Stupid Defrag Question

Rod Speed wrote:
Keith Wilby wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Keith Wilby wrote
Ed Light wrote
Keith Wilby wrote

If I take a backup image of a fragmented drive and restore it onto
a new one, does the new one inherit the fragmentation from the image?

Yes

Thanks Ed. So it's defrag then image by the sound of it.

Nope, no point in defragging before imaging with True Image.

True Image takes care of that?

Nope, it makes no difference to the speed of the image creation and its
pointless defragging modern drives except in the most unusual situations.


There are few people who would say that, but it is true. Fragmentation
causes a bit of slowdown for disk access, but it's not a big effect, and
not nearly as big a problem as many people think. Running a defrag
won't help much in reality - either you're running windows, and windows
will immediately fragment the disk again as soon as you're finished, or
you are running Linux (or another OS) that has a sane block allocator
and generates very little unnecessary fragmentation.

Nope, it makes no difference to the speed of the image creation and its
pointless defragging modern drives except in the most unusual situations.

Though it may not apply to NTFS, I keep remembering what I read in my
first DOS manual. It said to defrag regularly enough to keep the OS from
getting confused and losing a fragment.


--
Ed Light

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"David Brown" wrote in message
...

There are few people who would say that, but it is true. Fragmentation
causes a bit of slowdown for disk access, but it's not a big effect, and
not nearly as big a problem as many people think. Running a defrag won't
help much in reality - either you're running windows, and windows will
immediately fragment the disk again as soon as you're finished, or you are
running Linux (or another OS) that has a sane block allocator and
generates very little unnecessary fragmentation.




Duly noted gents, thank you.

Ed Light wrote:

Nope, it makes no difference to the speed of the image creation and its
pointless defragging modern drives except in the most unusual
situations.

Though it may not apply to NTFS, I keep remembering what I read in my
first DOS manual. It said to defrag regularly enough to keep the OS from
getting confused and losing a fragment.



You are mixing something up, or there is a typo in your post. NTFS was
introduced with Windows NT (NT 3.51 perhaps) - DOS never supported NTFS.
And the OS should not get mixed up even if there are lots of fragments
(although windows is not exactly renowned for being bug-free).

David Brown wrote:
Ed Light wrote:

Though it may not apply to NTFS, I keep remembering what I read in my
first DOS manual. It said to defrag regularly enough to keep the OS
from getting confused and losing a fragment.



You are mixing something up, or there is a typo in your post. NTFS was
introduced with Windows NT (NT 3.51 perhaps) - DOS never supported NTFS.
And the OS should not get mixed up even if there are lots of fragments
(although windows is not exactly renowned for being bug-free).

I did say "though it may not apply to NTFS." Of course DOS was olden times.

Like you say, Windows isn't perfect. I keep it defragged just to feel safe.

I definitely *have* found that defragging increses performance.

--
Ed Light

Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

Bring the Troops Home:
http://bringthemhomenow.org
http://antiwar.com

Iraq Veterans Against the War:
http://ivaw.org
http://couragetoresist.org

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.

David Brown wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Keith Wilby wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Keith Wilby wrote
Ed Light wrote
Keith Wilby wrote

If I take a backup image of a fragmented drive and restore it onto a new one, does the new one inherit the
fragmentation from the image?

Yes

Thanks Ed. So it's defrag then image by the sound of it.

Nope, no point in defragging before imaging with True Image.

True Image takes care of that?

Nope, it makes no difference to the speed of the image creation and its pointless defragging modern drives except in
the most unusual situations.

There are few people who would say that, but it is true. Fragmentation causes a bit of slowdown for disk access, but
it's not
a big effect, and not nearly as big a problem as many people think.

And the modern reality is that most very large file access is either random
rather than serial and when its serial, the speed of access is entirely
determined by the media speed because its usually a media file etc.

Running a defrag won't help much in reality - either you're running windows, and windows will immediately fragment the
disk again as soon as you're finished,

That doesnt happen that much, particularly with data files.

or you are running Linux (or another OS) that has a sane block allocator and generates very little unnecessary
fragmentation.

Ed Light wrote:

Nope, it makes no difference to the speed of the image creation and its pointless defragging modern drives except in
the most unusual situations.

Though it may not apply to NTFS,

Doesnt apply to FAT either.

I keep remembering what I read in my first DOS manual.

It was just a pig ignorant steaming turd.

It said to defrag regularly enough to keep the OS from getting confused and losing a fragment.

That never ever happens.

I never ever defrag and have never ever lost a fragment and have both FAT and NTFS partitions.

Ed Light wrote
David Brown wrote
Ed Light wrote

Though it may not apply to NTFS, I keep remembering what I read in
my first DOS manual. It said to defrag regularly enough to keep the
OS from getting confused and losing a fragment.

You are mixing something up, or there is a typo in your post. NTFS
was introduced with Windows NT (NT 3.51 perhaps) - DOS never
supported NTFS. And the OS should not get mixed up even if there
are lots of fragments (although windows is not exactly renowned for
being bug-free).

I did say "though it may not apply to NTFS." Of course DOS was olden times.

Like you say, Windows isn't perfect. I keep it defragged just to feel safe.

In fact you're taking more risk by defragging, just because
defragging is on of the most disk intensive operations.

I definitely *have* found that defragging increses performance.

Fraid not, because most access to very large files is random
now or they are media files and the speed of access to those
is entirely determined by the media play speed.

The only time it is detectable is with mass file copying of
large files and you shouldnt be doing much of that anyway.

And you have to count the defrag time in the time for that sort of mass file copying anyway.

"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...
Ed Light wrote:

Nope, it makes no difference to the speed of the image creation and its
pointless defragging modern drives except in the most unusual
situations.

Though it may not apply to NTFS,

Doesnt apply to FAT either.

I keep remembering what I read in my first DOS manual.

It was just a pig ignorant steaming turd.

It said to defrag regularly enough to keep the OS from getting confused
and losing a fragment.

That never ever happens.

I never ever defrag and have never ever lost a fragment and have both FAT
and NTFS partitions.


So in a nutshell I've been wasting my time p1ss-balling about defragging.
That's good to know, I won't waste any more time, not on defrags anyway.

Keith Wilby wrote:
"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...
Ed Light wrote:

Nope, it makes no difference to the speed of the image creation
and its pointless defragging modern drives except in the most
unusual situations.

Though it may not apply to NTFS,

Doesnt apply to FAT either.

I keep remembering what I read in my first DOS manual.

It was just a pig ignorant steaming turd.

It said to defrag regularly enough to keep the OS from getting
confused and losing a fragment.

That never ever happens.

I never ever defrag and have never ever lost a fragment and have
both FAT and NTFS partitions.


So in a nutshell I've been wasting my time p1ss-balling about defragging.

Yep.

That's good to know, I won't waste any more time, not on defrags anyway.

Yeah, thats what I do now.