How would this level of fragmentation slow down my PC performance ?

[sammy2]

I noticed in trying to extract 40gb of data the process was taking a bit longer than usual. I also noticed if I downloaded multiple files playing videos etc can stutter and general navigation is slower. I download and delete various HD movies etc and I believe this may be the read there were so many fragmented block ..How often should I defrag to maintain the highest level of performance ? 





 

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

Normally not until there's a lot... this seems like a lot if red = fragmented.

If you use Bittorrent, does the client allow you to pre-reserve / pre-create the space before it downloads?

[Obry]

This definitely is great candidate for defrag. Never seen so fragmented drive myself (but I rarely use defrag since most my devices use SSD's nowadays). Generally though it might be good to defrag when it gets to 30-40% or more in the red...

[sammy2]

Yes red is fragmented. I do use bit torrent and I haven't checked in utorrent allows me to pre-create the space. 

[sammy2]

Almost a day later and it's still defragging ..Using the optimizing feature on Auslogics tho. Really hope to see a speed increase across the board. Was hoping to hear what kind of impact my heavy fragmentation should cause.  

[sjms]

free isn't always great. i have been using raxco perfectdisk for over 10 years. it is a set it and forget it (for the most part) product. it even has functionality for SSDs

letting your drive get into double digit fragmentation increases search and workload considerably for your spinning drives.

[Anibal P]

This is why I always just use the auto defrag/optimize in Windows, have not needed to actually defrag an HDD in a few years, SSD is also set to auto optimize 

 

There's no good reason to not use the built in tools in Windows  these days 

[PGHammer]

free isn't always great. i have been using raxco perfectdisk for over 10 years. it is a set it and forget it (for the most part) product. it even has functionality for SSDs

letting your drive get into double digit fragmentation increases search and workload considerably for your spinning drives.

Disk Optimizer (Windows 10) *is* the current version of Condusiv's Diskeeper - literally, there is no difference other than minor GUI differences.

Like Diskeeper (which had the feature first) and Raxco PerfectDisk, it is "launch and leave" and/or schedulable.  Like both, it also supports SSDs and TRIM (and for the same reasons - SSDs are more commonplace).  Unless you need a particular proprietary feature in either PerfectDisk OR Condusiv Diskeeper, Disk Optimizer is plenty good enough for typical use.  (That wasn't exactly fun for Condusiv to hear (from me) for several reasons - I have been a Condusiv (and Diskeeper Corporation) partner since 1998 - going back to when Diskeeper added support for FAT32 - in other words, their first branching out from Windows NT; while Diskeeper is actually cheaper to license for individuals and SMBs compared to PerfectDisk, being branded "irrelevant" compared to a free product that your own company wrote DOES sting -  Condusiv WROTE the manual Disk Defragmenter that every NT-based OS has included - and wrote Disk Optimizer as well - which includes automatic multipasss defragmentation as well; the only time I recommend Diskeeper is for OSes older than 10.

[+BudMan MVC]

how would your disk get so fragmented?  Windows has had auto defrag for YEARS..  Are you still using xp?  There should be no possible reason for fragmentation to ever get so high unless you turned off auto??

As others have said there has been no reason for 3rd party defrag for years either.  If you really want to see jump in performance just move to SSD.

[sammy2]

No idea, I think it's the 40gb movie files I download causing the issue. Using windows 10 and I didn't disable any feature pertaining to the fragmentation

[Ad Man Gamer]

do you leave your computer on, or is it only on when you use it? If it is only on when actively in use, then maybe windows never has an idle period long enough to slot in a defrag, or it ironically goes so slow to preserve disk performance that it just can't put a dent in it.

[+BudMan MVC]

how big is D?  Downloading files would not do such a fragmentation..  How much space do you have free on D.. You need free space to be able to defrag efficiently

[sammy2]

2tb with tons of free space which varies depending on if I downloaded a 300gb 4k video etc lol. I got it defragged down to only 10% fragmentation but I did a performance test with samsung magician and it's performing worse. Which is surprising as another drive I defragged improved after defragmentation. 

[+BudMan MVC]

What is tons?  10%, 30% of the 2TB?

10% frag, is HIGH!!! My 3TB is 0%

[sammy2]

It's at 500 plus gb right now but I have a ton of movies to delete. If 10 is high then the 60% it was a few days ago was disastrous. That's what I wanted to find out how bad it was to be heavily fragmented. 

[spaceelf]

It's at 500 plus gb right now but I have a ton of movies to delete. If 10 is high then the 60% it was a few days ago was disastrous. That's what I wanted to find out how bad it was to be heavily fragmented. 

Large files don't always need to be fully defragmented, though any specific file being too fragmented is a problem if you're accessing it.

Your filesystem and system files getting badly fragmented are usually more serious.

free isn't always great. i have been using raxco perfectdisk for over 10 years. it is a set it and forget it (for the most part) product. it even has functionality for SSDs

letting your drive get into double digit fragmentation increases search and workload considerably for your spinning drives.

Auslogics latest defraggers are great, free or pro.  Perfectdisk has a tendency to take far longer than it should, though the end result is usually pretty damn good I'd go for Auslogics stuff anyday.

Edited October 20, 2015 by randomevent

[sammy2]

Tonight I was downloading two files and this caused the video I was playing to stutter. I guess I need faster drives. 

[+BudMan MVC]

enough can not be said about SSD...  It is the prob the best thing you can do for a performance..  Prices are good, you can get a 128GB for under $70 for sure..  This is normally more than enough for a OS/Working drive and then you just use your older spindle drives for storage.  Once you go ssd you will never want to use old school spindle drives ever again..

What was the benchmark you are seeing on the drive?  Is it inline with what it is suppose to be for that drive? Did you get your frag down to normal numbers.. As someone mentioned when defrags run they quite often can skip larger files unless you specific say to do them..   Contig is a tool from MS to take a deeper look into your fragmentation then the gui tool always and can be used to defrag specific large files, etc.  Or free space.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb897428.aspx

[spaceelf]

If they're writing 40+ gigs of data every day an SSD might not be a great way to go...they are fantastic but they do have their limits.

As someone mentioned when defrags run they quite often can skip larger files unless you specific say to do them..

I then installed the program in question and realized that rule was disabled by default.  (Still might apply in some modes, but I didn't check.)

[+BudMan MVC]

40GB a day is nothing for modern SSD..

Take a read http://techreport.com/review/27436/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-two-freaking-petabytes/4

The results of our experiment do, however, point to some more general conclusions about SSDs as a whole. Although only two drives made it to 2PB, all six wrote hundreds of terabytes without issue, vastly exceeding their official endurance specifications. More importantly, the drives all survived far more writes than most users are likely to generate. Typical consumers shouldn't worry about exceeding the endurance of modern SSDs.

So Warranty on 850 pro 128GB ssd is listed as 10 years or 150 TBW.. At 40GB a day... that is

150,000,000,000,000 / 40,000,000,000 = 3750 days.. And from the article listed above all the drives tested seem to live well past those numbers...

The evo model is listed at 75TBW or 5 years.. I don't think that is an issue either...

Home users would have to be worried about, what are the odds that you would be using that drive for anywhere near that length of time..  When they keep coming out with larger, faster, cheaper drives.. Do you really think you will be using the drive you buy today in 10 some years?  And really who is going to write 40GB a day every single day??

The oldest spindle drive I have still in operation is 6+ years old..  Its a tiny little 650GB drive... I really have no use for such a small slow drive with todays standards, I use it as a back up disk in my overall DR plan..  Its not the only backup of my files, just one of many..  I keep an eye on it with smart and it when I get another drive it will be retired and replaced with a my next smallest slowest drive 1TB that is only 3 years old, etc.. 

Edited October 22, 2015 by BudMan

[spaceelf]

The results of our experiment do, however, point to some more general conclusions about SSDs as a whole. Although only two drives made it to 2PB, all six wrote hundreds of terabytes without issue, vastly exceeding their official endurance specifications. More importantly, the drives all survived far more writes than most users are likely to generate. Typical consumers shouldn't worry about exceeding the endurance of modern SSDs.

Different drive firmwares still react differently based on how much activity they've had recently.

(I do have a fast older SSD that will kick down to ~40MB/sec writes if you've written too much to it, though that's an unusual case.)

Plus, SSDs are still comparatively expensive.  Far cheaper than they used to be certainly, but they're talking about 300gb video files...

I honestly don't know how good a drive you'd even need for that.

[+BudMan MVC]

Not sure where he is getting 300GB movies, nor what kind of connection they would have they could download that in a DAY?  Do they have Gig fiber or something?

Even their reference to 40GB was more than 1 movie, from my take. ###### in my library that would be 40+ movies..

As to expense of ssd, while it is not as low as your typical 3TB off the shelf home use drive.. When you compare the speed and endurance of the drive they are very reasonable price point if you ask me.. And it only goes down every day..  At somepoint in the not so distant future I could see the old spindle drive being useless for anything other than archival storage media.  Stuff that is not accessed very often, and not written too all that often as well.  With most likely a ssd as cache drive between..

If I was working with 100's GB per day of file moving I sure and the hell would not be using some older spindle single disk.. It would be an 0 array for sure and most, and most likely SSD to boot.. You can get the 500GB m.2 for like 175.. So for a 2TB array your looking at what $700.. Seems very reasonable for the performance you would see... 

I would be very curious to the specs of the hardware the OP is working with and actual what they are doing that they move about such size movies - are they in the editing biz?  And working with single 2TB disks that are frag to all get out??  Come on...

 

[+Thayios Subscriber²]

I had an issue with an External HD getting fragmented this bad (it was my storage for MKV files for my Plex server) since Plex kept locking the files Windows would never auto-defrag it like I had it set to.

Just some relevant information that may help someone in the future.

[sammy2]

Auslogics is saying 11% fragmented and windows is saying zero percent fragmented. 

[The Evil Overlord]

Just a guess, maybe the drive is failing?

[sammy2]

Just a guess, maybe the drive is failing?

I hope not. Unlikely tho. Health check etc are all okay and I haven't heard any crazy sound coming from it.