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Issues with “sparse” files


abolibibelot

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Using Defraggler 2.22.995, I noticed that it has issues dealing with NTFS “sparse” files.

– When analysing a 931GB partition which contains several complete or partial drive images, including one complete 931GB image file with an actual size of 206GB, and several partial 3TB image files with actual sizes up to 44GB, all created with ddrescue (from a Lubuntu live session) in “sparse” mode (-S switch), Defraggler doesn't list those files (all those with the “P” attribute), and seems to identify their clusters as “free space” (the whole partition is supposed to have 35GB of free space, yet the blue blocks take up about a third of the map's surface.

https://www.cjoint.com/c/IFrurA1Q5jA

https://www.cjoint.com/c/IFruXQkfD8A

– When opening that same partition, Defraggler displayed a notification saying that I could release 16GB by emptying the recycle bin – it turned out that the recycle bin contained a bunch of ”sparse” files, purposely created as almost empty, also using a ddrescue -S command, with a total size of 16GB indeed, but an actual allocated size of only 13MB. Therefore that message is misleading, and again, Defraggler is confused by the “sparse” nature of those files.

https://www.cjoint.com/c/IFruxyvCRRA

EDIT : In this particular case, I used Defraggler specifically to determine where the clusters of that 931GB image file were located, which it usually does very well (as I wrote here or here or here). I didn't actually attempt to defragment the partition (which according to this thread would result in quite a bit of a mess).

 

ST1000DM003 (fichiers “sparse” non répertoriés par Defraggler).png

Defraggler 2.2.2 ne détecte pas davantage les fichiers “sparse”.png

Defraggler 2.2.2 notification proposant de libérer 16Go en vidant corbeille -- en fait il s'agit de fichiers compressés, taille effective 13,2Mo.png

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  • 2 years later...

No reply in TWO YEARS on such a severe issue, oh well... (And Defraggler hasn't been updated since May 2018, despite this and other serious shortcomings reported on this forum.)

I was about to defragment a whole 2TB HDD which happens to contain a lot of compressed files, using Defraggler, and while looking for the install file to install it on my older computer (since there's no newer version, I prefer to avoid downloading the same stuff twice, even for such a small file), I stumbled upon saved Web pages from this thread, which I created in June 2019, and the other one about NTFS-compressed files — I had completely forgotten about those SNAFUs.

So I sure won't be using Defraggler to perform that task. And for once I'm thankful that my main HDD is such a mess (if it had been perfectly sorted I would have found the damn Defraggler install file right away and wouldn't have re-read those threads — and would have ended up with a dreadful mess on that other HDD).

Edited by abolibibelot
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