Buck said:What causes a system to slow down more from fragmenting,
fragmenting from many small files,
or fragmenting from very big files (like 500mb or 1gb)?
Modern systems dont slow down from any fragmenting.
While those do fragment, they're normally used in situations
where there is no slowdown. Most obviously with avi files etc
where the fragmentation is completely irrelevant, they get
played at a rate thats determined by the frame rate regardless.
Are you saying today's hard drives don't slow down from fragmenting,
or WindowsXP doesn't slow down from fragmenting?
Yes that's a good example. If fragmentation is caused by large avi
files, they might still play fine, but can they make your OS sluggish?
Rod Speed said:Both. Modern hard drives seek so quickly that the head move
from one fragment to another is so fast that its not noticeable,
and any version of Win is doing quite a lot with the hard drive
most of the time, even when say just web browsing and caching
all sorts of stuff from web pages that the heads are moving
around a hell of a lot most of the time that the occasional
extra head move from one fragment to another gets swamped.
And the tiny files in the cache dont get fragmented much either.
Nope, essentially because the head movement from one fragment
to another happens so quickly with modern hard drives that it
doesn't have any effect on what else the OS is doing.
Both. Modern hard drives seek so quickly that the head move
from one fragment to another is so fast that its not noticeable,
and any version of Win is doing quite a lot with the hard drive
most of the time, even when say just web browsing and caching
all sorts of stuff from web pages that the heads are moving
around a hell of a lot most of the time that the occasional
extra head move from one fragment to another gets swamped.
And the tiny files in the cache dont get fragmented much either.
Nope, essentially because the head movement from one fragment
to another happens so quickly with modern hard drives that it
doesnt have any effect on what else the OS is doing.
That's true if the system isn't heavily loaded. Eventually, systemsRod said:Both. Modern hard drives seek so quickly that the head move
from one fragment to another is so fast that its not noticeable,
and any version of Win is doing quite a lot with the hard drive
most of the time, even when say just web browsing and caching
all sorts of stuff from web pages that the heads are moving
around a hell of a lot most of the time that the occasional
extra head move from one fragment to another gets swamped.
And the tiny files in the cache dont get fragmented much either.
Nope, essentially because the head movement from one fragment
to another happens so quickly with modern hard drives that it
doesnt have any effect on what else the OS is doing.
Rod said:Modern systems dont slow down from any fragmenting.
So what could be the problem with my OS? It's a little sluggish than it used
to be,
and the last thing I was about to try was defragmenting it.
Since the drive is 120GB I haven't done it yet, I have to
leave it over night. I've run Spybot, Ad-Aware, Registry
Mechanic, and RegClean to try to get it running smoother.
I've also run SpinRite to fix any bad sectors on my drive.
And also a Fitness Test Utility from Hitachi with
S.M.A.R.T and everything, it checks out fine.
I don't want to do a clean install of WindowsXP even
I know that will most likely fix any sluggishness.
Is WindowsXP still prone to getting sluggish like Windows98 used to,
or is it just me?
When my system is being sluggish I can sometimes hear the
hard drive working hard to do it's job. I can hear this sound
which I don't know how to describe. I don't know if this
means the hard drive is slowly dying or if that's normal.
Like I said before, I checked it out with a couple of programs
and the drive is fine, but I know those programs could be wrong.
CJT said:Rod Speed wrote
That's true if the system isn't heavily loaded.
Eventually, systems will reach load levels at which such things matter
Bullshit.
(unless you buy more hardware than is really needed to do the job
-- your money, your choice). It's an OS's (as well as hardware's)
responsibility to schedule I/O to use head movement efficiently.
No One said:Rod Speed wrote
I beg to differ on that. My laptop becomes very slow do to
fragmenting and it runs XP....well, you did say modern...
Rod said:Few modern desktop system ever are for long.
Virtually every modern desktop system is that today.
The modern reality is that few modern desktop systems use
the hard drive agressively enough for that to be relevant.
I didn't notice anything in the original post that excluded servers.Servers are a different matter entirely.
CJT said:Rod Speed wrote
For that matter, hard disk performance is irrelevant to most modern desktop
systems, because the disk is barely used.
In fact, desktop systems probably shouldn't even have hard disks.
I didn't notice anything in the original post that excluded servers.
He clearly wasnt talking about a server.
Are you saying today's hard drives don't slow down from fragmenting,
or WindowsXP doesn't slow down from fragmenting?
Nick said:Rod Speed (e-mail address removed) wrote
Once again, you are assuming something,
and then giving an unreliable answer.
That is untrue.
Nope.
Modern Filesystems fragment far less than
older ones, but e.g. FAT32 is an old filesystem.
And they will slow down on reading and writing, just a
bit later since there is write buffering and read caching.
Reading a fragmented file for the first time is still
massively slower as reading an unfragmented file.
Writing a file to fragmented space witll slow down massively
when the write buffer is filled or a flush condition is triggered.
Of course HDDs have gotten faster, so the impact
of fragmentation is not so obvious as it used to be.
Nope, anyone running servers wouldnt have asked the original question.
Wrong again, you stupid frog ****wit.
Wrong again. Few could even pick it in a proper randomised
double blind trial without being allowed to use a ute that
displays the fragmentation status, so there is no 'massively'
Arno Wagner said:That is untrue.
Modern Filesystems fragment far less than older ones,
but e.g. FAT32 is an old filesystem. And they will slow down on reading
and writing, just a bit later since there is write buffering and read
caching. Reading a fragmented file for the first time is still massively
slower as reading an unfragmented file. Writing a file to fragmented
space witll slow down massively when the write buffer is filled or a
flush condition is triggered.
Of course HDDs have gotten faster, so the impact of fragmentation is
not so obvious as it used to be.