Just wondering if buying something like perfectdisk, O&O etc... is worth it I mean the xp buit in defragger seems pretty good it just seems like most Supertweakers use something like ^ those. Am I missing out is it worth spending the money.

I personally don't thinks defraging helps that much, at least not speed-wise....

also Ozzy, since your looking at this thread, will I have to change my Sig?? I think it's more than 30K.

thanks

O&O is very good.

Someone please refresh my memory as to how to defrag. It's been a long while since I last did it...

And where exactly do I find the hard drive upon which I am supposed to click?

rootbeer wrote on Apr 17^th, 2007 at 11:52pm:



START - MY COMPUTER

A window will open and you will see a list of drives show up. The CD drives, floppy and hard disk should be on that list or be displayed as icons depending on how the system is set up.

Right click the C drive and select PROPERTIES

When the properties box appears, select the TOOL tab. The second option will be DEFRAGMENT NOW click it and don’t touch anything while it is running. If you have never done that before it can take hours to complete and is very important to helping a system run well.

Make sure all programs and Windows are closed before you run the defrag too.


trojan rabbit wrote on Apr 7^th, 2007 at 11:40am:



You can not be more incorrect about defragging, especially with FS9 and FSX. The standard windows defrag tool does OK but is far short of a good and professional defrag tool. I highly recommend O&O Defrag and I also recommend it be set up and run EXACTLY as I describe in this post:

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?board=FSX;action=display;num=116...

I highly recommend everything I posted in that thread starting 2 posts above the one in the link be done before O&O Defrag is run

FS9 and FSX will run incredibly smoother once that is completed and done right. 50-70% of the success in that process is directly related to O&O Defrag, setting it up right and running it as I describe.

alrot wrote on Apr 19^th, 2007 at 12:56am:



Someone has been naughty to their system  


Heres the deal,

When you run a defrag tool, any defrag tool, two things which make having the system not be touched and all programs closed, critical

1. A defrag is very very system intense because of the amount of disk access taking place. If you are doing things on your system while a defrag is being run, the tool will SKIP part of the process in defragging files. The Windows defrag will not show this in the GUI, neither will the O&O defrag.

2. If you have programs open, anything associated with that program and all supporting files will not defrag

Here is a clip from the FSX & SLI thread as I explained how proper defrag and O&O works to Black ZR1:

Quote:


If you touch your system and take the focus of the CPU and memory away from the defrag process, the program will skip catalog entries and other areas. Even if you DONT touch your system a proper and complete defrag with O&O requires MANY repeat passes, simply because the software and process itself is intense and the program will deem what has priority and will skip things in the first run(s)

alrot wrote on Apr 19^th, 2007 at 2:20pm:



I am going to tell you something Alrot... I have yet to come across a so called 'expert', including some real a$$h0les from Microsoft who posts or lists 10-15 tweaks and suggestions that are good to do. What I find is 2 or 3 are awesome suggestions but the rest are complete nonsense and makes the 2-3 suggestions they post, worthless.

That is why you will see people say "I tried that and it does nothing. It makes things worse on my system"

Another reason you see people post something does not work is because THEY think they know better when they read something and either skip items in a GOOD list -OR - they try to go past that list and use a bunch of JUNK they read somewhere else on top of the GOOD list, which makes the good suggestions NOT WORK.

What works Alrot is a complete combination of the RIGHT tweaks and suggestions, not one or two and usually not past what is posted in a good list. They must all be done in the right order and set up in the right way for them to have a positive outcome.

There are tweaks that I did not list in my suggestions that can be done to further enhance things, BUT, they are very system dependant. In example, a good tweak is to turn off the Last Access Time Stamp system in Windows through the registry. (NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate =1 ) That tweak will lower disk access and CPU cycles BUT if you need that system enabled because you are using a defrag program such as Diskkeeper and Perfect Disk Pro which USES the last access time stamp to defrag a hard drive, you just TOTALLY killed the benefit Diskeeper or Perfect Disk defrag software may give you and that tweak can also affect the Windows defragger too which both use a LAST ACCESS algorithm to optimize a disk.  LOL!!!!

People just do not know or understand what they are really doing when they read and apply tweaks.

To take that further, those who COMPACT a disk are killing their performance too, especially if they turn off the Last Access stamp system. What they did was remove Windows ability to tell how old a file really is or if it is used recently so EVERYTHING on the disk ends up compacted after 3 months and completely fragmented to hel. Programs like Diskeeper, Perfect Disk and the Windows defrag have no idea what to do so they just reconnect the files the best they can which leaves the MFT and entire file system scrambled 10 times worse. Boot files are still found and optimized by the better defrag software and THAT is where the placebo is. The user sees the system boot a bit faster and ASSUMES they did something good.

WRONG

As a side note, if you must compact a hard drive because of space, you need a new hard drive. DON't compact, buy a drive that will leave you 50-60% or greater free space after eveything is installed. That free space is CRITICAL to Windows and your defrag software, especially O&O defrag, to have a place for moving files during the defrag runs AND more important, to have a proper space for the hidden MFT file catalog to exist and optimize correctly.


You must understand what a tweak really does and how you use your system and the supporting software before applying it or listening to advice.

One of the reasons I suggest O&O Defrag and set it up for NAME defrag is because it ALLOWS tweaks such as the Last Access Time Stamp be disable and not affect the defrag optimize, at all. The advantage to disabling the feature is truly seen!

You see, there IS a right way and a wrong way to go about things and the right way has very much to do with EVERYTHING in the good list and how it is applied.