Don't laugh.... is there a program to fragment a HD?

[Souka]

Don't laugh.... is there a program to fragment a HD?

There are plenty of programs to DE-fragment a HD, but I'm looking for one that will take the existing data and fragment the living daylights out of it.

Why? Curosity on performance impact feels on my computers, but also because I have a co-worker that claims that XP and Vista do not suffer from performance issues with because of the NTFS filesystem...

thing is... he's our Lead Helpdesk guy for our company!


Is there such a program?


Moved to Memory & Storage
Anandtech Moderator
Gillbot

 

[ViRGE]

He's not completely incorrect you know. With enough fragmentation even NTFS suffers, but like all modern file systems it has a certain level of fragmentation resistance. It doesn't fragment easily, and when it does it's not usually severe. You have to start running very low on space to get NTFS to naturally fragment so badly that performance greatly suffers.

Getting back on topic... No, I'm not aware of any programs that cause fragmentation.

 

[andrei3333]

of course fragmentation degreases performance...do you guys play games ? what happens if you forget to defrag after you installed a new game ? : L A G
think about it, if i told you you had to make a pizza, but the tomatoes were in tokyo, mushrooms in moscow, and pepperoni in berlin, how long would it take you to make that pizza ?

thats what the hdd is doing when its fetching fragmented files at your command

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Souka
Don't laugh.... is there a program to fragment a HD?

Is there such a program?

Yes, it's called Windows. Do a fresh install, then load all of the drivers, then all of the software you'll be using, and don't do any defragmentation.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: andrei3333
of course fragmentation degreases performance...do you guys play games ? what happens if you forget to defrag after you installed a new game ? : L A G
think about it, if i told you you had to make a pizza, but the tomatoes were in tokyo, mushrooms in moscow, and pepperoni in berlin, how long would it take you to make that pizza ?

thats what the hdd is doing when its fetching fragmented files at your command

:laugh:

Yes & no...

I'll let the gurus get involved in this thread, but as has been mentioned, the difference isn't nearly what people like to think it is.

I used to be paranoid about defragging all the time, & then when i switched to Vista, i started to let the OS do it's thing, & lo & behold, i see zero difference...

Not saying there cannot be or isn't a difference, but it's usually very minimal.

I think bsobel or Nothinman could well explain this

 

[0roo0roo]

it used to matter more when drives were dog slow.
now they are so fast its not really much of an issue.

 

[Modelworks]

It depends on the system and how its used.
If your someone who doesn't uninstall or delete things a lot then your not going to fragment the file system much.

If your someone like me though that installs and deletes things every day , testing different software, converting video files, etc then you can fragment a drive pretty bad.

I ran defrag the other day and the game crysis had over 300 fragments in some of its files.
There is no way that would not slow down the HD when it goes to retrieve those files.

I just ran perfectdisk to see most fragmented files.
Installed world in conflict again last night, should have defragmented first.
Some of the map files have 400+ fragments.

 

[postmortemIA]

Heavily fragmented is not where you want to be. It surely degrades performance of disk I/O.

 

[trexpesto]

Yes, it's called Windows.

Beat me to it!

 

[nerp]

Defrag is overrated and most people look at a drive map and go "OMG so fragged" when in reality it's not bad at all. Someone going out and buying a defragger just got scammed, FYI.

 

[Roguestar]

Just uninstall and reinstall a whole rake of programs, then copy a bunch of files around the drive!

 

[Bill Kunert]

I retired from Xerox several years ago and worked on high end printers. Our print servers at that time ran Windows NT and there was no defrag program built into the system and we were told fragmentation would not be a problem.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
it used to matter more when drives were dog slow.
now they are so fast its not really much of an issue.

:thumbsup:

It might a problem in some types of Servers, but it is Not really a problem on End Users systems.

End users "Speed" issues circles around Gaming.

In reality Gaming is more a problem of the Carbonware Neurobehavioral capacities rather than the Siliconeware.

 

[Roguestar]

^ I think there is a gap in the market, Jack. We should sell brain pills to "overclock your fleshware" to hardcore gamers who'll pay us $$$.

 

[Nothinman]

of course fragmentation degreases performance...do you guys play games ? what happens if you forget to defrag after you installed a new game ? : L A G

Only when the game tries to load things from disk which will likely happen anyway if it's ondemand in the middle of the game. If you're experiencing lag during non-level loading times then something else is wrong.

 

[theAnimal]

FragUtil (at the bottom of the page)

Scramble

 

[Nathelion]

Originally posted by: Roguestar
^ I think there is a gap in the market, Jack. We should sell brain pills to "overclock your fleshware" to hardcore gamers who'll pay us $$$.

Oh wait, that one German company is already doing that

 

[taltamir]

defragmentation takes time, it costs electricity, productivity, and hard drive life. It has a woefully low return on investment.
I recommend to everyone to never defrag anything.

 

[bigsnyder]

sent PM

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: Souka
Don't laugh.... is there a program to fragment a HD?

There are plenty of programs to DE-fragment a HD, but I'm looking for one that will take the existing data and fragment the living daylights out of it.

Why? Curosity on performance impact feels on my computers, but also because I have a co-worker that claims that XP and Vista do not suffer from performance issues with because of the NTFS filesystem...

thing is... he's our Lead Helpdesk guy for our company!


Is there such a program?


Moved to Memory & Storage
Anandtech Moderator
Gillbot

NTFS actively tries to take care of fragmentation, so it's harder to fragment.
A good file system doesn't even need an offline defragger. NTFS isn't good enough to go without one, but Microsoft likes to pretend it is.
Additionally, many programs take care of their own fragmentation now (for better or worse) by storing many files in larger package files.

 

[cretinbob]

All I've ever really seen fragmentation do is make a few programs run incorrectly. Once, back in windows 95, I had a wire frame model for raytracing, and when I defragmented the drive, it swapped the sides of the model. That was strange. But yeah, it mostly depends on what it is you are doing.