brando@linus.UUCP (Thomas J. Brando) (05/20/88)
Two questions: (1) will compacting my hard disk do me any good, and
(2) how can I do it?
(1) The 20MB hard disk in my SE has been fairly full for a number of
months, lots of stuff has been trashed, and lots of other stuff
has been added. I'm noticing that applications seem to run
more slowly [Not that they were fast to begin with :-)], and I
naturally attributed that to disk fragmentation. My brother had
a similar experience with his AT, got a program that compacted
his disk space, and realized a very noticeable speedup. Am I
off course here, or what? People that I've asked about this
problem have said they weren't sure that compacting my disk
would do me any good.
(2) Given that it would be of benefit for me to compact my disk,
WHAT PROGRAMS CAN I GET TO DO THAT? Let's assume I don't want
to backup my hard disk to floppies and then restore. I know
that'll work, and I might not mind doing that ONCE, but I'd
like a solution that could develop into a more long-term
relationship. I've looked through quite a few MacWorlds, I
found an article on file management, and another on backup
software, but no mention of disk compaction, or whether any
of the programs that were mentioned did disk compaction. Can
anyone give me a pointer here?
I'll be more than happy to summarize whatever I learn for those of
you with similar problems. Thanks.
--
Thom Brando linus!brando@mitre-bedford.{arpa,bitnet,csnet}
617-271-3947 {decvax,ihnp4,philabs,...}!linus!brando.uucptedj@hpcilzb.HP.COM (Ted Johnson) (05/21/88)
It's not the act of compacting your disk that gives you the speed up. It's the act of *unfragmenting* your disk. When your Mac writes files to disk, it puts things in the first place it finds room. If there isn't enough room to store a file contiguously (sp?) on the disk, then it writes sections of it all over. The reason fragmented programs run slower is that the disk drive has to seek all over the place for pieces of the program. A disk defragmenter tries to make all your applications contiguous again. I use Disk Express on my SE HD20 once every week or so. The speedup is noticeable, but not outstanding. The Mac boots quicker, and programs start up quicker. BTW, Disk Express isn't share/freeware. I got it for $30.00 from MacConnection. -Ted
jwhitnell@cup.portal.com (05/23/88)
Thomas J. Brando writes... |Two questions: (1) will compacting my hard disk do me any good, The answer is maybe. One of the nice things about the Mac is that it is much smarter about allocating disk space on large volumes then is MS DOS. The algorithm the Mac uses leads to less fragementation and hence less performance loss. Only with very large files (such as System) will there ususally be fragmentation (unless disk space is very tight) |and (2) how can I do it? There are two commerical utilities (with something as important as my disk I would never use a shareware/public domain utility) that I know of, DiskExpress by AlSoft ($34 from ComputerWare) and PowerOP V1.3 by PowerUP (sp?) (no price listed but same range). PowerOp offers a slightly better user interface in that it tells you what files are fragmented and allows you to exclude some of them, whereas DiskExpress will do your whole disk only. PowerOp is also by far the faster of the two. However PowerOp had serious problems rearranging some of the larger files on my disk, so I can't really recommend it. DiskExpress had no such problems with the same disk. Both offer erase free space (either 1 pass for speed or 3 passes for complete security) and a low-level disk scan to check the disk. Neither offered significant performance improvments after running either on my disk. Your milage may differ. DiskExpress also compresses all the files towards sector 0 sorted with either applications followed by documents or vice versus, whereas PowerOp just moves fragmented files The feature neither has and what I think will speed things up for any hard disk user to the ability to move the commonly used things to the beginning of the disk (i.e. directory followed by common files followed by free space followed by rarly used files). Anyone want to write one? |Thom Brando linus!brando@mitre-bedford.{arpa,bitnet,csnet} Jerry Whitnell jwhitnell@cup.portal.com ..!sun!cup.portal.com!jwhitnell
anson@spray.CalComp.COM (Ed Anson) (05/23/88)
In article <32435@linus.UUCP> brando@linus.UUCP (Thomas J. Brando) writes: >Two questions: (1) will compacting my hard disk do me any good, and >(2) how can I do it? > >(1) The 20MB hard disk in my SE has been fairly full for a number of > months, lots of stuff has been trashed, and lots of other stuff > has been added. I'm noticing that applications seem to run > more slowly [Not that they were fast to begin with :-)], and I > naturally attributed that to disk fragmentation. My brother had > a similar experience with his AT, got a program that compacted > his disk space, and realized a very noticeable speedup. Am I > off course here, or what? People that I've asked about this > problem have said they weren't sure that compacting my disk > would do me any good. Yes, it is about time you compact your disk. I use DiskExpress from ALSoft. It verifies the health of your disk, and then de-fragments all your files. It also has the option to move all system and application files to the front, in an attempt to reduce future fragmentation. That seems to work pretty well. BTW: The whole process requires about 2 hours on a 20MB disk. A full backup is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED before beginning, since any interruption of the process will leave your disk unreadable. DiskExpress is available through MacConnection for $26. Call today, you'll have it tomorrow. Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in either ALSoft or MacConnection. I only wish I did :-) Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own. But they seem to be shared by most people. -- ===================================================================== Ed Anson, Calcomp Display Products Division, Hudson NH 03051 (603) 885-8712, anson@elrond.CalComp.COM
jwhitnell@cup.portal.com (05/24/88)
One minor correction to my previous article. PowerOP (name changed from PowerUP) is published by the Software Power Company, not PowerUp as I said.
syap@ur-tut (James Fitzwilliam) (05/25/88)
In article <2303@spray.CalComp.COM> anson@spray.UUCP (Ed Anson) writes:
[...lots of good comments on Alsoft's optimizer program Disk Express...]
*BTW: The whole process requires about 2 hours on a 20MB disk. A full
*backup is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED before beginning, since any interruption of
*the process will leave your disk unreadable.
[...]
*Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own. But they seem to be
*shared by most people.
Ditto completely on all counts; just wanted to confirm in case you needed
a second opinion. I know that my applications load faster. Improvement
in startup time is hard for me to say, since I also just got Font/DA
Juggler (love it!), which is a 100K+ INIT.
James
domain: syap@tut.cc.rochester.edu
path: rochester!ur-tut!syap "Piano is my forte" (-:
GEnie: FITZWILLIAM
========================================================================dudek@csri.toronto.edu (Gregory Dudek) (05/26/88)
The effect is doing compaction using disk express is definitely measurable.
On my 20 MB NON-SCSI HD-20 on a Mac+, the time to start the Finder the
first time (before it might get into cache) went down by a measurable amount,
although not too drammatically (I forget the exact number).
The time to check the HD-20 when rebooting the Mac after a "surprise"
power-off went down by about 66% (from 1.5 min to 30 sec), if I
recall correctly.
Gregory Dudek
--
Dept. of Computer Science (vision group) University of Toronto
Reasonable mailers: dudek@ai.toronto.edu
Other UUCP: {uunet,ihnp4,decvax,linus,pyramid,
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ARPA: user%ai.toronto.edu@relay.cs.netecs165s052@deneb.ucdavis.edu (Greg DeMichillie) (05/28/88)
In article <2303@spray.CalComp.COM> anson@spray.UUCP (Ed Anson) writes: >In article <32435@linus.UUCP> brando@linus.UUCP (Thomas J. Brando) writes: >> [... question about DiskExpress ...] >Yes, it is about time you compact your disk. > >BTW: The whole process requires about 2 hours on a 20MB disk. A full >backup is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED before beginning, since any interruption of >the process will leave your disk unreadable. > I agree with the good comments about DiskExpress, but 2 hours to complete? I run DiskExpress on a 40MB drive and it takes no longer than 40 minutes. The trick may be that I use this program every week. The longer you wait, the more fragmented the disk becomes and the more work the poor program has to go through. ----- Greg DeMichillie lgdemichillie@deneb.ucdavis.edu ecs165s052@deneb.ucdavis.edu {ucbvax, lll-crg, sdcsvax}!ucdavis!lgdemichillie AppleLink: ST0178