Consolidation feature disappeared in v2

[Faziri]

Problem:

in v1.5 (the last before the new v2), if you defragged your drive and had the option "move files of more than x MB to the end of the drive" enabled, you'd see Defraggler defragment all your files and additionally move non-fragmented files of >x MB towards the end as well. So if you had, say, set x = 128, then all your files would be defragmented and all files of >128MB would be stacked onto the end of the drive.

V2 no longer does this, it only moves files of >128MB towards the end if it has to defragment them. Non-fragged files of >128MB just stay where they are as long as they don't interfere with the defragging of other files. And yes, of course i've tried looking for a solution in the settings and it just wasn't there.

If you read further, you'll also understand why i can say that the previous version (v1,5) was effectively 80% more efficient than v2 in the case of some power-users and why i say that doing a Fast Defrag with filesize set to a minimum of x (128) MB doesn't work, which is a bug if you ask me (it simply ignores one setting and listens to another setting it's not supposed to listen to). A Free Space Defrag ignores the "move to end" option as well.

 

What i'd like to ask:

to include an option that says "move 'big files' (as specified on the 'Defragment' tab) towards the end of the drive even if they are not fragmented."

or to make the Free Space Defrag and Fast Defrag respect the "move to end" option instead of just piling up the files at the start.

 

Why?

Because i have set up a placement system on my drive to speed up defrags and games by a lot, and Defraggler was a key component in it. DF had the ability to get large, rarely (never) edited files out of the way of the rest, at the end of the drive, so i just have to defrag the rest of the files, saving quite a few dozens of gigabytes and an hour of waiting. V2 just leaves them where they are as long as they're not fragmented.

 

Lemme explain:

let's say you have ~100GB of files on your drive. Half of them are small ones (as defined on the 'Defragment' tab) and the other half are big ones. Those big ones rarely change, it's only the small files that really end up getting fragmented and shotgun-blasted all over your drive in a million pieces. Most defraggers just pile all the files up into a single stack of files. Now imagine the small files fragment all over the place and you run a defragmentation. What happens is that your defragger ends up "defragging" the full 100GB to effectively defrag only a handful as it needs to move ALL the files to consolidate them all into that huge block again.

 

Add Defraggler to the mix:

you move all the large files towards the end of the drive once. After some time, the small ones get fragmented, and maybe a few of the big ones too, depending on what they are and how you use them. You run DF and what happens is that it defrags all the small files and moves the unfragged small ones to consolidate the whole. What's the difference? All the big files just stay where they are, at the end of the drive, where you placed them months ago and from where they still haven't moved, effectively reducing the defrag job by half of your harddrive's content and sky-rocketing the efficiency (since it no longer unnecessarily moves the large files around).

 

~edit: removed a load of text that was just a detailed example and an explanation of the irritating and unsolvable "swiss cheese" situation i'm facing with my own files right now~

I would like to add another thing though, which i cut out from above... The situation explained above becomes extra tough if you had a huge stack of large files at the end of the drive and then deleted a lot of them. The result is that you have this huge "swiss cheese" structure which, like i typed above, can't be gotten rid of since DF doesn't touch any of them if they're not fragmented.

http://i487.photobucket.com/albums/rr233/Faziri_at_pardus/Other%20Stuff/DF.jpg

 

Please bring back that level of control to DF, it was really the only thing that made DF stand out from the rest and it literally increased the defrag efficiency by over 50%! I could write a massive text about the why and how behind it, but it wouldn't be fair since i just can't explain it decently and you'd write me off as some noob because of it, followed by ignoring my request, just because of a bad explanation of a tough situation.

[Faziri]

I've been doing some more experimenting and it turns out this is more a bad formulation in the settings: on the Defrag tab, there's an option to "only move files of specified types" (for moving them to the end of the drive). You'd think that if you uncheck this, it'll move all files of >x MB to the end, but instead it just doesn't move them to the end of the drive at all and stacks them up between the rest of the files. I checked the option and set some more extensions, then let it run and now it moved my files correctly... Untill i paused it, stopped it and restarted it (after checking the same things in english to make sure it's not just a bad translation) anyway, after that it somehow continued with the bad behavior when it comes to moving files to the end of the drive...

 

Seriously, Defraggler's acting randomly with the moving and it even skips files, i never get it to defrag all my files (no, they are not in use by anything). Please have a look at the way Defraggler handles the "large" files!