky! The defrag process does remove
file "segments" during the re-org of the files. If your PC looses
power during this move, bye bye files!
 
I'd rather know why a software package cares to know you have
defragmented a drive. What is in that application that is so touchy, or
did someone misquote something? Files are files. The OS delivers them
to the software, its not the software application moving the heads, its
the OS or BIOS doing the dirty work.
Click to expand...

Software packages do not care if the drive is fragmented or not. It
is just us Windows "users" who notice that we can access files faster
on a "defragmented" drive compared to a fragments one.

Defragmenting a drive can be risky! The defrag process does remove
file "segments" during the re-org of the files. If your PC looses
power during this move, bye bye files!

-------

Depends on the defragmenter. If, the defragmenter moves the files, then
updates the file system, yes. If the defragmenter copies the files, updates
the filesystem, then removes the copied files, no. Yes, the latter its not
moving, its copying/updating the filesystem/deleting the copied files. Not
a pure move per se.
 
When editing HD videos, you work with massive files, even with 2K, let alone 4K.
Professional NLEs often insist on defragmented files in the way that games
insist on certain CPU and video card requirements (recommended specs, not
minimum specs). They can run without it, but they run much better (read actually
usable) with it.

--
Alec S.
news/alec->synetech/cjb/net


smlunatick said:
I'd rather know why a software package cares to know you have
defragmented a drive. What is in that application that is so touchy, or
did someone misquote something? Files are files. The OS delivers them
to the software, its not the software application moving the heads, its
the OS or BIOS doing the dirty work.
Click to expand...

Software packages do not care if the drive is fragmented or not. It
is just us Windows "users" who notice that we can access files faster
on a "defragmented" drive compared to a fragments one.
 
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