Degrag free space with fragmentation Schedule.

[ICPilot]

Hello. Question on the process of "free space de fragmentation with fragmentation". I have set a schedule to do this daily overnight, until it has moved all of the sectors to the front of the drive. I understand this is probably not necessary. This is a 6TB Black Western Digital Drive.

1.) I have set the schedule from midnight to 6 a.m. If I am not doing much work that day can I continue a manual version of this process? Will it pick up from where it left off overnight?

2.) Or should I leave it to the schedule and let it complete the entire process over several weeks?

[nukecad]

As you say it's not realy necessary, but I understand why you may want to do it.

It's going to take a long time on a 6TB drive.

If you stop a defragment (actually a consolidation/compaction if it's the free space) then what has already been done will remain done until you use the computer again.
So when you start defragging again it will not need to do that part of the disc again, (Well maybe a bit because defraggler will have taken a new look at what is now there).
 

TBH getting everything at the start of the disk is a bit of a holy grail, it's hardly ever going to happen although you can get close.
In 30+ years of computing I think I've seen it once where everything was at the start of the drive, until the computer started being used again.

[ICPilot]

Thank you for the response.

I have noticed when I also start this process the de fragged hard drive, becomes more fragmented. Probably just let the drive defrag and not work with free space de fragmentation. I wonder why this is a feature set. What is it useful for?

Would just free space fragmentation work better then trying to condense everything to the front of the disk. I work with large files and I always hear the drive churning. My though process was to move it to the front of the drive to help with accessing the data.

Thanks

[nukecad]

3 hours ago, ICPilot said:

I have noticed when I also start this process the de fragged hard drive, becomes more fragmented. Probably just let the drive defrag and not work with free space de fragmentation. I wonder why this is a feature set. What is it useful for?

That's correct - because you have specified "Defrag Freespace (allow fragmentation)" .

That is known as a consolidation  (or compaction) defrag where the purpose is to cram all of your files into the smallest number of clusters possible, to free up as many full clusters as possible.
To do that and totally fill up the least number of clusters some files have to be split across clusters, ie. deliberately fragmented to squeeze them in.
And that is what you are doing by using Defrag Freespace (allow fragmentation).
(You could also use Defrag Freespace without the "allow fragmentation" which would do the best it can to fill the clusters without fragmenting files).

It is what most people generally tend to think of as defragging, because it is what was wanted in the 'old days' when we all had much smaller drives.

But nowadays as we all tend to have much bigger drives then consolidation/compaction is not realy needed so much. There are lots of free clusters anyway.
Although there  are times when you still might want to do it.
And of course with a large drive a full drive consolidation will take a long time because the defragmenter has to look at every cluster on the drive.

So with todays lage drives many of us tend to use a 'File Defragment' to simply get each of our files into one piece each so that they load a tiny bit faster, without bothering just where they are on the disc.
It's also a lot quicker with large drives to do a file defrag than a whole disc consolidation.

By default Defraggler does a mixture of both types of defrag - but you can specify one type or the other.

A consolidation defrag is what you are currently doing by using Defrag Freespace, especially with the "(allow fragmentation)" option.

To do a file defrag instead of a consolidation defrag:

1. Open defraggler and analyse the drive.
2. Click on 'View Files' or click on the 'Files' tab.
3. Select the tickbox at the top of the list to select everything found.
4. Click on 'Defrag Checked'.

That will just defragment the files without trying to consolidate the whole drive.
So it will be much quicker and use less resources.

Like any tool that can be used in multiple ways what you get out of Defraggler depends on knowing how to use it in the best way to suit you.

I think in your place I'd probably continue with the Defrag Freespace, just so it's been done. (although I'd probably do it without the "allow fragmentation" option).
Then once that consolidation/compaction is done I'd do a file defrag to get the fragmented files back into one piece each, and then only do file defrags from then on.

 

[Andavari]

10 hours ago, nukecad said:

But nowadays as we all tend to have much bigger drives then consolidation/compaction is not realy needed so much.

 

The way some future hard drives will store data is called "zoned", so current defrag software I'm thinking will either be obsolete on such drives or have to be rewritten to accommodate such drives and things like consolidation would possibly work against how they're designed.

WD already has something called Zoned Storage but its different than what's mentioned above because it uses SSD and HDD together, however the picture in the middle of the page located here explains it better than words.

[ICPilot]

14 hours ago, nukecad said:

To do a file defrag instead of a consolidation defrag:

1. Open defraggler and analyse the drive.
2. Click on 'View Files' or click on the 'Files' tab.
3. Select the tickbox at the top of the list to select everything found.
4. Click on 'Defrag Checked'.

 

 

I have switched to defragging the 600GB of files for now and stopped the "Defrag Freespace (allow fragmentation)" . Appreciate the input. Now the only decision I have to make is switch to Defraggler or Windows defrag.

When I see all blue my assumption is for the time being the files are more together than split and fragmented?

I will read continue to read through all of the FAQs and search on the forums.

 

Thank you.

Edited January 14, 2022 by ICPilot
added a question

[nukecad]

2 hours ago, ICPilot said:

When I see all blue my assumption is for the time being the files are more together than split and fragmented?.

That's the default setting, (although you can change it and even customise the colours).
The standard reds and blues show both file status, Not-Fragmented/Fragmented, and indicates (roughly) how full each cluster is,

The 'Drive Map' tab shows you what the different coloured boxes mean.
This is the 'Original View' setting which has more saturated colours than the 'Modern View':