defraggler needs: sorting files by usage

[julevine]

but defraggler really needs this below on next build version

 

sorting files by last modified date

 

1:rarely modified files 30 days or more at beginning of drive including boot files

2: occasionally modified files in between

3:frequently modified files 30 days or less on end

 

defraggler needs this because it is pointless to defragment files all over the place without sorting them by modified date there's no benefit except some faster read times

 

especially for boot files and frequently and rarely modified used files

 

 

by sorting them by modified date the benefits are:

 

1: the read heads have to move less to find the needed files

 

2 big performance boost

 

3 less wearing on hard drive

 

4 less fragmented files

 

5 would not need to defragment drive so often

 

 

please add to defraggler soon

 

thank you

 

sorry for duplicate posts

[redhawk]

What you're suggesting would not improve the speed and performance of the drive in fact it would make things worse.

It's true files at the start of the drive load quicker, however priority should be always given to Operating System files and applications if you want an optimised file system.

Files that are stored and do not change should also be located at the start of the disk not changeable files as I'll try to explain.

 

When you move changeable files to the start of the drive there would be very little contiguous freespace for them to move into.

Therefore Defraggler must make room for this space by moving other files away to another area of the disk.

Once the freespace has been made Defraggler would move all the changeable files to the start of the disk all in a neat order: Firefox and Internet Explorer cache files (useless files) and probably VirtualBox / VMWare OS hard disk images etc.

 

So now everything has been defragged you would probably thinking well what could go wrong with this arrangement??

 

The problem is that your files are highly likely to quickly fragment and degrade the performance of the file system.

When a file expands it first uses it's cluster allocations, when this has gone it needs to get more free clusters.

Because all your files are neatly packed at the start of the disk all nearby clusters are in use would force the OS to use free clusters at some distance from the main file.

 

Now if you prioritise files that do not change to be located at the start of the disk fragmentation would still happen for changeable files but their fragments would be closer together and thus the disk head would have little distance to move.

 

So:

1: the read heads have to move less to find the needed files

The head is constantly swinging back and forth a few fragmented files isn't really going to make that much difference.

 

2 big performance boost

I've often wondered if you get much performance boost by Optimising the file system so I used a rival freeware defragging tool and let it organise my files in the optimum pattern.

After 10 minutes of shuffling around I have to be honest I saw no improvements, apart from Windows loading my desktop 2 seconds faster than previously.

As long as you defrag once every 3 months you're not going to see any big performance boost by defragging your drive once a week or every day.

 

3 less wearing on hard drive

Constant and unnecessary defragging would always wear your hard drive out.

 

4 less fragmented files

Files always fragment it's the nature of the file system.

However, files located at the start of the disk that fragment will degrade your file system more than fragmented files located at the end of the disk.

 

5 would not need to defragment drive so often

Same as 2.

 

Richard S.

[Rob Defraggle]

What you're suggesting would not improve the speed and performance of the drive in fact it would make things worse.

It's true files at the start of the drive load quicker, however priority should be always given to Operating System files and applications if you want an optimised file system.

Files that are stored and do not change should also be located at the start of the disk not changeable files as I'll try to explain.

That is what I think the OP was suggesting, that "stable" files be prioritised to beginning of disk to minimise the work done compacting. The problem is of course, that these "stable" frequently used files are not so stable if you're installing the OS & application updates like you're supposed to. Also as you have pointed out having only few small holes, does leads to file being allocated in many small widely scattered pieces when initially stored. I also like allowing small files to be densely stored by seperating out large files to end of the partion (as mostly large files are performance non-critical sequential access, less frequently used and using proportionately large number of disk blocks). Why would you want to lose the locality of small files stored in a folder, putting a newly modified one at end of disk just because it was recently updated?

 

Personally I think, if file system optimisation is a concern then using disk partitions is more effective than heuristics in a defrag tool and much reduces the defrag times as well, minimising the shifting around of data files.

[Rob Defraggle]

A drawback of strict ordering by age of writing, is that will cause greater fragmentation within compacted area, or leave holes with the free area unconsolidated, because files which fit neatly around immoveable files would not be packed around these new blocks.

 

Perhaps a better proposal would be to have "age bands" : < 1 month, 1-4 months and the "fossils". Assuming the most churn (rewriting, replacement and deletion) of young files, they'd need to be moved less, as they'd tend to be allocated in about the right place.

 

There'd be more chance of reducing shifts as (hopefully) each band would have many candidate file sizes, allowing moving 1 or 2 files to fill a hole, rather than shifting the whole lot. Though I'm not really sure if this intelligence is actually implemented, I do think most of the shifting is caused by compaction of large files, without enough small files to fill the gaps.

[MSS]

Please, add option 'Move files/folders to beginning' in same way 'Move large files to end' option do.

 

It must permit to add specific folders (and its files and sub-folders) and specific files (like pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys).

 

Thanks.

[Super Fast]

That is what I think the OP was suggesting, that "stable" files be prioritised to beginning of disk to minimise the work done compacting. The problem is of course, that these "stable" frequently used files are not so stable if you're installing the OS & application updates like you're supposed to.

This may be just me. But it seems like MOST of the "security holes" I find listed about MS windows come from Internet Explorer. Buffer exploits, drive by installs due to the malicious active x scripting, etc, etc.

 

It doesn't matter how much you update or patch a system. A hole is still a hole. I am sorry, until they take Active-X out of IE, all the "updates" in the world won't do any good because your still leaving a gaping big hole that anyone can go through!

 

I think it is much better to do these things:

 

- Use a good Service Pack

- Use a browser that does NOT have active X scripting (such as firefox)

- DON'T install thousands of useless plug-ins & ruin your security

- DON'T install hundreds of toolbars

- Watch what you install

- Use a good Antivirus

- Monitor your system startup + tasks folder frequently

 

Etc, etc

 

Internet Explorer? That one is such a laugh, I just call it Internet Exploder!

It does seem like most of the exploits come through IE!

[Guest]

It doesn't matter how much you update or patch a system. A hole is still a hole. I am sorry, until they take Active-X out of IE, all the "updates" in the world won't do any good because your still leaving a gaping big hole that anyone can go through!

A patch fixes a hole?

 

The prevalence of exploits coming through IE is linked to a) IE architecture and [would insert "b" followed by a parenthesis but it keeps giving me an annoying smiley] it is the most used internet explorer so it becomes an obvious target. Just like Windows is targetted by malware because it has a huge consumer base unlike any other OS.

 

And IE 9 looks great.

[Rob Defraggle]

This may be just me. But it seems like MOST of the "security holes" I find listed about MS windows come from Internet Explorer. Buffer exploits, drive by installs due to the malicious active x scripting, etc, etc.

Whilst I prefer another browser to, unless you can uninstall IE completely (which seems to be hard due to MS decisions) you still need toinstall the updates.

 

Just like Windows is targetted by malware because it has a huge consumer base unlike any other OS.

 

I don't buy the "market share" argument as a reason for many serious exploits, it is a consequence of MS's past attitude to prioritise "ease of use" over security, even in obvious target situations like email clients and browsers. It was not unforseable, they were warned!

 

The fact that very many Windows user have reason to distrust MS's updates compounds the issue.

 

But this is seems like a discussion for another place, so don't try and draw me further, the point was that the OS files do get changed, quite regularly; if you want to benefit from reduction in long seeks then partitioning the disk and storing as much data as you can outside of the System partition helps these issues considerably, at cost of having to choose another drive via dialogs more frequrently.

[Super Fast]

Whilst I prefer another browser to, unless you can uninstall IE completely (which seems to be hard due to MS decisions) you still need toinstall the updates.

That may be true, but I find regularly that malware cases & virus/trojan rates always seem to drop 95% or more after converting users to Firefox or some other more secure browser that doesn't allow any website to install anything they want just because you visit a webpage. Which is caused by Active-X scripting.

 

Sure, sometimes users do still install toolbars, programs with malware, but they at least have to click them now, instead of "driveby" malware doing it simply from visiting a page!

 

I am aware of IE9, but security researchers for McAfee in China found recently that a carefully crafted XML rules list could cause IE to import an "updated" rules list & whitelist bad controls that would allow active-X scripting to run anything all over again. It was found to work in XP, Vista, & 7 for users of IE 6, 7, 8. I assume that it also works on 9, but I haven't verified it yet. I always did say that active-x isn't good because it can't be fixed. Long as that hole remains, there is always a way around it. Why not close that door & be done with it? No active x?

 

P.S. This exploit successfully silently circumvented the UAC controls on Vista & 7 as well as the DEP protections in place.

 

Sure you can patch a system, but no matter how patched they are, active x is always a hole. Why use a hole? Wear protection when you get on the web. You use protection when you are with a partner, so why not use protection on the web?

 

Having the latest patches does NOTHING to stop exploits on a system that is using IE.

Seeing the track record for the other releases of IE, I am afraid to trust version 9, since it STILL has active x!

[Super Fast]

A drawback of strict ordering by age of writing, is that will cause greater fragmentation within compacted area, or leave holes with the free area unconsolidated, because files which fit neatly around immoveable files would not be packed around these new blocks.

 

Perhaps a better proposal would be to have "age bands" : < 1 month, 1-4 months and the "fossils". Assuming the most churn (rewriting, replacement and deletion) of young files, they'd need to be moved less, as they'd tend to be allocated in about the right place.

 

 

That sounds like a great idea. User selectable "fossil" dates...

 

With predefined "suggested" filters.

Would be nice to be able to send files that haven't changed in years/months to the front!

[julevine]

i would like defraggler to defrag like perfectdisk

[Super Fast]

A patch fixes a hole?

 

The prevalence of exploits coming through IE is linked to a) IE architecture and [would insert "b" followed by a parenthesis but it keeps giving me an annoying smiley] it is the most used internet explorer so it becomes an obvious target. Just like Windows is targetted by malware because it has a huge consumer base unlike any other OS.

 

And IE 9 looks great.

 

That may be, but Firefox has more than half the user base in some countries. So why aren't we hearing of similar experiences with Firefox? Surely, Firefox has been out long enough, & the popularity & rise of Firefox should have been enough to gather the attention of people wanting to target things...

 

Bottom line is... Internet Explorer is unsafe no matter how you look at it! I'm waiting on IE9... Waiting... For it to fall just like all the other Active-X versions! Additionally, IE-9 has problems viewing certain sites properly that seem to work in Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc...

[hazelnut]

Keep on topic guys please.

 

This area is for Defraggler suggestions.

[Super Fast]

Post removed by Moderator

 

This area of the forum is for Defraggler suggestions.