SimonFastEddy

Hello trium, Hello again nukecad, 11th February 2020 Thank you for being curious and questioning the central dogma - (SimonFastEddy) I worked at a TV factory making Black & White televisions, during my college days when on student breaks in the 60s. They had lots of televisions returning for repair because the On/Off switch on the front failed early. It was discovered that the switch was designed to only be turned "On" once and then left. It needed a new type of switch that could endure many On/Off cycles. I am not an advocate of the philosophy that defragmenting/servicing a HDD will wear the drive out. In my living room is an electric clock that has run continuously since the 1950s requiring just a bit of flex (original one had crumbling insulation) and two re-oils. It doesn't have bearings made on air-bearing lathes - all ex-WW2 - manual. If the life of the electrolytic capacitors in the power supply is about the same as the On/Off switch and the mother-board, HDD or memory, then a user would be best advised to use all the facilities and discard the machine when it fails. So I say "service it" if you can. Trium, I like what you say: "maybe microsoft should adapt this article to modern operating systems... :-)". I've read the same articles. PrivaZer improves things for a bit and ProcessLasso I am not sure about. A Clean Install does improve responsiveness (usability, feel, with speed being difficult to assess) after which I can even push this old PC to do a virus scan during a defrag with a document open on the Desktop as well, which is asking a lot. After time, when the PC becomes unresponsive, that is with just a document open, then it appears that the MFT also has issues requiring a lengthy free-space wipe (if that is what is required) but the O.S doesn't give clarity in it's messaging. A Clean Install is about two days work re-loading programs and settings. The typical user isn't us! They will have a 1 TB HDD and don't even know how to do a restore point. I looked at the Microsoft drive wiper "cipher". It started as an encryption tool. It didn't stall like CCleaner; it took 7 hours to complete the allocated task but the MFT was still stubborn to complete with CCleaner after a pass with the tool. All three PCs have the same characteristic: wipes MFT slowly to 50% completed than finishes very fast onto the main disc area the operation of which can be cancelled. The problem (if it is one) is not a bug in CCleaner or a bug in Microsoft W10. It is a design feature that needs developing resources. In the 1960s it was called "Built-in Obsolescence". I wonder if the original author who posted this question in 2013 is still curious. To the Moon, Mars, the stars and beyond... SimonFastEddy

Hello every body, Opinions vary on the Internet as to the virtues of wiping the free space. My three machines are refurbished ex-leased, ex-commercial units with negligible intrinsic value. I only wish they would wear out but they aren't anywhere near doing that yet. The Dell GX620 Pentium4 single core machine, was originally a Windows XP Professional installation. Drives are still in good health! Surfaces of the HDD still good. Given the age of my GX620 installation and the small MFT, it seems to me that they need servicing with a regular drive wipe. Piriform offer two options one of which is a complete Erase which I am not considering. A recent clean installation of Windows 10 back onto the GX620 reduced a CCleaner 2 hour MFT wipe to 2 minutes, and that was after having to sequentially wipe some half-a-dozen times (almost a day servicing the volume) because the machine was complaining of insufficient resource to complete the task. I am postulating the shortage of resource was in the MFT or MFT Zone Reservation. That saves a huge amount of drive wear, if that is your preference. It indicates that servicing is overdue. We haven't answered the original question that was posed in 2013. Link: NTFS MFT Zone Reservation http://systemmanager.ru/the_tweaking_experience.en/tweaks/file system tweaks/ntfs mft zone reservation.htm Question: Should a manager schedule a MFT free space wipe; a clean re-installation, or a resizing of a NTFS MFT Zone Reservation volume? Would any of those solve the problem anyway? A puzzle to finish: if you had a perfectly balanced coin and you had already thrown 4 heads, would you declare a heads again or change your call? Heads up... bottoms up... last orders. SimonFastEddy

Hello Nukecad, Why do I seem to be wiping free-space on a regular basis? It is because I can. Technicians use technical books from secondhand bookshops: they lack curiosity. I am curious enough to find out answers by experimentation. The question can be framed as follows: If wiping free space has no practical purpose, then why does Piriform include a facility to do just that? Why does Microsoft include a registry entry with a value that can be changed for NtfsMftZoneReservation ? Try using: fsutil behavior set mftzone 1 If you change the value from 1 to 2, 3, or 4. What happens? Have a look using UltraDefrag. All attempts to adjust memory resources (and there are a few options) gave no improvement in performance. I am fortunate in having a computer that I can tear-down and rebuild. The old Dell GX620 will outlive me - it is bomb proof. Have any thoughts? Your health! Drink in moderation. SimonFastEddy

Dear CCleaner, I am experiencing a prolonged wipe free-space task with CCleaner and Windows 10 v1909. This was initially reported as a bug here in 2013. I run three Dell computers with the same programs and personal files. The old Dell GX620 would not complete the wipe free-space task without reporting an insufficient resource. This PC has 53805 folders, 313894 files and 195 MB MFT. The task would fail after about 2 hours running, before 50% completed, although repeated attempts (about half a dozen) eventually brought success. The solution was to rebuild the software with a clean installation of Windows 10, loading back the programs and personal files and testing the free-space wipe at intervals. The GX620 didn't report any issues and now runs the Wipe MFT free-space in 2 minutes; a full task completes in 2 hours 5 minutes. In comparison the Dell 755 and Dell 760 running installations several years old are now returning wipe MFT times of 35 minutes and 60 minutes, respectively. I am currently treating the installations as disposable with a rebuild required around 6 months or when the wipe task fails. It looks like an O.S. issue as though a journal is filling and not clearing... The GX620 is a test machine that has been stripped of software and rebuilt and it is a test-bed. No surprise it has issues. Malware not detected. Any thoughts? SimonFastEddy