Windows 2K3 Defrag question

[bluestrobe]

I have a 500GB Seagate IDE drive in my file server with most of my backed up DVD's on. If I remember correctly the truse space is 462GB and I am down to 55.9GB. With that much left, defrag is still giving me the warning that it can't properly do it's job without more free space. How could 55.9GB not be enough free space for any operation? I was hoping to fill it up more but I want the ability to defrag it also and don't see the two co-exisiting. How much space does defrag truly need to operate? Are there any alternatives? I just see letting more space than 55.9GB sitting there is a waste.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: bluestrobe
I have a 500GB Seagate IDE drive in my file server with most of my backed up DVD's on. If I remember correctly the truse space is 462GB and I am down to 55.9GB. With that much left, defrag is still giving me the warning that it can't properly do it's job without more free space. How could 55.9GB not be enough free space for any operation? I was hoping to fill it up more but I want the ability to defrag it also and don't see the two co-exisiting. How much space does defrag truly need to operate? Are there any alternatives? I just see letting more space than 55.9GB sitting there is a waste.

15%-20% should be enough. Some third party tools will do better with much less. Honest question, why do you need to defrag the volume? Sounds like its mostly large files anyhow, the minor layout improvement is not going to be noticeable in any video player.

 

[bluestrobe]

Originally posted by: bsobel15%-20% should be enough. Some third party tools will do better with much less. Honest question, why do you need to defrag the volume? Sounds like its mostly large files anyhow, the minor layout improvement is not going to be noticeable in any video player.

I checked the volume with defrag and there was a few slivers of blue, but it was mostly red. I don't want the files getting fragmented to the point I would start seeing errors.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: bluestrobe

Originally posted by: bsobel15%-20% should be enough. Some third party tools will do better with much less. Honest question, why do you need to defrag the volume? Sounds like its mostly large files anyhow, the minor layout improvement is not going to be noticeable in any video player.

I checked the volume with defrag and there was a few slivers of blue, but it was mostly red. I don't want the files getting fragmented to the point I would start seeing errors.

Fragmentation doesnt cause errors, and files dont just 'fragment'. If these are mostly large media files (Im basing that on your description) they aren't going to become more fragmented over time. Fragmenation occurs when you have a lot of churn (delete files, replace more, etc).

 

[bluestrobe]

I've been adding these files over a period of 3 weeks. I know idle files don't fragment and this is the first time I went back and checked the drive with defrag.

 

[Nothinman]

You're still looking for problems where there are none. If it was a busy server hit by multiple people and always seeking all over the place you might, might, have a reason to worry about fragmentation. But for a home, personal server it almost never matter. Hell I just checked mine again and because rtorrent doesn't support preallocation of torrents I get this:

#xfs_db -r -c frag /dev/mapper/cdata
actual 1919009, ideal 31632, fragmentation factor 98.35%

But I never notice any latency when accessing the files on there.

 

[bluestrobe]

I don't think there is a problem. I defragged it once even with the little 20% warning and will leave it alone since it's not going to change much after now.