Defrag Needed?

If you are looking into video editing, you might be better served by
stopping what you are doing now, and creating a separate partition on the
fastest drive you have just for the temp files created during editing,
then
completing your installation, for video 60GB even is not too big (may not
be
big enough)

I only have one hard drive :-).

Look also into tweaking system.ini settings to change the shell for the
time
you are doing video work, to the video editor instead of explorer
Win98se can be tweaked into a very fast video editing platform
maxtor 40 & 160GB drive, each partitioned into a 8GB bootable OS clones
and
32, 72&80GB extended partitions

That's an idea. Thanx. I will be using Adobe Premiere 6.0. Does that use
much power? When I run it - it ran pretty fast.

jkb

The amount of space you have filled on the disk has nothing to do with how
fragmented the drive might be, and therefore has nothing to do with whether
or not a defrag would be worthwhile. A drive only becomes fragmented as you
delete items then add new stuff - the new stuff you add can get scattered
amongst the gaps created by the stuff that was deleted. If all you've been
doing is adding new stuff then there will be no fragmentation.

However, if you have used the drive A Lot then you have probably been doing
a lot of deleting, and in that case it might be fragmented. I believe there
are tools that can tell you how fragmented a drive is, but it's a bit
pointless since there is no universal agreement on how to measure
fragmentation.

The amount of used space is not the primary determinate of the time a defrag
will take. Whether or not you choose to consolidate free space, the extent
of fragmentation, and how much re-arranging gets done as part of the
application optimization has more effect on the time than the volume of
data.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"jkb" nospam@none wrote in message
...
There's no need to defrag if all you've done is an install. Defrag only
becomes significant if you have deleted files, creating odd-sized spaces
on
disk, then added more files. There's some deletion that goes on during
an
install, but not enough to be concerned about.

But, I have filled 14GB already, and probably will do more. Especially as
I'm looking into video-editing. :-)

OTOH, if the drive isn't fragmented and there isn't any application usage
history then defragging won't do anything, and it will complete very
quickly. I would always recommend doing Scandisk before defragging.

How do I tell whether it's fragmented or not? I use my hard drive A Lot.

The reported amount of disk space used does not indicate anything about
the
fragmentation on the drive.

But won't space used affect largely the time it takes?

Thanx for your help,
jkb

A 60 Gb drive will commonly be partitioned into something like two 15Gb
partitions and the remainder in one partition. This would give you a system
partition, an application partition, and a work file partition. Of course,
there are many variations on this sort of scheme, but the advantage of
something like this is that you can then manage the partitions according to
how they get used. For instance, you could make a point of keeping the
working partition well defragged, because you want your video files to be
accessed as smoothly as possible, but the other partitions aren't as
important.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"jkb" nospam@none wrote in message
...
snip

I only have one hard drive :-).

The amount of space you have filled on the disk has nothing to do with how
fragmented the drive might be, and therefore has nothing to do with
whether
or not a defrag would be worthwhile. A drive only becomes fragmented as
you
delete items then add new stuff - the new stuff you add can get scattered
amongst the gaps created by the stuff that was deleted. If all you've
been
doing is adding new stuff then there will be no fragmentation.

But wouldn't a largely filled hard drive mean that defrag has to wade
through a lot of stuff?

However, if you have used the drive A Lot then you have probably been
doing
a lot of deleting, and in that case it might be fragmented. I believe
there
are tools that can tell you how fragmented a drive is, but it's a bit
pointless since there is no universal agreement on how to measure
fragmentation.

I actually do very little deleting. Mainly installing things I might want,
using big programs, etc.

The amount of used space is not the primary determinate of the time a
defrag
will take. Whether or not you choose to consolidate free space, the
extent
of fragmentation, and how much re-arranging gets done as part of the
application optimization has more effect on the time than the volume of
data.

Thanx for your help,
jkb

A 60 Gb drive will commonly be partitioned into something like two 15Gb
partitions and the remainder in one partition. This would give you a
system
partition, an application partition, and a work file partition.

That's a nice idea - But, what if I want Linux as well? :-). I haven't
started doing VE yet, so just about all of that 14GB used up is programs and
downloads.

Of course, there are many variations on this sort of scheme, but the
advantage of
something like this is that you can then manage the partitions according
to
how they get used. For instance, you could make a point of keeping the
working partition well defragged, because you want your video files to be
accessed as smoothly as possible, but the other partitions aren't as
important.

Doesn't defragging also speed up applications?

jkb

Not if its all recently installed, the installer already places the files in
the next available location, which is contiguous on an empty drive. Unless
you have been using installed programs, there are no applog entries to have
defrag say 'this' is more important than 'that', move 'this' to the top,
move 'that' to the end.

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"jkb" nospam@none wrote in message
...
| The amount of space you have filled on the disk has nothing to do with
how
| fragmented the drive might be, and therefore has nothing to do with
| whether
| or not a defrag would be worthwhile. A drive only becomes fragmented as
| you
| delete items then add new stuff - the new stuff you add can get
scattered
| amongst the gaps created by the stuff that was deleted. If all you've
| been
| doing is adding new stuff then there will be no fragmentation.
|
| But wouldn't a largely filled hard drive mean that defrag has to wade
| through a lot of stuff?
|
| However, if you have used the drive A Lot then you have probably been
| doing
| a lot of deleting, and in that case it might be fragmented. I believe
| there
| are tools that can tell you how fragmented a drive is, but it's a bit
| pointless since there is no universal agreement on how to measure
| fragmentation.
|
| I actually do very little deleting. Mainly installing things I might want,
| using big programs, etc.
|
| The amount of used space is not the primary determinate of the time a
| defrag
| will take. Whether or not you choose to consolidate free space, the
| extent
| of fragmentation, and how much re-arranging gets done as part of the
| application optimization has more effect on the time than the volume of
| data.
|
| Thanx for your help,
| jkb
|
|

Not if its all recently installed, the installer already places the files
in
the next available location, which is contiguous on an empty drive. Unless
you have been using installed programs, there are no applog entries to
have
defrag say 'this' is more important than 'that', move 'this' to the top,
move 'that' to the end.

Well, I've used every program installed at least several times.

"jkb" nospam@none wrote in message
...
A 60 Gb drive will commonly be partitioned into something like two 15Gb
partitions and the remainder in one partition. This would give you a
system
partition, an application partition, and a work file partition.

That's a nice idea - But, what if I want Linux as well? :-).

Then set aside one of the partitions for Linux. That issue aplies whether
your disk is one large partition or several smaller ones.


Doesn't defragging also speed up applications?

You mean application loading? Yes it does, but how often do you start an
application compared to how often you read and write your data files from
within an application?

Then set aside one of the partitions for Linux. That issue aplies whether
your disk is one large partition or several smaller ones.

What kind of sizing would you reccomend? I generally give Linux about
10-13GB.

You mean application loading? Yes it does, but how often do you start an
application compared to how often you read and write your data files from
within an application?

Well, What kind of hard drive usage would you say Railroad Tycoon 3 or Rise
of Nations or FS2004 uses?

"jkb" nospam@none wrote in message
...
Then set aside one of the partitions for Linux. That issue aplies
whether
your disk is one large partition or several smaller ones.

What kind of sizing would you reccomend? I generally give Linux about
10-13GB.

Questions about Linux are best asked in a Linux newsgroup where the Linux
experts hang out.

You mean application loading? Yes it does, but how often do you start an
application compared to how often you read and write your data files from
within an application?

Well, What kind of hard drive usage would you say Railroad Tycoon 3 or
Rise
of Nations or FS2004 uses?

Questions about particular applications are best asked in newsgroups where
the experts in those applications hang out.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)