Somewhere in this chain of defrag/performance things I questioned
whether it was still possible (in addition to defragging) to physically
relocate files to specific areas of the disk where seek times might be
minimized or sequential data access might be maximized. The reason had
to do with Logical Block Addressing (LBA) and, in particular, LBA in
combination with zoned bit recording which divides the disc into zones
where the number of sectors per track varies with radius.
This was relevant to Brian's comment that he had paid his computer guy
to defrag his computer using a utility that also relocates some Windows
files and the page file to areas of the disk where performance is
improved. Based on the link from Mike below, actual performance testing
of defragged drives tends to produce little or no benefit. However, I
acceded to Brian that optimally positioning some files (especially the
page file) might improve performance if it could be done on today's LBA
drives with zoned bit recording. I still haven't found a complete
description of how such a translation can be done (LBA yes, zoned bit
recording no) but now have little doubt that it can be. Brian says his
computer's performance has been significantly improved in the past so
I'll accept that it has. But I'll also add that the only review that I
could find of the same software pans it as useless and a waste of money.
Who knows? What I do know is that after running this machine for the
past 6 years Windows shows me a disk structure with large seqeantial
areas of unallocated space and does not recommend that the disk be
defragged since performance will not be significantly improved.
Chuck Norcutt
On 8/14/2012 5:56 PM, usher99@xxxxxxx wrote:
> Defragging one old office computer with Fat 32 generally only used by
> one office staff to run excel is profoundly enhanced by defragging,
> never reexamined the issue until the comments here.
>
> Doing a bit more digging, Dr. Disk appears to be nearly if not wholly
> spot on.
>
> PC World 2011
> "Defragging and Optimizing:
> In days past (the age of FAT16 and FAT32), regularly defragging a hard
> drive made a noticeable difference in the speed with which it loaded
> applications and data--now, not as much. Even so, optimization--placing
> large, often-used files such as Outlook .pst files in the
> quickest-to-load location on your hard drive--can speed things up"
>
> Then found this including comments from Steve Gibson:
>
> http://www.pcworld.com/article/214678/defragging_why_how_and_whether.html
>
> The author recommends running the windoze one for the reasons
> mentioned once a month.
>
> I have always been impressed with Spinrite--now that has been a good
> utility.
> One thing about defragging is it does refresh the data and all things
> look quite neat--excellent placebo effect as well. It is free afterall.
> It does make data recovery possibly easier as mentioned. Some
> suggest start up time Might be imroved though I have not seen hard data
> on that.
>
> Mike
>
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