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Free space defragger?
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deltaepsylon View Drop Down
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Posts: 1 		Post Options Post Options   Quote deltaepsylon Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Free space defragger?
    Posted: 28 February 2007 at 10:14pm
Dirms is good, i ve heard: i havent acutally used it myself.
But what i DO know is good is JKDefrag. Its REALLY good, and its free!
if u use the command line version with the -a4 option, then u get completely optimized disk. all the files on one end, all the free space on the other end.

but as often one must do with all defraggers, multiple passes of JK defrag
maybe 2 with the -a4 option, or about 4 without it
must be used for a nice disk
Cheese is good.
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JDlugosz View Drop Down
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Posts: 87 		Post Options Post Options   Quote JDlugosz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 February 2007 at 3:25pm
The "dirms" degragger was designed for that.  Not only will it slide everything over to consolidate free space, but it will overcome the 16-cluster granularity of all other degraggers and remove more space between the files.  It's free.
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jawz101 View Drop Down
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Posts: 470 		Post Options Post Options   Quote jawz101 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 January 2007 at 2:00pm

o&o defragmenter?
can defrag w/ numerous methods.  you pick which one you like

space, stealth, last modified, last accessed, by name(directory structure)

usually I start off w/ space and then do last modified after that.  I would think that would reduce fragmentation as much as possible since old files that have never changed would never move if defragging by last modified.

Other than that- have you thought of archiving 4 year old stuff to DVD's or something?

Or probably a great idea:  These big hard drives everyone buys are as big as server drives sometimes, and people have larger file counts.  Consider using more  partitions instead of creating folders.

ex: create a partition named downloads and set all your file sharing apps to point to it instead.  That way the downloads partition can get fragmented as much as it wants but the data that I know I'll always keep is in a more stagnant partition.



Edited by jawz101 - 11 January 2007 at 9:12am
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JanS View Drop Down
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Posts: 10 		Post Options Post Options   Quote JanS Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28 December 2006 at 4:43pm
I have similar problems with a FAT32 drive, 55 GB in size, of which approx. 45 are used. I thought about taking an old Win98SE boot CD, boot it in dos mode and run defrag. Any chance of this going to work, or will I mess up my system? (I do have files over 2 GB)

The windows XP defrag is much slower than older ones, it seems to me.

A really good thing would be a new offline defragmenter working like this:
1. Scan drive
2. Think of new layout for drive. Check file change dates (file that didnt change for long probably will keep their size) and keep free space after files often increasing their size (maybe monitor the file system for a while with a background tool). Put directories together (so clusters 1-10 contain c:\somedir\1.dat and clusters 11-20 contain c:\somedir\2.dat) at least for small files, as they are more likely to be read in that order. Create lots of continguos free space.
3. Defrag - allow user to select method: a) Windows-like slow but probably safe defrag b) read lots of consecutive data into RAM and write them in one run (less seeks, more speed) or c) copy whole disk somewhere else (other partition, external drive, network), verify, and then write back correctly. This would be faster for really fragmented drives with little free space.


Edited by JanS - 28 December 2006 at 4:52pm
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Kitten View Drop Down
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Posts: 12 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Kitten Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 December 2006 at 10:25am
Where is the advantage though? With normal defrag or a space squeeze, either way you've got to move almost eveything, so why not move all the fragments to where there will no longer be any fragmentation?


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D1rtyJ00 View Drop Down
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Posts: 146 		Post Options Post Options   Quote D1rtyJ00 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 September 2005 at 10:13am
Most commercial defrag engines support the freespace consolidation you speak of, including Winternals Defrag Manager.  Contig may not support this, or may not do this very well because Mark doesn't want his free defrag engine competing too closely with his commercial defrag engine.  Just a theory...
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Moleculor View Drop Down
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Posts: 2 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Moleculor Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 September 2005 at 7:48am

Ok, so XP's defragger -might- help a bit, but I know it doesn't do things perfectly. I also definitely knew about the fragmentation aspects of BT, and use the pre-allocation thing, but it's certainly far from perfect.

Thanks for the suggestion about the XP defragger. I still think a free-space defragger would be nice though.

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namrehto View Drop Down
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Posts: 3861 		Post Options Post Options   Quote namrehto Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 September 2005 at 4:50am
NT or XP? Though far from perfect, XP's defragger should make an attempt at compacting files and freeing up contiguous freespace. You may need several passes at it. Can't comment on Winternals Defrag Manager.

BTW, BitTorrent is notorious for fragmentation as a consequence of the way it works. Solution: set the BT client to pre-allocate file space before joining the swarm rather than let it allocate on the fly. HTH
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Moleculor View Drop Down
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Posts: 2 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Moleculor Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13 September 2005 at 11:13pm

Ok. I've been working with computers since I before I was in kindergarten, but I'll admit, I know very little about the really low level stuff like clusters and fragments and such like that. I also know very little about what makes NTFS or FAT32 different from each other. However, I thought I might suggest something. I may or may not be the first person to suggest this.

Originally my computer had a 40GB hard drive. I ran out of space, and eventually decided that I'd had enough of deleting files to make room for other stuff (games!), so I upgraded to 120GB. I then copied the entire 40GB drive over to my 120GB drive, and continued to use that data. Even a virus smashing into my version of Windows and starting to chew through things didn't force me to format: I just installed a second version of Windows, cleaned my system, deleted the old Windows, and moved on with my life.

However, even 120GB + 40GB of backup storage is not enough for me. So I continually run out of room and have to delete/re-install things.

Some of the data on these drives is four years old, if not older. In addition, I use BitTorrent. So, suffice it to say, my drive has some portions that are fragmented.

Now, I've used contig, and contiged the entire drive. Several times. I use contig to only defrag programs I need to eek every bit of performance out of too, like World of Warcraft, which not only uses BitTorrent technology for it's patch downloading, but patches have the unpleasant effect of causing files to burst into five-figure or higher fragmentation (last time, one file was in 75,000+ fragments).

However, contig is slowly becoming less and less efficient. I have to delete large quantities of data (last "wipe" was 20GB or so) just to free up enough space to get some "ok" defragging done. My swapfile's sitting at about 65 fragments, and that 75,000 fragment file defragged to about 65 fragments as well. I can remember when I got my swapfile down to TWO fragments. Contig alone just isn't cutting it. 

So if I understand how clusters and such work on drives, here's my recommendation: A program who's sole purpose is to slide all data on the drive together. This is not defragmentation. This is just pushing fragment of file A together with fragment of file B together with fragment of file C, to make sure that that free space of a GB between files A and B, and that GB of free space between files B and C become 2GB of free space behind file C. For example, right now I have 14.5GB free on my drive, yet my 2GB swapfile won't defrag any more. Why? All that space is scattered between other fragments.

So I guess I'm just suggesting that we get a "free space" defragger.

Or do I not understand basic drive functionality?

(EDIT: Yes, I realize that the only way to do things more inefficently than sliding data together would be to slide data together a cluster at a time. It's just an example. I realize there are probably a half-dozen ways of doing it more efficiently. 'Tis just an example.)



Edited by Moleculor
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