Defraggler Memory Grave...

[SebastianJu2]

Hello,

 

I tested defraggler with a 1500GB Harddisc. It found 4008 fragmented files and 11.804.929 Fragments. And it used 1500MB of RAM at this time... Thats really hard.

 

The nearly identical Auslogics Disc Defrag needs under 5MB with the same disc.

 

Looks to me that there is something to fix...

[TheWebAtom]

How much time did Defraggler take to complete the operation compared to Auslogics?

[SebastianJu2]

I yesterday tested it again because I wanted to see if defraggler is now behaving another way when I already have 20% unfragmented now but it didnt. It took 1500MB of RAM. Then I let it run a good amount of minutes to see if it is different but it was very lame. It had the similar behavior to JkDefragGUI which means it used the harddisc only a little bit. The main time it was consuming high parts of cpu-usage and didnt write anything. So I stopped because it was really lame.

 

Now i made a test for a small systemdrive. 30GB partition and 1,4GB free. I used the full defrag. I can say that defraggler is way slower. Compared to auslogics (both softwares used the slowest defrag mode) it is writing very lame while auslogics is fast copying. And defraggler is slower on a not very fragmented disc because it wants very badly to move all files to the beginning. Which means that at each run there are files changed and so fragmented. Then it steals small files from the end to move everything to the beginning. But the hole this breaks has to be filled again. So it copies half of the disc again without getting an advantage from that. And i think this behaviour will lead to the point that all small files are together at the start of the disc. Dont know if that is good or bad.

Auslogics doesnt copy files to start so badly. It does but not that fanatic. So its faster.

Defraggler wasnt able to defrag all files so I used auslogics on this partition and it could solve most of these files.

 

Then I tested again the big disc. 1,3TB and 37,6GB free. And it was like described above. Plus it was very lame compared to auslogics. Because Auslogics is copying all the time. The hd-light only is flackering sometimes but is on the maintime. Defraggler doesnt do 98% of the time anything with the disc but it is calculating all the time. Which makes it very slow.

 

So for my tests defraggler is slower for big and small partitions.

 

I think defraggler is slower because it wants to calculate where the best place is for files. But this means for my pc that it is taking big time for calculating instead writing. Which makes it slow.

[TheWebAtom]

I think defraggler is slower because it wants to calculate where the best place is for files.

 

Well, I think if Defraggler wants to to a better job then all the more power to it

[Andavari]

I think the clue to your "issue" is the shear amount of data that 1.3TB system has on it. Many defrag tools could take forever on that amount of data especially if you don't have it logically split up into multiple partitions to try and avoid fragmentation in the first place.

 

Then again from my own personal experience some defrag tools just don't get along well with some systems! I've tried several (actually too many) over the years that spend a mind numbing 40-60 minutes just analyzing because when they get to my D: drive which has thousands of tiny files they literally choke, then they merrily only take about 10 minutes to actually defrag. It's annoying but is also dependent upon the amount of data, files, and file sizes.

[Kramy]

Well, I think if Defraggler wants to to a better job then all the more power to it

Hi. See my thread here:

 

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=28804

 

Copying a 4KiB file appears to take several seconds in Defraggler. I think it's taking a bit too long trying to find the right spot...

[SebastianJu2]

Well, I think if Defraggler wants to to a better job then all the more power to it

 

I dont think that I have a bad pc. I have 4GB RAM (3GB usable on Vista 32bit) +3,5GB Swapfile. And my cpu is a dualcore T7700. So I think it should have enough horsepower...

 

I think the clue to your "issue" is the shear amount of data that 1.3TB system has on it. Many defrag tools could take forever on that amount of data especially if you don't have it logically split up into multiple partitions to try and avoid fragmentation in the first place.

 

Then again from my own personal experience some defrag tools just don't get along well with some systems! I've tried several (actually too many) over the years that spend a mind numbing 40-60 minutes just analyzing because when they get to my D: drive which has thousands of tiny files they literally choke, then they merrily only take about 10 minutes to actually defrag. It's annoying but is also dependent upon the amount of data, files, and file sizes.

 

The analyzing-phase wasnt very different in time I think. But I think defraggler is collecting much more data. And is using this to calculate where to put the files best. Good idea but it seems that this makes the process way slower. Even on my C-Drive, which is only 30GB its way slower because of that.

When I first tried Defraggler with the big partition one of my opened firefox crashed because the lack of ram. I would say good idea with the calculation but at the end the use is limited...

 

By the way... why doesnt defragmenting softwares use another way to defragment nearly full partitions? I mean starting from beginning it could move on and move every block thats in the way to the end until its enough place to put a big file into the place. But the softwares seems to shuffle the files forth and back and after some time it seems there is enough place to put a file into.

Cant such softwares move single blocks and do they have to move a whole file? If so I dont see why that should be the case.

I think moving block to the end to make space would be faster then the other techniques I saw at nearly full harddiscs.