POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Why is defragging so slow? : Re: Why is defragging so slow? Server Time
6 Sep 2024 05:15:47 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Why is defragging so slow?  
From: Darren New
Date: 4 Jun 2009 16:14:50
Message: <4a282b3a$1@news.povray.org>
Warp wrote:
>   No dice. Also that simply refuses to move those tiny files, and is unable
> to defragment that one big file. I even tried to boot to safe mode and run
> it from there. No banana.

Weird. I never really let it grind all the way through, but it did 
defragment some stuff for me.

> http://warp.povusers.org/snaps/c-drive.png

I think I have an older (or freer) version of that program. I don't have all 
those options. :-)

>   I can't understand what those small files are. They are not marked as
> unmovable nor anything special. They just are there, and no defragmenter
> is moving them.

My guess, offhand, would be either directories or small files the system 
happens to have open for some reason.

Oh, wait... Do you have system restore turned on? I bet you can't move files 
that are the backing store of virtual volumes.  Try going into system on the 
control panel and turning off system restore, and see if those files go away 
after the system has had time to sync the drive.

Also, maybe consider scheduling a chkdsk on boot. Perhaps the blocks wound 
up being marked used but aren't really used any more?

>   (The master file table certainly takes a humongous amount of space.
> Is that really normal?)

It never gets any smaller. If you run chkdsk, it'll tell you how much of the 
MFT space is actually in use.  There's also "reserved but unallocated" space 
at the end of the MFT (normally 1/8th your disk). You can put files there, 
but the system will use that space last, because once your MFT is 
fragmented, you can't defrag it.

>   Btw, this is how it looks after I restore that one big file:
> http://warp.povusers.org/snaps/c-drive2.png

That's only 4 fragments or so. Doesn't seem too bad. But I can understand 
the frustration of not being able to figure out what those files are.

I bet it wouldn't be *too* hard to write a program to tell you file names 
and cluster numbers on stdout, so you could figure out which files they are. 
(Actually, DriveXML will do that as part of backing up the disk, writing it 
into the xml-formatted backup file, but then you need to actually back up 
the disk to get that file using that program. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!


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