defrag takes much longer on 1000GB drive

Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or 500
GB. drive. My system may be a bit slow but the difference in time is
very large (maybe 10 times longer). The cluster size on all my hard
drives is 4KB.

Is it because the NTFS indexes and other system software are so big that
they need a significant amount of processor and I/O time?

As the 1000 Gb fills up will it start to get sluggish? I don't want two
500 GB drives but I'll do that if it prevents a problem.

This is the CHKDSK data:

976751968 KB total disk space.
36065140 KB in 19106 files.
5144 KB in 725 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
154888 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
940526796 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
244187992 total allocation units on disk.
235131699 allocation units available on disk.

In article , sandot
says...

Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or 500
GB. drive.

No ****. I'd have never have guessed that.

My system may be a bit slow but the difference in time is
very large (maybe 10 times longer). The cluster size on all my hard
drives is 4KB.

Well there you go then. It's got a lot to check.

As the 1000 Gb fills up will it start to get sluggish?

Yes, the same as any other drive.
I don't want two
500 GB drives but I'll do that if it prevents a problem.

It won't.



--
Conor
www.notebooks-r-us.co.uk
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't
looking good either. - Scott Adams

Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or 500
GB. drive.

Get an Intel Extreme processor, up the pagefile, and if it
is like my 1TB, it is the large files like DVD .iso's that
slow up the defrag. Not that defrag makes much difference
to performance.
With a decent defrag utility there will be a scheduler,
so run it overnight once a month.
You don't say how long it takes, and is it a USB
external, or connected by mobo SATA?
With a C:\ OS and D:\ data, defrag of D:\ can run
in the background, with no apparent performance
hit.
What you need to worry about is when it goes
tits up, without a backup.
I use two different utilities, True Image for the
OS, Fileback for D:\ data, onto another 1TB.

On Jul 30, 3:15*pm, "Ato_Zee" wrote:
Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or 500
GB. drive.

Get an Intel Extreme processor, up the pagefile, and if it
is like my 1TB, it is the large files like DVD .iso's that
slow up the defrag. Not that defrag makes much difference
to performance.
With a decent defrag utility there will be a scheduler,
so run it overnight once a month.
You don't say how long it takes, and is it a USB
external, or connected by mobo SATA?
With a C:\ OS and D:\ data, defrag of D:\ can run
in the background, with no apparent performance
hit.
What you need to worry about is when it goes
tits up, without a backup.
I use two different utilities, True Image for the
OS, Fileback for D:\ data, onto another 1TB.

Many people say that defrag on NTFS is not required.

Personally, I think it has a place, but a fairly long way down the
priority list. Once every month or two sounds about right, and I
doubt you will spot the difference in speed. I agree with Ato_Zee on
this point.

In my experence, the files that become most fragmented are incremental
logs. Large files (GB files) can also become quite fragmented as well.

Ato_Zee also mentioned what happens when the disk 'fails' A good back
up must be stage 1,2,3 and 4, but from a recovery point of view, a
defraged disk is always much easier.

Michael

www.cnwrecovery.com

On 13:13 30 Jul 2009, Conor wrote:

On 12:56 30 Jul 2009, sandot wrote:

Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or
500 GB. drive. My system may be a bit slow but the difference in
time is very large (maybe 10 times longer). The cluster size on
all my hard drives is 4KB.

Is it because the NTFS indexes and other system software are so big
that they need a significant amount of processor and I/O time?

As the 1000 Gb fills up will it start to get sluggish? I don't
want two 500 GB drives but I'll do that if it prevents a problem.

This is the CHKDSK data:

976751968 KB total disk space.

36065140 KB in 19106 files.
5144 KB in 725 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
154888 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
940526796 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
244187992 total allocation units on disk. 235131699 allocation
units available on disk.

No ****. I'd have never have guessed that.

Well there you go then. It's got a lot to check.

Yes, the same as any other drive.

It won't.


Thank you for your views. I think the stats may have been unclear. Only
30 GB of the 1000 GB drive has been used.

"976751968 KB total disk space"
means there's a total of 976,751,968 KB on the drive.

"940526796 KB available on disk"
means 940,526,796 KB free space.

The barely used 1000 GB drive is still much slower to defrag than a much
fuller 200 MB or 500 GB drive.

On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:56:06 +0100, sandot wrote:

| Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or 500
| GB. drive. My system may be a bit slow but the difference in time is
| very large (maybe 10 times longer). The cluster size on all my hard
| drives is 4KB.
|
| Is it because the NTFS indexes and other system software are so big that
| they need a significant amount of processor and I/O time?
|
| As the 1000 Gb fills up will it start to get sluggish? I don't want two
| 500 GB drives but I'll do that if it prevents a problem.

You have only one partition on the drive? That's like having one huge drawer in
your house that you keep everything you own in.

Larc

Larc wrote:
On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:56:06 +0100, sandot
wrote:

Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or
500 GB. drive. My system may be a bit slow but the difference in
time is very large (maybe 10 times longer). The cluster size on all
my hard drives is 4KB.

Is it because the NTFS indexes and other system software are so big
that they need a significant amount of processor and I/O time?

As the 1000 Gb fills up will it start to get sluggish? I don't want
two 500 GB drives but I'll do that if it prevents a problem.

You have only one partition on the drive? That's like having one
huge drawer in your house that you keep everything you own in.

Nope, nothing like. We have a funky computer thingo that keeps track of
where everything is in the case of the drive that isnt available with the drawer.

Makes a hell of a lot more sense to organise by folder tree than partition with a drive.

On Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:24:26 +1000, "Rod Speed" wrote:

| Larc wrote:
| On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:56:06 +0100, sandot
| wrote:
|
| Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or
| 500 GB. drive. My system may be a bit slow but the difference in
| time is very large (maybe 10 times longer). The cluster size on all
| my hard drives is 4KB.
|
| Is it because the NTFS indexes and other system software are so big
| that they need a significant amount of processor and I/O time?
|
| As the 1000 Gb fills up will it start to get sluggish? I don't want
| two 500 GB drives but I'll do that if it prevents a problem.
|
| You have only one partition on the drive? That's like having one
| huge drawer in your house that you keep everything you own in.
|
| Nope, nothing like. We have a funky computer thingo that keeps track of
| where everything is in the case of the drive that isnt available with the drawer.
|
| Makes a hell of a lot more sense to organise by folder tree than partition with a drive.

Precisely the same management functions are available for smaller partitions.
Plus that would help solve the OP's principal complaint.

Larc

Larc wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Larc wrote:
sandot wrote

Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or
500 GB. drive. My system may be a bit slow but the difference in
time is very large (maybe 10 times longer). The cluster size on
all my hard drives is 4KB.

Is it because the NTFS indexes and other system software are so big
that they need a significant amount of processor and I/O time?

As the 1000 Gb fills up will it start to get sluggish? I don't
want two 500 GB drives but I'll do that if it prevents a problem.

You have only one partition on the drive? That's like having one
huge drawer in your house that you keep everything you own in.

Nope, nothing like. We have a funky computer thingo that keeps track
of where everything is in the case of the drive that isnt available
with the drawer.

Makes a hell of a lot more sense to organise by folder tree than partition with a drive.

Precisely the same management functions are available for smaller partitions.

Wrong. There is no management function that dynamically
adjusts the size of the separate partitions so that they are
big enough for the contents as the contents change over time.

Plus that would help solve the OP's principal complaint.

You dont know that either. You dont know that that particular
drive wouldnt be just as slow with multiple partitions.

And defragging makes no sense with modern 1TB drives anyway.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage sandot wrote:
Defragging my 1000 GB hard drive takes much longer than a 200 GB or 500
GB. drive. My system may be a bit slow but the difference in time is
very large (maybe 10 times longer). The cluster size on all my hard
drives is 4KB.

Is it because the NTFS indexes and other system software are so big that
they need a significant amount of processor and I/O time?

As the 1000 Gb fills up will it start to get sluggish? I don't want two
500 GB drives but I'll do that if it prevents a problem.

This is the CHKDSK data:

976751968 KB total disk space.
36065140 KB in 19106 files.
5144 KB in 725 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
154888 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
940526796 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
244187992 total allocation units on disk.
235131699 allocation units available on disk.

Defragging is not a linear operation in the number of allocation units
on the drive. It gets more than proportionally slower. In addition, it
is possible that you hit some limit and the implementation (data A
replaces B and then gets replaced by B again and so on), which can
give you nearly arbitrary slowdown.

You do not need two 500GB drives. You can use two 500GB partitions
instead. The limit here is the filesystem size, not the drive
size.

Arno