Disk format & Fragmentation

[gloomyandy]

Hi Folks,
Up until now my system has been happy recording two DVB streams while viewing either a recorded program or time shifting. However tonight I started getting stuttering on one of the recordings. I'm not 100% sure (Because I have just switched to the latest svn), but I think it was caused by a very fragmented disk (lots of red in the xp disk analysis). So the question is what is the best practice for disk maintenance? Currently I'm using an NTFS partition with default settings (the drive is fine SATA, 200Mb two partitions one for the system one for recordings using DMA etc). I've not been de-fragmenting the drive up until now - should I be - how often?

Thanks for any help

Andy

[Marcusb]

Windows doesn't handle large DVR-ms files very well. I have a scheduled task which wakes my PC every few nights and perfoms a defrag.

[reagan+carter]

hello,

I first used to use the experimental ReiserDriver -system driver for the Reiser filesystem which suffers from only minimal fragmentation- (it worked alright but the driver was never quite finished).
I finally ended up, after OS reinstallation, paying for the costly Diskeeper which automagically and intelligently took care of the fragmentation problems with my new NTFS file system.

The price of a Diskeeper license for a single dedicated HTPC is quite high, and surely not worth it, but it is a working solution for lazy people.

The scheduled Defrag calls are an alternative that costs zero Rupee if you don't mind your system being unavailable during the process.

[Marcusb]

It's also been suggested to use larger than normal cluster sizes, since you will only be storing very large files there, but if the clusters are too big then you'll get bad stuttering.

[nitro]

i have my 250GB disk split into 2 partitions. 10gb for XP install and the other 210gb for files. the larger partition has the largest configurable cluster size enabled. I have been running my MP box for many months now, and there is minimal fragmentation.

[gloomyandy]

Thanks for the info. A couple of questions...
1. To schedule disk defrag do you use the Windows scheduler? Can you leave mp running (but not recording/playing) during this?
2. Cluster size. I assume you have to set this when you create the partition? Anyone know of a way to change it for an already active partition?

Thanks

Andy

[wortelsoft]

As posted somewere else sometime ago:

Originally Posted by wortelsoft

Since Windows Xp the windows defrag is now also a command line utility. Which makes it possible to schedule the defragmentation.

just type the following in at a cmd prompt to schedule to defrag drive c: every wednesday at 2AM:

at 2:00 every:w defrag c: /f

Best thing: its free

Windows XP can optimize itself as well it does this every three days whem the computer is idle. Or kick this of by hand by ussing cmd prompt:

Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks (case sensitive)

[Hair]

But today, if you use MP to hibernate after recording. If you wake up the PC with another program, woun't MP set it to hibernate again?

I've just discovered that my 177GB partition was heavily fragmented, according to Diskeeper. It would be great to have MP waking up the machine and do maintainance (ie defrag and EPG update) at regular intervals.

I've been using the same partition since august (then it was clean), it is already heavily fragmented! I'm now spending time starting and stopping diskeeper between recordings. I've also had to disable hibernation in MP. Diskeeper reports that it will take quite a few defragmentations to get a result! And even a Samsung disk starts to make a racket at these fragmented times! ;-)

[zion22]

That's what I never understood with Diskeeper/windows defrag. That fact that you actually have to defrag the drive like 5 times in a row to get some decent results (if you start off with a fragmented disc).

So yeah, you'll need to run it often to keep the fragmentation low.

Whatever happend to Norton Speed Disk anyways... it used to be.. uhm.. good.?

[Spragleknas]

Anybody tried JkDefrag?

JkDefrag is a disk defragmenting utility for Windows, and is the first open source defragmenting project of its kind[1]. This free computer program was developed by Jeroen Kessels beginning in 2004[2], and is released under the GNU General Public License.

"Review" of defrag apps: http://donnedwards.openaccess.co.za/...efragmentation