FSX Alphanumeric Hard Drive Sort Results Are In

[fsfilmworks]

thanks for the heads up mike

[N700MS]

I used O&O. Definitely a good program. Although it took 4.5 hours to defrag my 250GB drive so it definitely takes a while. Microsofts defrag has never taken that long but I suspect that O&O is doing it properly where as MS half-a$$es it.

[jamesnobrien]

I assume that you have no axe to grind about O&O defrag. I generally defrag with Microsoft every few days and this morning it informed me of no need to defrag. However, I had downloaded the O&O defrag trial version and made use of it. It claimed 37% of files were fragmented. Either it overstates the case or Microsoft Defrag is awful. What is your opinion and maybe a simple explanation?
Jim O'Brien

[RyanbATC]

Has anyone used Diskeeper? I've used it and liked it because it is very fast at defragging. This O&O software takes forever even though I just defraged a week ago....

It's only defragging about 20GB of my 10,000 rpm raptor. i don't see why it has to take 2 hours.

Diskeeper was extrememly speedy and did a good job. O&O appears to do a good job too with complete/name defrag but I was wonderin why it takes so long.

[loki]

I've been running Diskeeper for a couple of years now without any trouble. The defrag program that comes with XP is actually a stripped version of Diskeeper 3 or 4.

loki

[EMAPhil]

I use diskeeper in auto mode. This means it tends to kick in immediately after loading new software, or during say a large download off the net.

You can tell when it does its thing by the disk activity which typically takes only a few minutes in background.

Diskeeper claims that it is not necessary to move files around in the extreme manner of some defraggers, just to do the defrag. As I get no stutters in flight or untoward pauses I can only say I'm happy with their approach.

PS They have great customer support as well.

[xxmikexx]

Folks,

I have received dozens of emails in response to my recent articles about FSX and alphanumeric defragmentation here

http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/op-ed/ed395.htm

and here

http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/op-ed/ed394.htm

An overwhelming majority of these readers reported, and new ones continue to report, FSX performance improvements ranging anywhere from good to spectacular. A notable exception is a simmer who owns a full-race Great Computer In The Sky, and who therefore got no performance boost. (Note that these articles were directed at owners of the typical computers of today and yesterday, not at the owners of supercomputers.)

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Now ... In a post to the Outer Marker here

http://www.flightsim.com/dc/dcboard....id=71354&page=

the poster said

"WARNING: O&O Defrag hosed my hard drives!"

It never happened, folks. In the tenth response in the thread, buried deep in the response, the poster himself retracted the charge, saying "I think that perhaps O&O was in the middle of defragging when I restarted the computer."

[... Sigh ...]

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Most of my readers used O&O Defrag for the essential alphanumeric sort. None of them reported any problems with O&OD whatsoever.

Many used Ultimate Defrag. Most of them had no problems with UD but several did, encountering exactly the problems I encountered and reported in an even earlier article. Since my bad experience was not unique, I must retract my guarded recommendation of Ultimate Defrag. As I said, it's a terrific idea but the product needs work. As I said, avail yourself of the free trial of O&O Defrag. If you're satisfied with the results, don't bother with Ultimate Defrag.

You can get O&O Defrag at http://www.oo-software.com/en/download/

Mike McCarthy
xxmikexx@qwest.net

[xxmikexx]

Jim,

Sorry for the delay in responding -- As I recall I haven't been to this forum since opening the thread.

Indeed I have no axe to grind re O&OD. I would take O&OD's word for it over the MS utility. If you don't want to do that, try the freeware program Power Defragmenter, though it won't report on %fragmentation, it will simply defragment. I don't have the link handy but try Googling the name. It's very fast and seems to do a decent job, though not a perfect one. (And it won't do either offline defrags or alphanumeric defrags.)

As to a simple explanation re the MS defragmenter, I'm not a defragmentation expert and can only guess: I think the MS program is more of a space consolidator, and not a very good one at that. Hit it with too many defragmented files and it appears to silently throw up its hands. This is not much of an explanation, is it.

I assume that after your O&OD run you restarted it and discovered no significant level of drive fragmentation, n'est ce pas?

[xxmikexx]

Ryan et al,

O&OD does more than defragment, it moves stuff around, especially during Complete/SPACE and Complete/NAME. My guess is that DiskKeeper does something much closer to O&OD's STEALTH defrag -- don't move a lot of stuff around, just move and defragment the fragmented files -- but I am in fact guessing.

I hope this helps.

Mike McCarthy
xxmikexx@qwest.net

[jamesnobrien]

Oui, c'est correct. Interestingly enough, I had to reinstall FSX and the reinstallation caused a significant amount of fragmentation
Jim O'Brien