I have three HD's.  G: has all of my FSX stuff on it and only FSX stuff, C: has my XP 32 Bit OS and all my other stuff, D: has all of the HP installed backup programs (stuff that came with the PC).

I can make a bunch of changes to G: and run a complete name defrag and it will take 1.5 to 3.5 hours to go throught G: then if I do not do anything but reboot and run a complete name on G: most of the time it takes less than five minutes.

On C: no matter how many times I run a complete name defrag and do nothing in between defrags except reboot it takes C: 3 hours or more, why is that?

G: and C: have about the same amount of data on them.  G: is a 750 gig drive and C: is a 250 gig drive.

Rod

I can vouch for that. Both my OS drive and my FSX drive was defragged at the same time about 2 months ago and I just checked mine and the OS was 12% fragmented and the FSX drive was only 1%.

I have a question though, I added a 3rd drive for back ups using ACRONIS and that drive is showing 46% fragmentation. Should I defrag my backup drive? My gut instinct says not to as I do a incremental nightly of my data. I have a master image of both drives in what I call top condition and periodically do a second image when making major changes but I leave the MASTER as is incase all else fails.

I doubt the O&O service running is taking away any noticable performance from your computer. The defrag you are doing 2X a day is doing nothing to help FSX performance. The complete name defrag I think is the major one as far as FSX performance. All the steps Nick has posted as far as defrag proceedures must be followed for maximum benefit. Anyways fragmenting of HD are a natural thing so I can live with it accumulating over time. Then I run a defrag as per Nicks instructions and am good to go for another 3 months or so. I have FSX on a sep. HD and it stays VERY clean, only 1 or 2% fragmented over 3 months time.

WebbPA wrote on May 2^nd, 2009 at 10:28pm:

I dont see what you have posted as being a solution. The boot up defrag you are doing will not speed up his complete name defrag in any way shape or form. It may be taking a long time due to how he uses his computer, the CPU speed, or the amount of ram on the system. 1.5 - 3 hrs is about right to do a defrag properly. Im not trying to say what you are doing is bad in any way, I just dont think it is a worth while proceedure. If it makes you happy then by all means do it.

With the NEW O&O v11 SHUT DOWN MONITORING and UNCHECK the tray items in the properties

Otherwise what was said here is HOGWASH and it will not in any way shape of form affect performance



What was suggested in this thread is not true, not necessary and is quite off the wall

NAME DEFRAGS which are what deliver the true performance from ACCESS only need to be done once a month at the most unless a very large program was installed.

OFFLINE DEFRAGS are not needed every single reboot on home systems. This was a feature added by O&O at the request of SYS ADMINS who only reboot their systems FOR MAINTENANCE ONLY and which have a huge UP TIME before that reboot occurs

Offline defrags are only needed the same period in time that onlines are performed

NEVER RUN any background defrag job

NEVER run any online defrag other than SPACE and last COMPLETE NAME which is what delivers the perf


Do not use the monitor features and be sure to shut down the tray tools in the properties


That not an opinion its a fact.. anyone is welcome to use their system the way they wish but constant defrags are simply unnecessary and do nothing for performance. nor do they truly save time

why?

Because the only defrag that makes a drive access truly faster is COMPLETE NAME and that will never EVER run fast on any OS drive after system system has been rebooted

who cares

When defrags are done right, you FLUSH all the temp files, Launch O&O and set for OFFLINE defrag, reboot, wait till its finished and once back in Windows manually launch O&O after waiting for 5 min to be sure of full boot, and select COMPLETE NAME

dont touch the system for any reason

no emailin
no surfin
no pornin
no chattin
no nothin

dont even touch the mouse

go have a beer, mow the grass, watch a movie and enjoy life. When you come back reboot and you are good to go for a month or 3

You can use the SPACE defrag which is very fast in between performance maintenance runs of NAME but only with Versions 8, 8.6 and v11. NEVER run a space defrag with O&O Version 10

Cant say I didnt try to tell ya before good ol Nick had to come and lay the smack down on ya. 

NickN wrote on May 3^rd, 2009 at 12:07am:

No Pornin?     

WebbPA wrote on May 3^rd, 2009 at 1:03am:

I cant resist....


Man you are a FREEKIN IDIOT! Oh the Dumb Masses.

Please continue to feel superior as you watch your computers do nothing for three hours once a month every month.

idahosurge wrote on May 3^rd, 2009 at 8:19am:



Yes Rod

that is correct.

Each time your system reboots it is writing files to the hard drive, both on shut down and again on restart.

It is also writing to the MFT constantly as you use your computer. The MFT is defragmented in both the online and offline process. During the offline defrag the MFT may be moved or reordered. During the online NAME defrag the catalog is also alphanumerically ordered as well as the files on the drive. That process significantly reduces the time it requires the head to seek between the MFT catalog and the files. Every operation has a MFT and file read (and sometimes write) to it. So that means changes take place as we use our system even if we do not delete or move any file on the OS drive.

Also, if you followed my list then every 3 days the system is automatically writing a file which Windows uses for prefetch and O&O will use to optimize the system boot by placing the files listed in it at the beginning of the physical platter in name order.

So the combination of the two and a 'name' defrag will restart the process from the beginning of the drive. Since you are using O&O v11 you can alternately run a SPACE defrag between your monthly/bimonthly NAME defrags. The SPACE defrag will complete in a matter of minutes and will suffice between the longer 'high performance' maintenance defrag passes.


Single drive systems will usually take longer to correctly defag than multi drive systems but that is also defined by the amount of data the drives hold, if they are OS or simply used for storage/application

If you place backups and install very large performance applications like MSFS on their own drives, the amount of fragmentation that occurs is significantly reduced and if drives outside the OS are formatted to 64K that will further reduce fragmentation and maintenance time.

DRIVE is a physical disk unit

PARTITION is what must be placed on ANY physical drive for Windows to read it.

You can have one partition on each physical drive and it will appear in Windows as different drives

HOWEVER

A single DRIVE can have MANY partitions and appear in Windows like many physical drives..  In this case they are NOT!


So if you have one physical hard drive (black box with power and data cables going to it) and 3 show up in Windows that is 3 partitions on one drive

Placing FSX or any application on a 2nd partition is a NO NO!

Drive 1 - Partition 1 =  OS

Drive 2 - Partition 1 = FSX

If you want storage you can make partitions and place storage behind the OS or FSX.. I would however try to use the OS physical drive for that and not the FSX drive

Drive 1 - Partition 1 = OS
             Partition 2 = Storage

Drive 2 - Partition 1 = FSX



If you wish to use both FSX and FS9 install them in folders (with their own names) to the root of Drive 2 and do not use partitions