Hard Drive Maintenance

[nsuperman86]

I really want to keep my new ThinkPad running smooth, and I have noticed some utilities to do so. Just had a couple questions about them.

How often should I defrag my drive? I was thinking about every 3 months.
Does disk cleanup help, and if so how often should I use that?
And lastly does anyone in here use the Error-checking utility?
What exactly is its purpose and how useful is it?

By the way, if anyone has any recommendations or programs to help keep my ThinkPad in the best shape, don't mind slapping down a few comments.

[eriqesque]

I certainly wouldn't wait 3 month's to defrag the disk.
I run diskeeper and it defrags automatically based upon usage... But it usually runs a couple of times a day. But depending on your usage of the notebook is depending on when you should defrag but at the least 1 would say once a week.

Also as for clean-up you can do this once a week or so.

And the error checking is only usually needed if an improper shutdown is down.

[Hangfire]

eriqesque,

I noticed that diskeeper says it is not suitable for XP Pro. Do you have any suggestions?

[stgreek]

eriqesque,

I noticed that diskeeper says it is not suitable for XP Pro. Do you have any suggestions?

I might be wrong but I think that NTFS filesysytems, just like Linux filesystems, do not need defragmenting (sth to do with journalling?). If however you run windows xp on FAT32 diskeeper should work and defrag would make a difference.

[monty cantsin]

I might be wrong but I think that NTFS filesysytems, just like Linux filesystems, do not need defragmenting (sth to do with journalling?).

Wrong. I've got an XP pro NTFS5 system with an 80GB HDD here that I've been using mainly as a backup file server for my notebooks. It hasn't been defragmented for about a year now and has become extremely sluggish since. Fragmentation has finally reached a level of 39% and can actually be feeled, often the system doesn't react at all (mouse hangs etc.) for up to five seconds and even above when it is reading strongly fragmented data.

[monty cantsin]

I noticed that diskeeper says it is not suitable for XP Pro. Do you have any suggestions?

There's a special edition for XP Pro:

http://www.executive.com/diskeeper/disk ... ldk10#grid

Btw, the current version 8 runs very well on my systems. You can download a trial version here:

http://www1.execsoft.com/us_dk80_protr.exe

http://www.soft32.com/download-Diskeepe ... 426-5.html

http://consumer.execsoft.com/downloads/ ... asp?RId=50

[MichaelMeier]

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[flake]

NTFS does get fragmented over time. Not as bad as a FAT filesystem but it still does. The addtition of jornalling is not why. It has to do with the basic filesystem structure on the disk.

How often you should defrag depends on what you do. Downloading a lot of large files (iso images, many mp3s) to a single directory is an excelent way to quickly fragment a disk. :)

For most people, the built-in defragmentor (more or less the same thing as diskeeper lite) will be just fine. The only thing the full version of diskeeper adds is ability to defrag the MFT and pagefile at boot time and schedualing. IMO, Diskeeper is very low quality software. Older versions would sometimes hang the system or silently corrupt the disk (nice!).

BUT... There is a free program that does the same thing see http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freew ... frag.shtml

also see:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/contig.shtml

You can easily create a schedualed task to contig. I find that, mainly, the data files from my email program are the files that are continualy always becoming fragmented (data being added in somewhat large ammounts to a single directory). Most other changing data files I have are smaller and don't get fragmented very often. A once a month defrag will do wonders.

The MFT is usualy in two spots (and that's not a bad thing). If you never defrag, the MFT can eventualy become quite fragmented (after many months) and will radicaly slow down a system. Defragging once a month or in may cases just a couple times a year will pretty much ensure that this never happens unless you run a very busy database or something on your laptop :)

Oh yea, to prevent deep seated filesystem problems it is not a bad idea to run "chkdsk /f c:" about once a month. Do "chkdsk /r c:" once or twice a year to check for bad sectors.

Cheers,


~Jason

[eriqesque]

eriqesque,

I noticed that diskeeper says it is not suitable for XP Pro. Do you have any suggestions?

Hangfire,

See monty Cantsin 2nd post

[Klangfarben]

A problem with most defragmenting methods is that some system
files used by Windows can not be defragmented. If you would like
to defragment every single file, there is a way. (In my opinion,
this takes less time.)

This is not for everyone, because you should have two Thinkpads
with the same type of drive bays, and also a second hard drive
adaptor.

If you are ready:

1) Put the hard disk you wish to defragment into the adaptor;

2) Put the adaptor into the bay of another Thinkpad;

3) And defragment the disk with your favorite utility;

4) In order to take out the drive from the bay without shutting
down the machine, you may have to completely stop the service of
deragmentation, going to Control panel -> Administrative Tools ->
Services. (In my case, I pause O&O Defrag service.)

If some of you know better procedures, please let me know.

[monty cantsin]

A problem with most defragmenting methods is that some system files used by Windows can not be defragmented.

Yes, there's at least a grain of truth to it.

If some of you know better procedures, please let me know.

How creative, but, yes, you can do it with every professional defrag solution. You have to use the boot-time defragmentation mode in Diskeeper and O&O Defrag or simply resort to PageDefrag that has been mentioned by Jason above, which is even available for free...

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freew ... frag.shtml

However, I don't see that PageDefrag also defragments the MFTs, for this task you still have to resort to Diskeeper, O&O Defrag or other professional tools with such a feature.

Btw, as I am currently reading...

http://www.oo-software.com/en/products/ ... facts.html

and

http://www.oo-software.com/en/news/2004 ... 40617.html

...I am informed that since Version 6 O&O Defrag can also defragment the MFTs and the Windows registry online, without having to shut down the whole system. Very interesting. Makes me think about changing over to it and leaving Diskeeper behind.

[AssPenny]

VoptXP is one of the best defrag programs have run across. Its faster than most.

[Klangfarben]

...I am informed that since Version 6 O&O Defrag can also defragment the MFTs and the Windows registry online, without having to shut down the whole system. Very interesting. Makes me think about changing over to it and leaving Diskeeper behind.

Thanks for your reply, monty cantsin. To my knowledge, however,
only the N.B. server edition of O&O Defrag V6.5 supports that
feature. (Of course that version does not run under Windows
2000/XP Professional.) And I am not very fond of boot time
defragmentation in general: I have seen error messages and had
even corrupt data on several occasions using boot time
defragmentation. That is why I still prefer my "creative" method.

[monty cantsin]

To my knowledge, however, only the N.B.

"N.B."? Sorry, don't know what this is.

server edition of O&O Defrag V6.5 supports that feature. (Of course that version does not run under Windows 2000/XP Professional.)

Well, actually I'm currently testing the O&O Defrag 6.5 Server edition on an XP Pro system... and the facts page of the manufacturer says that O&O Defrag Professional supports online defragmentation of the MFT and system files as well:

http://www.oo-software.com/en/products/ ... facts.html

In fact, also Diskeeper 8 can defragment all system files except of the paging file and most of the MFT, so this is no real advantage of the O&O software, but only the core functionality that is provided by the Windows XP operating system. But it seems to me that O&O Defrag performs its tasks more rigorously, while Diskeeper often needs a few successive runs to show good results.

Yet what I regard as a big plus of O&O Defrag is its ability to defrag drives very effectively in the background, without severly impeding the workflow on a system that is currently in usage. Although I like the user interface of Diskeeper 8 much better, Diskeeper slows down a system dramatically when other applications have to access the drive.

And I am not very fond of boot time defragmentation in general: I have seen error messages and had even corrupt data on several occasions using boot time defragmentation.

Well, seems that I can call myself very lucky, I didn't have such troubles yet. Which software did you use? An earlier version of Diskeeper? In the past Diskeeper has been reported to be quite unsafe.

That is why I still prefer my "creative" method.

Well, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with creativity, of course...

[Klangfarben]

Thanks for your corrections, monty cantsin. (Sorry to those who
were misled by my previous post.) O&O Defrag 6.5 server edition
does run under Windows 2000/XP Professional indeed. And the
professional version supports the online defragmentation of some
system files as well.

But my point still remains. I have yet to see a program that can
defragment every system file, including page files, online in one
fell swoop. (According to the help file, O&O Defrag 6.5
Professional cannot defragment paging files online.)

Which software did you use? An earlier
version of Diskeeper? In the past Diskeeper has been reported to
be quite unsafe.

Exactly. I tested Diskeeper and PerfectDisk a couple of years ago.
I do not remember their version numbers.

And this is off-topic:

To my knowledge,
however, only the N.B.

"N.B."? Sorry, don't know what this
is.

'N.B.' is the abbreviation of Latin 'nota bene', which means 'mark
well' or 'note well' and it is used to call attention to a point.
Thus that occurrence of the word in a sentence does not generally
mark the end of the sentence. To avoid ambiguity, I could have
written "only the server (N.B.) edition" instead. Sorry if that
confused you.

[flake]

AFAIK it would be pretty much impossible to defrag the pagefile while windows is running. This has to do with windows missing the functionality to flush the contents of the page file to real ram so the lock can be removed. Linux can do this whole process in two fell swoops with swapoff and swapon

But, defragging the page file is of dubious value anyway. if you have stuff stuck in virtual memory then you have bigger problems the fragmentation. Besides, most things are not contiguous in memory anyway, so a "fragmented" pagefile is not really stuffing things up any more then it normaly is

[monty cantsin]

But my point still remains. I have yet to see a program that can defragment every system file, including page files, online in one fell swoop. (According to the help file, O&O Defrag 6.5 Professional cannot defragment paging files online.)

Yes, and for some strange reason on all of my systems also the hibernation file is locked, so O&O doesn't touch it, either, in online mode.

'N.B.' is the abbreviation of Latin 'nota bene', which means 'mark well' or 'note well' and it is used to call attention to a point. Thus that occurrence of the word in a sentence does not generally mark the end of the sentence. To avoid ambiguity, I could have written "only the server (N.B.) edition" instead. Sorry if that confused you.

Shame on me. Actually I got a Latin proficiency certificate and studied humanities at university for years, but that totally slipped my attention...

[MichaelMeier]

..

[monty cantsin]

An unfragmented file would allow to read/write with very little head movement in neighboring tracks.

Yes, that's certainly true, but the speed improvement you have with data files isn't so much noticable with the paging file, as flake wrote above. Only very seldom larger, continuous blocks of data are written to / read from the paging file. I once had a paging file in use that was scattered into more than one and a half thousand pieces (don't ask me how that happened ), and after defragmenting it into one continuous block, there was hardly a gain in speed perceptible. The system slows down dramatically when it must access the paging file, and it does so whether this paging file is written in one single block or scattered all over the drive.

[MichaelMeier]

..