Best defrag software?

Data is striped across platters by the disk firmware, and the heads can't move independently so there's nothing special to be done on the software side.

Much like raid it just stripes across the platters. Look at any benchmark of a drive with multiple platters or a raid0 array, performance drops off at the end of the drive/array.

This is a common misconception - hard drives *don't* stripe data across multiple platters as in a RAID0 array. A design patent was issued a couple of years ago, but AFAIK it's never gone beyond the conceptual stage.

Check out "Background of the invention" for an explanation of the difficulties involved.

As for defragging, I've never seen any independent, repeatable tests proving that third-party apps provide a noticeable performance improvement over Windows 7 or Vista's built-in defragger. Until it's forthcoming, I'll continue to believe that these apps provide nothing more than therapeutic value from watching little coloured blocks being shuffled around. :D
 
Interesting patent, but it's describing something else. Really, I think the innovation there is in the independently movable heads. In their background section they even describe the type of 'striping' we're talking about:
As a result of its common-carrier and single-coil actuator design, core electronic architecture, and vertical track-alignment discrepancy, current drive configurations prevent data from being written simultaneously to different tracks withinidentical or separate cylinders. In contrast, current drives write data sequentially in a successive pattern generally giving preference to the lowest cylinder, head, and sector numbers. Pursuant to this pattern, for example, data are writtensequentially to progressively ascending head and sector numbers within the lowest available cylinder number until that cylinder is filled, in which case the process begins anew starting with the first head and sector numbers within the next adjacentcylinder. Because tracks within a given cylinder are quasi-aligned, this pattern has the primary effect of reducing the seek time required by the read/write heads for sequentially accessing successive data.

I will clarify a little bit though and recognize that unlike the RAID0 case, the data is logically striped across platters, but (as far as I know, anyway) it's not read from multiple platters simultaneously, it's done for data locality to reduce the frequency of head movements and getting a little bit of 'free' performance. Much simpler to implement than what they're describing, but the on-disk layout of the data (if I understand the patent synopsis) should end up being very similar. It just doesn't make sense to do it any other way (at least as long as the disk controller is deciding which platter the data ends up on, anyway).

Either way, the defrag utility doesn't do anything special (and can't really) about it.
 
I will clarify a little bit though and recognize that unlike the RAID0 case, the data is logically striped across platters, but (as far as I know, anyway) it's not read from multiple platters simultaneously, it's done for data locality to reduce the frequency of head movements and getting a little bit of 'free' performance.
Fair enough, I guess it really boils down to the semantics of "striping" - I was using it in the commonly accepted sense of splitting files across multiple surfaces which are read/written concurrently, as in RAID0. If it were feasible with a multiple-head plus common carrier design, I imagine HDD manufacturers would be trying to squeeze *more* platters rather than fewer into their casings, in an attempt to increase STR.

Although technically interesting, the independently-movable head concept looks a bit of a non-starter to me, both from a cost and reliability POV - maybe if someone had run with it a few years earlier it might have stood a chance, but with the current speed of development of SSDs it all seems a bit of a lost cause in any case.
 
ahh... thanks for clarifying... I should have known that the data was "striped" at the firmware level - seems pretty obvious now.

So it would seem that Ultimate Defrag's file placement might work. Perhaps I'll try it out again... It's a bit like short-stroking for your most important files, but with retention of the entire disk for less frequently used files.
 
Fair enough, I guess it really boils down to the semantics of "striping" - I was using it in the commonly accepted sense of splitting files across multiple surfaces which are read/written concurrently, as in RAID0. If it were feasible with a multiple-head plus common carrier design, I imagine HDD manufacturers would be trying to squeeze *more* platters rather than fewer into their casings, in an attempt to increase STR.

Although technically interesting, the independently-movable head concept looks a bit of a non-starter to me, both from a cost and reliability POV - maybe if someone had run with it a few years earlier it might have stood a chance, but with the current speed of development of SSDs it all seems a bit of a lost cause in any case.

No shit, there is a reason that two of my 250GB AAKS drives in Raid0 are faster than a dual platter 500GB AAKS.

I would figure that it's common sense that certain parts of the drive are faster than others
and the less that the heads have to move to read data the better but whatever.
 
So it would seem that Ultimate Defrag's file placement might work. Perhaps I'll try it out again... It's a bit like short-stroking for your most important files, but with retention of the entire disk for less frequently used files.
I think the real issue is not whether or not it "works", more whether it "works to the point where it provides a worthwhile performance improvement".

It's my feeling that any theoretical benefits would be made completely unnoticeable by other factors, such as the prefetching and caching performed by modern OSes and the overall speed of today's HDDs, but obviously if there's any convincing data out there to the contrary I'll happily revise my opinion. :)
 
I think the real issue is not whether or not it "works", more whether it "works to the point where it provides a worthwhile performance improvement".

It's my feeling that any theoretical benefits would be made completely unnoticeable by other factors, such as the prefetching and caching performed by modern OSes and the overall speed of today's HDDs, but obviously if there's any convincing data out there to the contrary I'll happily revise my opinion. :)

When you are running something like a heavily modded Oblivion that loads things on the fly with a 20GB folder it doesn't hurt but you're right in the vast majority of apps it makes no difference.
 
You can really 'feel' the difference between Virtual Machine running on a defragged HDD vs un-defragged drive. The performance is significant if there is heavy fragmentation. Otherwise the benefit of a day-to-day defrag or defrag protection is not too noticable.
 
When you are running something like a heavily modded Oblivion that loads things on the fly with a 20GB folder it doesn't hurt but you're right in the vast majority of apps it makes no difference.

HA! This is exactly why I was looking in this thread. lol

I had remembered reading about ultimatedefrag a couple years ago, and now I'm running a 25gb oblivion and found myself wondering if something like this might help.

Still really don't know if it would actually help at all, or if I want to give it a try. I think I just need to get an ssd solely for my oblivion :rolleyes:
 
Guys, the best one out there in my opinion is Disktrix Ultimate Defrag. It allows you to place certain folders on the outside of the hard disk and can place files sequentially on the disk for best performance. Placement of files on the disk has the biggest impact on HD performance. It can even "archive" files that you don't use often in the center of the HD. I recommend this tool highly and performance improvements are more than noticeable.

YUP Ultimate Defrag ROCKS!!

Been using it since FSX came out,did wonders for that game..
 
HA! This is exactly why I was looking in this thread. lol

I had remembered reading about ultimatedefrag a couple years ago, and now I'm running a 25gb oblivion and found myself wondering if something like this might help.

Still really don't know if it would actually help at all, or if I want to give it a try. I think I just need to get an ssd solely for my oblivion :rolleyes:

:D I'm glad that I'm not the only one whos thought about it.
 
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