I just realized that I miss defraging my hard drive!

[Daniel ~]

Particularly de-fraging with "Norton Utilities"!

Do windows users still need to defrag their hard drives? Do they still pay (As I did) Norton to defrag for them?

It just became clear to me that this is the only thing I miss about windows.

The one reason I have to envy windows users.

How hard would it be to create a Linux application the "pretends" to defrag my hard drive?

I would like it to defrag at three different speeds and have a variable setting showing various states of fragmentation.


The first state would show a drive with little need of defraging... at the start,... but when I say to myself "what the hell lets make this drive perfect and get those last half dozen or so bits where they belong"...it would take three days to re-order everything and would be incredibly indecisive and slow doing it... This would no doubt be my favorite setting.


Then we could have one setting that shows a hard drive from the time before order arrive in the universe. One with enormous potential for de-fragmentation. The kind of mess that makes you think you should just give up and do a complete reinstall of your Operating system.


But once I choose which files I wanted Alpha and which programs should be listed as omega on my third world slum of a hard drive and I hit the defrag BUTTON (the button should be very large and surrounded by disclaimers declaring this operation just barely safe to preform...)

It would jump to it and move huge seemingly unrelated chunks of data
snapping them into place in rows of colored bites and bits

(colors I've predetermined to represent various unimportant things)

that tell me that I have firm control of the new hard drive arrangement whizzing into place as I look on in inspired awe assured of getting the fastest drive I have ever known !

It should complete it's operations in no time at all! Leaving just a half dozen or so bits out of place. These lost bits should significantly mess up the color scheme and demand my immediate attention!

Finally there should be one setting that in the middle of the defrag starts issuing random warnings and bits of advice... Like :

"your hard drive may not be usable when this operation completes six hours from now...we will just have to wait and see."

Or

"It would probably be best to increase your ram before trying to restart this operation. Norton will now shut down this operation...Would you like to test your RAM or enlarge your swap file?"


This last one would be centered around reminding me of a time in my life when swap files meant a great deal to me... a time I fear I shall never know again....

I wish Linux could see it's way clear to providing me with a decent reminder of that time... A fragmentation program that would be a topic of endless debate as to swap-file size. it's proper placement and weather a second drive helps or hinders it's operations...

I guess it's only now...in my declining years that I can admit to myself that not everything windows did was bad...

[ThunderRd]

Originally Posted by Daniel ~

How hard would it be to create a Linux application the "pretends" to defrag my hard drive?

You are a very, very sad man.

Get a life

[Daniel ~]

I think I have a life...But I can't be sure until it's defraged ....":O}

[Aedan]

In which case you might want to find out which is your primary drive, and run the command below, replacing /dev/sda1 with whatever your primary partition is:

fsck.ext4 -fvn /dev/sda1

It should return a bunch of figures including:

• non-contiguous files
• non-contiguous directory

Those two give you an idea of how many files/directories are fragmented. If you want to do something about it, well, you're pretty limited. It's basically moving all the files off the partition and then copying them back on again.

[Aedan]

Originally Posted by Daniel ~

A fragmentation program that would be a topic of endless debate as to swap-file size. it's proper placement and weather a second drive helps or hinders it's operations...

As always, the swap partition or swap file should be the most used partition on the least used drive. Yes, multiple drives can improve performance when you have to swap. This hasn't changed between Unix/Windows/Linux/FreeBSD/Whatever...

[Daniel ~]

Originally Posted by Aedan

In which case you might want to find out which is your primary drive, and run the command below, replacing /dev/sda1 with whatever your primary partition is:

fsck.ext4 -fvn /dev/sda1

It should return a bunch of figures including:

• non-contiguous files
• non-contiguous directory

Those two give you an idea of how many files/directories are fragmented. If you want to do something about it, well, you're pretty limited. It's basically moving all the files off the partition and then copying them back on again.

Just so it doesn't actually change anything! LOL

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by Aedan

As always, the swap partition or swap file should be the most used partition on the least used drive. Yes, multiple drives can improve performance when you have to swap. This hasn't changed between Unix/Windows/Linux/FreeBSD/Whatever...

Yeah, but what HAS changed is the fact that, unless you dedicate a drive to swap, anything above 1 GB is pretty pointless, as the swap file access will drive your machine into the ground. With 8GB+ machines becoming more the norm, and 4GB pretty common, it's arguable whether you even NEED a swap file.

BTW, can anyone tell me if Windows still requires a swap file? I know it used to be the case that named pipes (among other things) were backed by the swap (paging) file, so Windows didn't like not having at least a small paging file, but that was back in the days of Win2K and XP. I don't know if that is still true or not.

[Daniel ~]

OH! OH! This is everything I hoped for! LOL

[ThunderRd]

Originally Posted by Gizmo

Yeah, but what HAS changed is the fact that, unless you dedicate a drive to swap, anything above 1 GB is pretty pointless, as the swap file access will drive your machine into the ground. With 8GB+ machines becoming more the norm, and 4GB pretty common, it's arguable whether you even NEED a swap file.

BTW, can anyone tell me if Windows still requires a swap file? I know it used to be the case that named pipes (among other things) were backed by the swap (paging) file, so Windows didn't like not having at least a small paging file, but that was back in the days of Win2K and XP. I don't know if that is still true or not.

I can't remember the last time my Gentoo box used the swap file. I have a 500MB swap, but it is never used.

On my Win7 box, I essentially have no swapfile. I do keep a 200MB file only because if you don't have it, you can't get certain boot/crash dump error messages. (I think I have seen a kludge somewhere to work around that problem, but I can't remember it, and I'm too lazy to do it.)

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by ThunderRd

I do keep a 200MB file only because if you don't have it, you can't get certain boot/crash dump error messages.

That's a symptom of the same problem, so it sounds like it's still there. Doesn't greatly surprise me; Windows' virtual memory architecture internally is pretty tightly wedded to the page file. I would imagine changing that would be very hard, and arguably not worth the effort.

[Daniel ~]

It's almost like Linux had never replaced Windows and we are all still living enslaved by Bill gates' vision of the past!

This is better than a good Zombie movie!

(Not better than a great Zombie move though...)

[ThunderRd]

Originally Posted by Gizmo

That's a symptom of the same problem, so it sounds like it's still there. Doesn't greatly surprise me; Windows' virtual memory architecture internally is pretty tightly wedded to the page file. I would imagine changing that would be very hard, and arguably not worth the effort.

Here's the registry hack:

How to use the DedicatedDumpFile registry value to overcome space limitations on the system drive when capturing a system memory dump - Ntdebugging Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs


FWIW, I see absolutely no performance gains running W7 with a pagefile. I've been running it without one [except for the 200MB], problem-free, for many months now.

[Aedan]

Originally Posted by Gizmo

With 8GB+ machines becoming more the norm, and 4GB pretty common, it's arguable whether you even NEED a swap file.

I agree totally on this - it's always been better to not use a swap file.

Sometimes I do wonder if the proliferation of memory limited devices with no swap file (AKA smart phones) might have helped some devs deal with low memory situations, or whether they still turn out the same bad code that falls over when there's no memory available.

[Daniel ~]

In Mint 15 my Swapfile, while not actually available, can be altered at the users desecration....Not quite what I was hoping for...but it's something...":O{

[MUff1N]

Funny stuff Dan, thanks for the laugh!

BTW I don't use pagefile either...

[Daniel ~]

Thanks Muff1n.

The sad part...As ThunderRd may have guessed, I didn't start out to be funny.... It just came out that way...":O}

[TrevorS]

Originally Posted by Daniel ~

Particularly de-fraging with "Norton Utilities"!

Do windows users still need to defrag their hard drives? Do they still pay (As I did) Norton to defrag for them?

It just became clear to me that this is the only thing I miss about windows.

The one reason I have to envy windows users.

<snip>

I wish Linux could see it's way clear to providing me with a decent reminder of that time... A fragmentation program that would be a topic of endless debate as to swap-file size. it's proper placement and weather a second drive helps or hinders it's operations...

I guess it's only now...in my declining years that I can admit to myself that not everything windows did was bad...

I don't pay for any of my utilities, haven't for years (though still keep a copy of Norton Utilities for when I install 98SE.) There are some really excellent freebies on the web and the defrager I use is "Auslogics Disk Defrag", though I'm sure my copy wouldn't work on Linux. Perhaps they have a Linux version?

Any particular reason Linux apparently doesn't concern itself with disc fragmentation?

For swap files, I install a 200MB in the system partition plus the recommended size with fixed dimensions in another partition (preferably on another drive), but it's not clear the larger file actually gets used -- even on my 1GB machines.

[Daniel ~]

Linux NEVER needs de-fraging! ":O}

As to why that is....some one who knows something will have to explain.

[TrevorS]

Originally Posted by Daniel ~

Linux NEVER needs de-fraging! ":O}

As to why that is....some one who knows something will have to explain.

Well, it would appear this is the explanation, but it depends on having the disc partition be no more than say 80% full.

HTG Explains: Why Linux Doesn’t Need Defragmenting

Haven't seen any data yet verifying this ability to remain defragmented, but would expect above 60% full or so, there's liable to be a lot of incremental file relocating in order to maintain contiguity.

On the subject of page files, I read in the Mint User Manual they recommend a page-file size of 1.5 times the amount of memory. So it appears not to have gone away.

Also read some major wishful think PR nonsense in that "Manual" which is unfortunate. It's more like a fluffy publicity tool than a genuine Operator Manual. Has the effect of lessening confidence, not growing it. I gather there's some other publication one should obtain (preferably download) in order to get a real Operator Manual?

[Daniel ~]

This is my swap file file usage....I've never seen it in use...ever!