NTFS and Disk Activity

  • Thread starter Thread starter AbbN
  • Start date Start date
A

AbbN

Hi,

I recently converted a (don't laugh) 15 gig hard drive to NTFS (curiosity
got the best of me) running XP Pro and now SP2. I notice a LOT more disk
activity than when it was FAT, especially during start up. I have fast find
turned off. However, I also notice a drastic time reduction to defrag the
drive. When it was FAT it use to take 3 - 4 hours using Norton Speed disk or
it's own defragmenter. Now, it takes about 20 - 30 minutes.

Any comments on the greatly increased disk activity??

Thanks In Advance
Abb N
 
Hi,

I recently converted a (don't laugh) 15 gig hard drive to NTFS (curiosity
got the best of me) running XP Pro and now SP2. I notice a LOT more disk
activity than when it was FAT, especially during start up. I have fast find
turned off. However, I also notice a drastic time reduction to defrag the
drive. When it was FAT it use to take 3 - 4 hours using Norton Speed disk or
it's own defragmenter. Now, it takes about 20 - 30 minutes.

Any comments on the greatly increased disk activity??

Thanks In Advance
Abb N
Click to expand...

Why laugh ? I've been setting up NTFS systems since the days when a
220MB disk was big, for a PC. NTFS file system compression of the
entire C drive let us use systems lots longer than the manufacturer
would have liked.

NTFS is a "journalled file system", which makes it robust in the face
of crashing hardware for the same reasons that databases have done
transaction journalling for 30 years. It increases disk I/O, but
it'd done in a way that doesn't slow you down.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Journalled+filesystem
 
AbbN said:
I recently converted a (don't laugh) 15 gig hard drive to NTFS (curiosity
got the best of me) running XP Pro and now SP2. I notice a LOT more disk
activity than when it was FAT, especially during start up. I have fast find
turned off. However, I also notice a drastic time reduction to defrag the
drive. When it was FAT it use to take 3 - 4 hours using Norton Speed disk or
it's own defragmenter. Now, it takes about 20 - 30 minutes.

Any comments on the greatly increased disk activity??
Click to expand...

A simple conversion without taking precautions is liable to land you
with 512 byte clusters for the partition, hence the activity
 
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