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Question about defragmenting a Hard Drive

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Old Jun 11, 2007 | 10:32 PM
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Question about defragmenting a Hard Drive

I have a 200GB Seagate that now has about 4GB of free space left. I tried to defragment my hard drive but it said that it is recommended that I have atleast 30GB fo free space to defragment my hard drive, but that I also had the option of continuing anyway. So my question is say I can free up about 15GB of hard drive space, would anything happen if I just went ahead and defragmented the hard drive even though I didn't have the recommended free space?
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Old Jun 11, 2007 | 11:57 PM
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With only 4 GB of free space, t won't defragment as quickly, and it may not defragment to its best capability. The more free space, the more swing space it can use to move and organize files.
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 12:04 AM
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alright first what do you have thats talking up that much room on your hard drive......and have you run the analysis of the drive....
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 01:35 AM
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just suck it up and delete some old pr0n files. really, u shouldn't use a hard drive to it's capacity even though it goes up to ~200gigs. try deleting old unused files and links using CCleaner and just delete some things u don't need anymore or transfer them to another disk. the entire hard drive should run faster as the end result.
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 05:16 AM
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I will still work....Delete the porn (you only watch it once anyway)
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 07:31 AM
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People in the Know I.E. ME, will tell you to not defrag your drive. The concept of defraging is fatally flawed in that once its been defragged it causes more fragments to occur more frequently, thus actually if you will double fragmenting your HD. so yourself time and headache and leave it alone cause your actually making things worse.
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 07:52 AM
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Originally Posted by The Dougler
People in the Know I.E. ME, will tell you to not defrag your drive. The concept of defraging is fatally flawed in that once its been defragged it causes more fragments to occur more frequently, thus actually if you will double fragmenting your HD. so yourself time and headache and leave it alone cause your actually making things worse.
It seems to me that your logic is fatally flawed...please explain yourself.
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 08:05 AM
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Originally Posted by Hojo061782
It seems to me that your logic is fatally flawed...please explain yourself.
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 08:15 AM
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Originally Posted by Hojo061782
It seems to me that your logic is fatally flawed...please explain yourself.



I run a defrag nightly. It speeds up the machine immensely.
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 08:24 AM
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Just buy (or download) the newest version of Diskeeper. It now features an always-on automatic defragmenting. So any time there is any new file or deleted file it will clean things up instantly without slowing down your computer. In fact the people who wrote the Windows defragmenter went on to make Diskeeper.
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 08:32 AM
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Originally Posted by Beelzebub



I run a defrag nightly. It speeds up the machine immensely.
werd my C drive got heavily fragmented and in the end everything was running slow, was taking forever to load files, wow was running slow.. etc..

after i defragmented everything sped up
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 08:34 AM
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Originally Posted by Whiskers
I will still work....Delete the porn (you only watch it once anyway)
sometimes twice
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 08:42 AM
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Originally Posted by sonnyg80
sometimes twice
Not the same scene though...Its tough to to the same scene more then once.....
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 08:45 AM
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i need to get my last 320gb seagate drive

what i have right now in my computer is a 80gb raptor + 200gb pata drive + 160gb pata drive + 250gb sata drive and a 320gb sata drive in my closet

what im planning to do is dump everything but the 80gb raptor, buy another 320gb sata drive, and then set up the 2 320gb drives in raid 0 and using that for storage and the raptor for my OS.

and that one 250gb drive? guess ill throw it in there for the hell of it.

and yes i need this much storage, and no its not all for porn.
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 09:20 AM
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Originally Posted by AMGala
Just buy (or download) the newest version of Diskeeper. It now features an always-on automatic defragmenting. So any time there is any new file or deleted file it will clean things up instantly without slowing down your computer. In fact the people who wrote the Windows defragmenter went on to make Diskeeper.
Meh...just use the windows scheduler and a script file. Much cheaper, and has the same effect.
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 09:22 AM
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Originally Posted by Mizouse
i need to get my last 320gb seagate drive

what i have right now in my computer is a 80gb raptor + 200gb pata drive + 160gb pata drive + 250gb sata drive and a 320gb sata drive in my closet

what im planning to do is dump everything but the 80gb raptor, buy another 320gb sata drive, and then set up the 2 320gb drives in raid 0 and using that for storage and the raptor for my OS.

and that one 250gb drive? guess ill throw it in there for the hell of it.

and yes i need this much storage, and no its not all for porn.
Just be aware that with striping or spanning drives that you effectively double the chances of hard drive failure causing data loss. A better solution would be to do at least a 3 drive RAID 5 if you're going to do any RAID of any sort.
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 09:24 AM
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Originally Posted by Whiskers
Not the same scene though...Its tough to to the same scene more then once.....
good point...novelty wears off on watching a standing lotus twice
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 12:20 PM
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Originally Posted by Whiskers
Not the same scene though...Its tough to to the same scene more then once.....
You need one of these:

Girlfriend
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Girlfriend (disambiguation).
Close Relationships

Affinity • Attachment • Bonding • Cohabitation • Compersion • Concubinage • Courtship • Divorce • Dower/-ry • Friendship • Family • Husband • Infatuation • Intimacy • Jealousy • Limerence • Love • Marriage • Monogamy • Nonmonogamy • Office romance • Passion • Partner • Pederasty • Platonic love • Psychology of Monogamy • Relationship abuse • Sexuality • Spouse • Separation • Wedding • Widowhood • Wife
v • d • e

A girlfriend is a female partner in a non-marital romantic relationship, or a female friend.

[edit] Scope

The term is most commonly used to describe any female person who is in a romantic relationship with another person.

An older woman in such a non-marital relationship is sometimes described instead as a significant other or partner, especially if the two partners are living together. At times, since "girlfriend" and "partner" mean different things to different people, the distinctions between the terms are subjective, and which term is used in a relationship will ultimately be determined by personal preference.

When used by a girl or woman about another female in a non-sexual, non-romantic context, the 2-word form "girl friend" is usually used to avoid confusion with the romantic meaning.

Though nuanced, there is a significant difference between girlfriend and boyfriend, and girl friend and boy friend. In a strictly grammatical sense, a girlfriend or boyfriend is an 'individual of significance' with whom one shares a relationship. A girl friend or boy friend, however, is simply a friend identified on the basis of gender.

[edit] Synonyms

* Depending on the informal speech styles in a given time and place, one's girlfriend is sometimes referred to as "my old lady", "my lady," "my main squeeze," "my girl," "my bird," "my honey", "my baby", and "my chick" may be used in the same sense as "girlfriend"; however, it should be noted that these terms can be considered as sexist, by some. It is advisable to not use these terms in formal language. Frequently, these are preceded by a possessive pronoun or otherwise contextually marked for clarification, as such terms are more generic ways of referring to females and alone do not indicate a relationship of any sort.[1]
* A female engaged in an extramarital relationship with a married person is frequently considered a "mistress".
* Some terms of endearment directed to females, a romantic relationship is not required, are "darling", "sweetheart", "lover", etc.
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 12:23 PM
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^^^ you know he is married right?
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 12:27 PM
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Originally Posted by Cruz_msl
You need one of these:

Girlfriend
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For other uses, see Girlfriend (disambiguation).
Close Relationships
Yeah, but Whisker's wife won't let him have a girlfriend.
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 12:31 PM
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Originally Posted by Hojo061782
Just be aware that with striping or spanning drives that you effectively double the chances of hard drive failure causing data loss. A better solution would be to do at least a 3 drive RAID 5 if you're going to do any RAID of any sort.
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 12:57 PM
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Originally Posted by Mizouse
^^^ you know he is married right?

Quiet you!!

Tell me more about this girlfriend thing....
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 12:59 PM
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defragging cause more fragging because, what it does is move all the pieces of a file together, removing the space in between files and writing one continues track. Now the next time any of those are files a modified they have to fragment because there is no longer room at the end of the file for additions. thus as you "de-frag" anything that you change create new frags quicker and quicker until you end up like beelzebub and have to do it all the time, think about how hard he is stressing his HD compared to normal users when its garunteed that it gets a full re=write every day?
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 01:01 PM
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Originally Posted by Whiskers
Not the same scene though...Its tough to to the same scene more then once.....

Unless it is a threesome..
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 01:12 PM
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Originally Posted by The Dougler
defragging cause more fragging because, what it does is move all the pieces of a file together, removing the space in between files and writing one continues track. Now the next time any of those are files a modified they have to fragment because there is no longer room at the end of the file for additions. thus as you "de-frag" anything that you change create new frags quicker and quicker until you end up like beelzebub and have to do it all the time, think about how hard he is stressing his HD compared to normal users when its garunteed that it gets a full re=write every day?
Thats why you need to defrag on a regular basis...
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 01:25 PM
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You need at least 15% free space to defrag an NTFS volume. It has been my experience that you need more like 20% free space to defrag effectively, but you may be lucky at 15% free space.

Save your money and do NOT buy Executive Diskeeper. The reason why is MS bought the Diskkeeper engine and incorporated into Windows. The only difference with Executive's retail product is the ability to run more than one defrag at a time. However with Windows Task Scheduler you can have all your defrags run over night, so who cares how long it will take.

HERE is a nice article on Microsoft's knowledgebase on how to setup scheduled tasks to run defrags on all of your volumes. You will need one task per volume.

The frequency you should defrag your hard drive is directly related to the type and amount of use your machine receives. All 3 of my XP Pro machines are scheduled to run once a week at 3am on Thursday mornings. One of the three receives heavy use (database, games and downloads) and it does just fine. The other two could probably go to once a month, but I like keeping things as much alike as possible on my network.

You may be tempted to schedule a defrag every day, but I very strongly (as in VERY strongly) suggest you do not do this, for the simple reason it puts undo wear and tear on your drives. Start out with once a month and increase the frequency if needed.

If you are having difficulty freeing up space to do the defrag, then try to upload your files to a friends computer, buy another hard drive or use an internet file storage service (there are a few free ones.) Something else you can do is open several Gmail accounts and upload files to them, you get >2gb per account.

Hard drives are cheap these days, so I recommend you fill your controller card ports and case to the max. You can pick up 500gb drives for $120 and maybe even less. My network just passed the 3TB mark late last week when I added a Western Digital 500gb drive to my media server.

CanopyFlyer
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 01:54 PM
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Originally Posted by Whiskers
Not the same scene though...Its tough to to the same scene more then once.....
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 02:04 PM
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Originally Posted by CanopyFlyer
You need at least 15% free space to defrag an NTFS volume. It has been my experience that you need more like 20% free space to defrag effectively, but you may be lucky at 15% free space.

Save your money and do NOT buy Executive Diskeeper. The reason why is MS bought the Diskkeeper engine and incorporated into Windows. The only difference with Executive's retail product is the ability to run more than one defrag at a time. However with Windows Task Scheduler you can have all your defrags run over night, so who cares how long it will take.

HERE is a nice article on Microsoft's knowledgebase on how to setup scheduled tasks to run defrags on all of your volumes. You will need one task per volume.

The frequency you should defrag your hard drive is directly related to the type and amount of use your machine receives. All 3 of my XP Pro machines are scheduled to run once a week at 3am on Thursday mornings. One of the three receives heavy use (database, games and downloads) and it does just fine. The other two could probably go to once a month, but I like keeping things as much alike as possible on my network.

You may be tempted to schedule a defrag every day, but I very strongly (as in VERY strongly) suggest you do not do this, for the simple reason it puts undo wear and tear on your drives. Start out with once a month and increase the frequency if needed.

If you are having difficulty freeing up space to do the defrag, then try to upload your files to a friends computer, buy another hard drive or use an internet file storage service (there are a few free ones.) Something else you can do is open several Gmail accounts and upload files to them, you get >2gb per account.

Hard drives are cheap these days, so I recommend you fill your controller card ports and case to the max. You can pick up 500gb drives for $120 and maybe even less. My network just passed the 3TB mark late last week when I added a Western Digital 500gb drive to my media server.

CanopyFlyer
I'd think that the Diskeeper defrag engine has been improved since the version MS put into XP. But I don't know about Vista.
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 02:36 PM
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Originally Posted by Whiskers
Quiet you!!

Tell me more about this girlfriend thing....
“I've been in love with the same woman for forty-one years. If my wife finds out, she'll kill me.”
Henry Youngman

“In life, it's not who you know that's important, it's how your wife found out.”
Joey Adams
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 03:37 PM
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Originally Posted by The Dougler
defragging cause more fragging because, what it does is move all the pieces of a file together, removing the space in between files and writing one continues track. Now the next time any of those are files a modified they have to fragment because there is no longer room at the end of the file for additions. thus as you "de-frag" anything that you change create new frags ...?
This is technically true, however I'd guess that this only occurs for a very small percentage of files. How many files do you have whose filename renames the same, but the file grows? I have a spreadsheet I do my budget on, maybe a few other files, that's about it. Applications certainly don't change in size.
It's most likely files that are downloaded, used, then deleted.

One suggestion I'd make is to consider partitioning your drive. Even on my relatively small 160GB drive, I carved it into a C: partition (for the OS and applications), a D: partition for data files (tax return, spreadsheets, dig camera pictures [this partition is what I am primarily concerned with backing up], and a E: partition which stores larger audio and video media files which I'm not concerned about as much.

Jeff
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 08:09 PM
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Originally Posted by Whiskers
Not the same scene though...Its tough to to the same scene more then once.....
1 scene = 15 minutes not including credits. that's 30 jacks. grab your calculator.
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Old Jun 12, 2007 | 08:51 PM
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I don't buy the, "you are wearing out your drive" argument.

An enabled drive in a server is going to spin at 10-15k RPM no matter if you are reading/writing data or not. The only additional thing that you are moving is the head, and that is an electromagnetic voice-coil that is pretty damn reliable.

I rarely, if ever, defrag our servers. The additional gain in performance wouldn't be realized in my particular environment.

I used to be addicted to Norton Speed Disk back in the days of DOS. Now that was a cool program.

Last edited by doopstr; Jun 12, 2007 at 08:53 PM.
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Old Jun 13, 2007 | 12:56 AM
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While we're on the subject of hard drives, I have a Western Digital external HD which only has media files on it (music & movies). It seems that if I don't use the drive for about ten minutes, it "shuts down." the power is still on, but it stops spinning or whatever. (Don't know the proper terminology here)

Then when I open a file or folder on the HD, I can hear it spinning up again. Is this bad for the HD? Can I turn this feature off to make the files instantly accessible without waiting a few seconds for it to spin up? Is this a good or bad idea?
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Old Jun 13, 2007 | 05:03 AM
  #34  
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Originally Posted by GOOSE
While we're on the subject of hard drives, I have a Western Digital external HD which only has media files on it (music & movies). It seems that if I don't use the drive for about ten minutes, it "shuts down." the power is still on, but it stops spinning or whatever. (Don't know the proper terminology here)

Then when I open a file or folder on the HD, I can hear it spinning up again. Is this bad for the HD? Can I turn this feature off to make the files instantly accessible without waiting a few seconds for it to spin up? Is this a good or bad idea?
are you running windows Vista? cause when i was running vista for the 2 days i had it installed, i noticed this too and looked it up. vista has a power saving feature that shuts down the hard drives when there is inactivity for the set time. you can disable it.
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Old Jun 13, 2007 | 07:50 AM
  #35  
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Originally Posted by GOOSE
While we're on the subject of hard drives, I have a Western Digital external HD which only has media files on it (music & movies). It seems that if I don't use the drive for about ten minutes, it "shuts down." the power is still on, but it stops spinning or whatever. (Don't know the proper terminology here)

Then when I open a file or folder on the HD, I can hear it spinning up again. Is this bad for the HD? Can I turn this feature off to make the files instantly accessible without waiting a few seconds for it to spin up? Is this a good or bad idea?
I always disable the spin-down feature of hard drives. It doesn't do that for wear reasons, but rather for power reasons. To disable it, go to the power options of the control panel.
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Old Jun 13, 2007 | 08:46 AM
  #36  
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Originally Posted by AMGala
I'd think that the Diskeeper defrag engine has been improved since the version MS put into XP. But I don't know about Vista.
So what? The defrag engine in XP works quite well. If you want to spend the $$ on Executive's retail product go ahead. Just because something is "updated" doesn't make it any more suitable to the need at hand.

Originally Posted by doopstr
I rarely, if ever, defrag our servers. The additional gain in performance wouldn't be realized in my particular environment.
You're trying to draw a comparison between an apple and an orange... No wait more like rutabaga. What works for a server does not always translate to a desktop/laptop. In the environment I work with we have some servers that are defragged weekly and others that almost never have it done. Exchange servers are one that comes to mind that almost never get defragged... I have two clusters that haven't been defragged since they went into production about 2 years ago, of course the mail store sits on a SAN too.


Goose I would suggest setting the "turn off hard disks" out to 1 hour or more, that way your drive isn't constantly shutting down and spinning back up. Go to START/ CONTROL PANEL/ POWER OPTIONS and set it there.

CanopyFlyer
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Old Jun 13, 2007 | 01:46 PM
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Originally Posted by CanopyFlyer

Goose I would suggest setting the "turn off hard disks" out to 1 hour or more, that way your drive isn't constantly shutting down and spinning back up. Go to START/ CONTROL PANEL/ POWER OPTIONS and set it there.

CanopyFlyer

"Turn off hard disks" is at never. Seems like these options are for the internal hard drive of my laptop (windows xp). I want to disable the spin down feature for my external. Anyone know how?
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Old Jun 13, 2007 | 03:36 PM
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Yeah diskeeper will defragment the MFT when you choose to do a boot time defrag. This is very important in speeding up the HD. The disk defragmenter included with XP will not defrag the MFT (and yes - it was written by the same company).

M$ included MFT defragmentation in the disk defragmenter included in Server 2003. Prior to that, you had to buy a 3rd party product.

As an experiment try this:

Run a boot time chkdsk and make note of how long it takes to check the indexes (step 2). Run a boot time defrag even using the trial version of diskeeper, and make sure you've selected defrag of the MFT. Then, run the boot time chkdsk again.

My step 2 went from about a minute to about 5 seconds. Now that's a significant improvement.
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Old Jun 13, 2007 | 03:38 PM
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Originally Posted by GOOSE
"Turn off hard disks" is at never. Seems like these options are for the internal hard drive of my laptop (windows xp). I want to disable the spin down feature for my external. Anyone know how?
The mfg probably makes a utility to change that setting. I know IBM (now Hitachi) does.
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Old Jun 13, 2007 | 03:40 PM
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Someone said they De-Frag every night ??? Totally un-necessary.

What is taking up 196 gigs of space ??? Just curious
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