Re: John Kelly -OT- Perfect Disk

Hello,

"Steve" <Steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:54AA9EAE-864E-4144-B1E2-DDDBD3C9985B@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Thanks again John. Just so I am sure on this, Offline defrag is a defrag
> at
> boot up?? I assume there is a check box in PD to do this. I am not at my
> home
> PC, so I am just trying to get all possible info before I head home.

The process when you first set it up is to determine if it can do it
right there and then...On drive C that is never true and it is always done
during the boot sequence.

On other drives it will look for something called as handle. It examines the
system iinfo and if it finds a handle to a file on the target drive it will
offer you the option of forcing a closure of all handles (connections to
the file) If you answer yes it will without considering what damage it may
cause close those handles...more on that in a moment. It will then perform
the defrag ONLINE...the result is exactly the same as if it did it offline
as far as I am aware.

If you tell it NO to the close all connection questions it will then ask if
you want it to happen at the next boot sequence. Answering Yes here is not
exactly the same as forcing an offline defrag at avery boot. Answering yes
will only cause it to happen once. (Click on the drive properties to select
defrag at every boot)

Handles. Most of us will know that Windows (of any flavour) can be a right
pain in the rear end when it comes to cleaning up behind itself. Temp files
that should have been removed when a program closes are not cleaned up
either due to proper termination of the program or the program itself does
not do any housekeeping, etc etc etc. For exactly the same type of reasons
your system can consider a file to be in use even when it is not....its
possible that it can believe a file is in use even if the file no longer
exists. Its easy then to see why Perfect Disk and the question about closing
all files is a two edged sword....if you tell it to close the links when
there should be none open, all will be fine. If on the other hand a program
is running that has not yet finished with that file answering Yes stands a
good chance of screwing up the data in that file.

For these reasons I always tell people to reboot twice. Its the same reason
why some programs tell you to close all other programs before
proceeding.....it may not be immediately obvious why....it can mean that
whatever that particular program is going to do it will result in files
being deleted or phyically moved or access is forced even though it should
be exclusive to some other program (databases mostly) You can dream up all
sorts of scenarios...and thats the final problem...there are a lot of
programs around, often free or very cheap, that were not put through a
process us old programmers refer to as Boiler Plating...the program knows
what to do in most if not all conceivable situations and will not just crash
when it can not deal with a problem....and finally thats why it is both
expensive and hard to get Microsoft Certification for a program....Perfect
Disk is the only program in this field that has that certification....even
though one MVP rubbished it and demonstrated he had not got a clue and had
not read the instructions on how to use it.

Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org

No, I keep telling you, I am NOT an Instant Expert

>
> Steve
>
> "John Kelly" wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> > Thanks for the replies. I would not call my self extremely computer
>> > savvy,
>> > so I tend to be quite conservative with anything I do on the PC.
>> > Perfect
>> > Disk
>> > claims it will try to reduce the MFT zone down to about 50MB (if I
>> > remember
>> > the help file correctly), but it seems like your experience says
>> > otherwise.
>>
>> Yes you are right...in fact I have it set to defragment all drives
>> during the boot period....its slow the first time you do it afterwards
>> fairly quick...maybe 15 - 20 seconds for three drives and as I am in no
>> great rush I can afford to wait that much when powering up. It only
>> defrags
>> the system files during that particular process. I do an online defrag of
>> C
>> and D: every day (D has some databases on it) and I defrag E as and when
>> I
>> think I need to...its very fast and is a 250GB drive and I am fortunate
>> to
>> have them all on a fast machine. I had forgotten all about that feature
>> even
>> though I see it happen every time I turn it on.
>>
>> > Are you also saying that this zone is still available for files, that
>> > it
>> > is
>> > still considered usable space? Is there a way to tell how big the MFT
>> > zone
>> > is? You say yours was some 12GB but I can't tell how big mine is. I do
>> > know
>> > its now out in the free space where it wasn't before. Don't know why it
>> > moved.
>>
>> Thats the way I read it. If I were you I would do an Offline
>> Deefrag...It actually does it the next time you boot if its the C drive.
>> It
>> will attempt to do it there and then for the other drives but to do that
>> it
>> must have exclusive use of the drive and as thats not always possible it
>> tells you it will do that drive on the next boot sequence.
>>
>> You can find the size of any file using PD, but you need to know its
>> ID
>> number. You can work out approx size for the system files by taking the
>> value for each cell..which is obviously different for each size of hard
>> drive and multiply it by the number of cells occupied. The table lends
>> itself to this method bewcause of the way/place it is displayed in PD
>>
>> > I'll take a look at a few of the links you sent. If you have any other
>> > short
>> > term suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
>>
>> No, your mention of the 50MB reduction reminded me of the best way to
>> do
>> it...offline defrag....here is one more way of increasing performance
>> ....
>>
>> I store my pagefile on drive D. It being used for a databse which might
>> not
>> be accessed by me for several days at a time. I also disable the page
>> file
>> on Drive C. Because of this XP is forced to use Drive D for storage and
>> that
>> makes the system a little faster. Would you believe that XP does not
>> delete
>> the file PAGEFILE.SYS ??? so you have to change the view options to
>> reveal
>> it and then you can delete it....you can retrieve a lot of space on drive
>> C
>> and that will have a small positive effect on performance.
>>
>> Best Wishes.....Jhn Kelly
>> www.the-kellys.org
>>
>> Guv, I keep telling you, I am not an Instant Expert...Honest !!
>>
>> >
>> > Thanks again,
>> > Steve
>> >
>> > "John Kelly" wrote:
>> >
>> >> Hello again,
>> >>
>> >> I have just found a section on Registry entries. It states that
>> >> you
>> >> can
>> >> increase the size but NOT decrease the size to less than XP has
>> >> calculated.
>> >> Interestingly it implies that if your files need space XP will allow
>> >> them
>> >> to
>> >> use free space inside the table. The more I read the more it sounds
>> >> like
>> >> a
>> >> badly conceived format/method. Here is the relevent text
>> >>
>> >> The default MFT zone is calculated and reserved by the system when it
>> >> mounts
>> >> the volume, and is based on volume size. You can increase the MFT zone
>> >> by
>> >> means of the registry entry detailed in Microsoft Knowledge Base
>> >> Article
>> >> 174619, but you cannot make the default MFT zone smaller than what is
>> >> calculated. Increasing the MFT zone does not decrease the disk space
>> >> that
>> >> users can use for data files.
>> >>
>> >> and here is the link to the page if you want it...
>> >>
>> >> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/fileio/fs/master_file_table.asp
>> >>
>> >> Best Wishes....John Kelly
>> >> www.the-kellys.org
>> >>
>> >> No, I am not an Instant Expert.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> "Steve" <Steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> >> news:D26BE11F-52F4-48E1-BEF3-50733634D54E@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> >> > John,
>> >> >
>> >> > I've taken your advice in the past and ordered Perfect Disk which
>> >> > has
>> >> > done
>> >> > a
>> >> > great job in defragging my free space. For MM purposes I usually
>> >> > keep
>> >> > free
>> >> > at
>> >> > least 30GB of my 60GB drive for capturing etc. When I'm done I move
>> >> > all
>> >> > my
>> >> > movies/clips to the backup larger drive.
>> >> >
>> >> > After running PD last night (its been awhile), I noticed I have a
>> >> > large
>> >> > MFT
>> >> > zone out in the free space, which I never noticed before. Previously
>> >> > PD
>> >> > would
>> >> > create one large continuous free space. I don't know if thats
>> >> > actually
>> >> > occupied space or just allocated space. Can you give me any insight
>> >> > into
>> >> > the
>> >> > MFT zone? Should I run PD again?
>> >> >
>> >> > Thanks,
>> >> > Steve
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>>
>>
>>


.

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