Windows 2000 Defrag strategy to extend disk life

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AndyHancock

I looked into defragging utilities in order to minimize the wear on my
hard drive. This differs from most people's main motivation, which
is to improve the speed of data acquisition from the hard drive. For
me, that is a beneficial side effectg.

So far, I've found that freeware doesn't cut it. The short story is
that they don't use the proper security privilege so as to be able to
access and derag all files, regardless of the account to which they
below. I ended up trialing Diskeeper, which seems quite awesome in
that it defrags all the files that the freeware could not. It also
defrags in the background, making use of otherwise lull times in CPU
usage. In addition, the premier pro version supposedly has some
intelligence which figures out which files you access most, and
optimizes the access to them.

Unfortunately, the background defragger seems to go against my reason
for defragging, which is to minimize disk wear rather than speeding up
file access. The background defragging seems to keep the hard drive
perpetually spinning, even in the absence of activity that would cause
defragmentation. So basically, I'm going to forgo that feature and
possibly continue comparing commercial defraggers.

Are there any considerations that I may be overlooking in this
decision?

In the absence of background defragging, would once a week be frequent
enough for defragging? I don't use the machine for video, audio, or
any kind of media. Just plain old surfing and email.
 
"AndyHancock" <AndyMHancock@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:c67f6d57-0b65-4eb6-9e08-08d065846ebf@t54g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> I looked into defragging utilities in order to minimize the wear on my
> hard drive. This differs from most people's main motivation, which
> is to improve the speed of data acquisition from the hard drive. For
> me, that is a beneficial side effectg.
>
>


<snip>

defragging or not defragging
one way or the other is *not* going to affect disk wear in any significant
way.

defragging is useful only in terms of performance.
 
On May 5, 9:04 pm, "philo" <ph...@privacy.net> wrote:
> "AndyHancock" <AndyMHanc...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:c67f6d57-0b65-4eb6-9e08-08d065846ebf@t54g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
>
> > I looked into defragging utilities in order to minimize the wear on my
> > hard drive. This differs from most people's main motivation, which
> > is to improve the speed of data acquisition from the hard drive. For
> > me, that is a beneficial side effectg.
>
> <snip>
>
> defragging or not defragging
> one way or the other is *not* going to affect disk wear in any significant
> way.
>
> defragging is useful only in terms of performance.

Hello, Philo,

Could you please elaborate on why unfragmented files would not extend
disk life? It seems that noticably more disk churning is needed for
the same amount of data access on a fragmented file. Is there not
more head movement as well?

As well, for non-background defragging, is once a week typically
sufficient?
 
<snip>
> >
> > defragging or not defragging
> > one way or the other is *not* going to affect disk wear in any
significant
> > way.
> >
> > defragging is useful only in terms of performance.
>
> Hello, Philo,
>
> Could you please elaborate on why unfragmented files would not extend
> disk life? It seems that noticably more disk churning is needed for
> the same amount of data access on a fragmented file. Is there not
> more head movement as well?
>
> As well, for non-background defragging, is once a week typically
> sufficient?


With your machine tunred on...unless the drive is in the sleep mode,
it's always rotating...the armature's movement is not what is going to wear
out a drive.

I don't know if this analogy is any good
but it's like saying that your automobile will fail sooner
if you bring a passenger along with you.

As to non-background defragging..
unless you are really using your machine heavily...I doubt if you need to
defrag
more than once a month. I might defrag my machine 5 or 6 times a year.
 
philo wrote:

> With your machine tunred on...unless the drive is in the sleep mode,
> it's always rotating...the armature's movement is not what is going to wear
> out a drive.

Philo, is there actually evidence for that statement? I don't know first
hand but if I had to guess i would say the constant rotation of the
platter with no starts/stops/speed-changes would involve the least
forces and therefore be the least contributor to wear.

The armature on the other hand *is* accelerating/decelerating/changing
direction with each disk access, so there are constantly changing forces
acting. This is exactly where I would expect the major wear to be. (That
and the platter surface - although I understand that the head rides on
an air gap there so that although any wear would still be a function of
armature movement, it's likely to be minimal).
 
Sid Elbow wrote:
> philo wrote:
>
>> With your machine tunred on...unless the drive is in the sleep mode,
>> it's always rotating...the armature's movement is not what is going to
>> wear
>> out a drive.
>
>
> Philo, is there actually evidence for that statement? I don't know first
> hand but if I had to guess i would say the constant rotation of the
> platter with no starts/stops/speed-changes would involve the least
> forces and therefore be the least contributor to wear.
>
> The armature on the other hand *is* accelerating/decelerating/changing
> direction with each disk access, so there are constantly changing forces
> acting. This is exactly where I would expect the major wear to be. (That
> and the platter surface - although I understand that the head rides on
> an air gap there so that although any wear would still be a function of
> armature movement, it's likely to be minimal).

FWIW, the repeated defrag activity is more likely to INCREASE the amount
of action the RW head goes through. The additional movement of the heads
to pick up the fragments on a read are nothing compared to activity
caused by a defrag. So one should argue that anal defragging DECREASES
the life expectancy of the drive, NOT increase it.
 
Bob I wrote:

> FWIW, the repeated defrag activity is more likely to INCREASE the amount
> of action the RW head goes through. The additional movement of the heads
> to pick up the fragments on a read are nothing compared to activity
> caused by a defrag. So one should argue that anal defragging DECREASES
> the life expectancy of the drive, NOT increase it.

I wouldn't want to be categorical about it in either direction. Whether,
say, a half-hour of intense activity once a week offsets or exceeds the
additional activity due to fragmentation would depend on individual
circumstances I would think. At least, it isn't obvious to me one way or
the other.
 
Sid Elbow wrote:
> Bob I wrote:
>
>> FWIW, the repeated defrag activity is more likely to INCREASE the
>> amount of action the RW head goes through. The additional movement of
>> the heads to pick up the fragments on a read are nothing compared to
>> activity caused by a defrag. So one should argue that anal defragging
>> DECREASES the life expectancy of the drive, NOT increase it.
>
>
> I wouldn't want to be categorical about it in either direction. Whether,
> say, a half-hour of intense activity once a week offsets or exceeds the
> additional activity due to fragmentation would depend on individual
> circumstances I would think. At least, it isn't obvious to me one way or
> the other.
>

Actually, the OP appeared to believe that frequent defragging would
somehow extend the drives life expectancy. In the real world, any
difference would not amount to any statistical measurable amount.(in
either direction)
 
"Sid Elbow" <here@there.com> wrote in message
news:48206adc$0$28602$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com...
> philo wrote:
>
> > With your machine tunred on...unless the drive is in the sleep mode,
> > it's always rotating...the armature's movement is not what is going to
wear
> > out a drive.
>
> Philo, is there actually evidence for that statement? I don't know first
> hand but if I had to guess i would say the constant rotation of the
> platter with no starts/stops/speed-changes would involve the least
> forces and therefore be the least contributor to wear.
>
> The armature on the other hand *is* accelerating/decelerating/changing
> direction with each disk access, so there are constantly changing forces
> acting. This is exactly where I would expect the major wear to be. (That
> and the platter surface - although I understand that the head rides on
> an air gap there so that although any wear would still be a function of
> armature movement, it's likely to be minimal).



I do not have any scientific tests to back me up of course...
but can come up with another analogy perhaps.

If you drive your car from NY to LA and always stayed in the same lane...

vs. taking the same trip but changing lanes often...would you *really* have
driven your car
any significant distance farther or put significanly more wear and tear on
the car's suspension?


I think that if one wrote some software to purposely stress a HD and the
armature
were *continually* oscillated as fast as possible through the greatest range
of movement...
that something like that could cause damage...

but you also need to consider that the very act of defragging a drive will
cause a lot of movement.

I think that such factors as excess heat would play a much larger role in
premature drive failure.


Anyway all this is simply my 2 cents worth
so with inflation and all...may only be a penny's worth!
 
Here's what I do (I weighed out all the same concerns plus a few more)

On most machines I set up an automatic defrag once a week during off hours.
This minimizes impact felt by users and tends to keep the disks in an
efficient layout.

I do find that automated tapes backups are faster when the disk is defragged
as is general machine performance but I'm sensitive to these things.

In any event, I weigh out defrag implementations on a per-machine basis. So
if I had one that had a lot of file creation and erasing going on I would
probably defrag it more.

If you defrag once per week then you're probably cutting down on the amount
of times the head on a drive travels. If you do it on a continual background
basis then you'll have speedy disks but you've dramatically increased the
amount of work that they are doing (as you found out).

Given that all my machines are on RAID 5 arrays and each one has a dedicated
spare (that means I can experience two drive failures before I'm up the
creek) I'm not too worried about how hard the drives work.

My servers are all 'old' in comparison to modern machines and many of my
drives have been in use for 5 years. I buy them (literally) off e-bay for
very little and keep spares. For $50 I can get (5) 15K Seagate's with trays
so.....

But of course it all depends on budget/application etc. At any rate, for
most of my machines a defrag once a week keeps the fragments from getting
out of hand and minimizes the impact to the end users :-)

Best!
Dave


"AndyHancock" <AndyMHancock@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:c67f6d57-0b65-4eb6-9e08-08d065846ebf@t54g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> I looked into defragging utilities in order to minimize the wear on my
> hard drive. This differs from most people's main motivation, which
> is to improve the speed of data acquisition from the hard drive. For
> me, that is a beneficial side effectg.
>
> So far, I've found that freeware doesn't cut it. The short story is
> that they don't use the proper security privilege so as to be able to
> access and derag all files, regardless of the account to which they
> below. I ended up trialing Diskeeper, which seems quite awesome in
> that it defrags all the files that the freeware could not. It also
> defrags in the background, making use of otherwise lull times in CPU
> usage. In addition, the premier pro version supposedly has some
> intelligence which figures out which files you access most, and
> optimizes the access to them.
>
> Unfortunately, the background defragger seems to go against my reason
> for defragging, which is to minimize disk wear rather than speeding up
> file access. The background defragging seems to keep the hard drive
> perpetually spinning, even in the absence of activity that would cause
> defragmentation. So basically, I'm going to forgo that feature and
> possibly continue comparing commercial defraggers.
>
> Are there any considerations that I may be overlooking in this
> decision?
>
> In the absence of background defragging, would once a week be frequent
> enough for defragging? I don't use the machine for video, audio, or
> any kind of media. Just plain old surfing and email.
 
On Tue, 6 May 2008 03:19:09 -0500, "philo" <philo@privacy.net> wrote:

>
><snip>
>> >
>> > defragging or not defragging
>> > one way or the other is *not* going to affect disk wear in any
>significant
>> > way.
>> >
>> > defragging is useful only in terms of performance.
>>
>> Hello, Philo,
>>
>> Could you please elaborate on why unfragmented files would not extend
>> disk life? It seems that noticably more disk churning is needed for
>> the same amount of data access on a fragmented file. Is there not
>> more head movement as well?
>>
>> As well, for non-background defragging, is once a week typically
>> sufficient?
>
>
>With your machine tunred on...unless the drive is in the sleep mode,
>it's always rotating...the armature's movement is not what is going to wear
>out a drive.
>
>I don't know if this analogy is any good
>but it's like saying that your automobile will fail sooner
>if you bring a passenger along with you.
>
>As to non-background defragging..
>unless you are really using your machine heavily...I doubt if you need to
>defrag
>more than once a month. I might defrag my machine 5 or 6 times a year.
>
The old Norton Speed Disk had options for files to be 'stored at end
of disk', by preference, and would group files in order of activity or
date of access. The 'most frequently accessed' files were located
adjacent to remaining empty space. It would also place the swap files
for early windows systems in the first sectors.

I think the idea was that seldom accessed files could be located so as
to reduce hardware travel and access time.

Whether this increased disk life or reduced noise, power consumption
or mechanical wear is not obvious.

I think the best strategy for maintaining disk life involves locating
the hardware permanently (no toy trays) where it's not going to get
kicked or dropped or overheat, using good quality connectors, and
replacing your power supply at least every two years.

RL
 
On May 6, 4:19 am, "philo" <ph...@privacy.net> wrote:
> <snip>
>
>
>
>
>
> > > defragging or not defragging
> > > one way or the other is *not* going to affect disk wear in any
> significant
> > > way.
>
> > > defragging is useful only in terms of performance.
>
> > Hello, Philo,
>
> > Could you please elaborate on why unfragmented files would not extend
> > disk life? It seems that noticably more disk churning is needed for
> > the same amount of data access on a fragmented file. Is there not
> > more head movement as well?
>
> > As well, for non-background defragging, is once a week typically
> > sufficient?
>
> With your machine tunred on...unless the drive is in the sleep mode,
> it's always rotating...the armature's movement is not what is going to wear
> out a drive.

Now that's interesting. That's what that slight continuous whispering
sound is.

But there's more than just the continuous whisper occuring. Whenever
there is disk access, the LED blinks spasmodically and there is
chattering. Probably the head moving. Wouldn't that weigh into the
disk life?

> I don't know if this analogy is any good
> but it's like saying that your automobile will fail sooner
> if you bring a passenger along with you.
>
> As to non-background defragging..
> unless you are really using your machine heavily...I doubt if you need to
> defrag
> more than once a month. I might defrag my machine 5 or 6 times a year.

Cool. I think I'd be too lazy to defrag once a week anyway. Thanks!
 
On May 6, 12:58 pm, Bob I <bire...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sid Elbow wrote:
> > Bob I wrote:
>
> >> FWIW, the repeated defrag activity is more likely to INCREASE the
> >> amount of action the RW head goes through. The additional movement of
> >> the heads to pick up the fragments on a read are nothing compared to
> >> activity caused by a defrag. So one should argue that anal defragging
> >> DECREASES the life expectancy of the drive, NOT increase it.

It seems that way, if we take the chattering of the disk drive to be
some kind of rough proxy indicator of wear on the drive. (That's an
open "if", responses to clarify its inaccuracy or veracity from those
more technically knowledgable are welcome).

> > I wouldn't want to be categorical about it in either direction. Whether,
> > say, a half-hour of intense activity once a week offsets or exceeds the
> > additional activity due to fragmentation would depend on individual
> > circumstances I would think. At least, it isn't obvious to me one way or
> > the other.
>
> Actually, the OP appeared to believe that frequent defragging would
> somehow extend the drives life expectancy. In the real world, any
> difference would not amount to any statistical measurable amount.(in
> either direction)

I was wondering about that possibility for normal defrags, not
constant background defrag that keeps the disk chattering all the
time. The only way to have any confidence beyond speculation is to
conduct trials with a farm of disk drives as the test population (and
with a control group too).

Just based on speculation, defrags streamlines the reads for a little
while, for the cost of the wear due to defragging. Whether the
temporarily streamlined operation more than compensates for the wear
from defrag....who knows. Again, it also depends on whether the
chattering actually takes more out of the disk life than the
continuous spinning (which never stops even in the absence of chatter,
judging from responses in this thread).

As I said in another post, *if* the chattering is taken as the sole
indicator of wear that is occuring (big if), then the constant
background defrag creates much more of it than either non-background
defrag (weekly or biweekly defrags) or just living with unstreamlined
disk reads due to fragmentation.
 
On May 6, 3:42 pm, "philo" <ph...@privacy.net> wrote:
> "Sid Elbow" <h...@there.com> wrote in message
>
> news:48206adc$0$28602$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com...
>
>
>
> > philo wrote:
>
> > > With your machine tunred on...unless the drive is in the sleep mode,
> > > it's always rotating...the armature's movement is not what is going to
> wear
> > > out a drive.
>
> > Philo, is there actually evidence for that statement? I don't know first
> > hand but if I had to guess i would say the constant rotation of the
> > platter with no starts/stops/speed-changes would involve the least
> > forces and therefore be the least contributor to wear.
>
> > The armature on the other hand *is* accelerating/decelerating/changing
> > direction with each disk access, so there are constantly changing forces
> > acting. This is exactly where I would expect the major wear to be. (That
> > and the platter surface - although I understand that the head rides on
> > an air gap there so that although any wear would still be a function of
> > armature movement, it's likely to be minimal).
>
> I do not have any scientific tests to back me up of course...
> but can come up with another analogy perhaps.
>
> If you drive your car from NY to LA and always stayed in the same lane...
>
> vs. taking the same trip but changing lanes often...would you *really* have
> driven your car
> any significant distance farther or put significanly more wear and tear on
> the car's suspension?
>
> I think that if one wrote some software to purposely stress a HD and the
> armature
> were *continually* oscillated as fast as possible through the greatest range
> of movement...
> that something like that could cause damage...
>
> but you also need to consider that the very act of defragging a drive will
> cause a lot of movement.
>
> I think that such factors as excess heat would play a much larger role in
> premature drive failure.
>
> Anyway all this is simply my 2 cents worth
> so with inflation and all...may only be a penny's worth!

LOL! I agree that it's hard to move beyond tallying of considerations
and possible contributing factors without a controlled study. It was
interesting to hear the considerations nevertheless. Thanks!
 
<snip>
> > > As well, for non-background defragging, is once a week typically
> > > sufficient?
> >
> > With your machine tunred on...unless the drive is in the sleep mode,
> > it's always rotating...the armature's movement is not what is going to
wear
> > out a drive.
>
> Now that's interesting. That's what that slight continuous whispering
> sound is.
>
> But there's more than just the continuous whisper occuring. Whenever
> there is disk access, the LED blinks spasmodically and there is
> chattering. Probably the head moving. Wouldn't that weigh into the
> disk life?
>
> > I don't know if this analogy is any good
> > but it's like saying that your automobile will fail sooner
> > if you bring a passenger along with you.
> >
> > As to non-background defragging..
> > unless you are really using your machine heavily...I doubt if you need
to
> > defrag
> > more than once a month. I might defrag my machine 5 or 6 times a year.
>
> Cool. I think I'd be too lazy to defrag once a week anyway. Thanks!


Sure!

That reminds me...
I have not checked my GF's machine
I bet it has not been defragged in 4 months or more...
I better have a look, though it's running just fine.
 
This is a home machine, an 8-year old laptop (approximately). No
RAID. When it dies, it's time for a new machine. It is so old that
it only has USB1, and no native wireless. It takes a card, which
tends to make the fan run almost continuously, thus upping the
probability of another failure mode. Anything that uses up a few
percent of CPU continuously causes the fan to run. It's ironic that
recently boosting the RAM alleviates wear on the disk (since more of
the memory space is in RAM), but it also allows the CPU to run at a
higher percentage and increases wear on the fan.

Anyway, I'm trying to stave off it's demise for as long as possible.
One of its hinges has been replaced, and the hard drive was replaced
around 3-4 years ago. These days, I put it on standby whenever it's
not being used. Hence, scheduled defrags won't work, but it's no big
deal to launch a manual defrag before bed time. Once a week sounds
managable (with some weeks skipped for whatever reason).

About getting drives off e-bay, I'm reticent to using e-bay, as well
as to using second-hand drives. No redundancy in my "system", so I
don't have a chance to replace a drive before losing data.

Thanks for your anecdotes!

On May 7, 2:49 am, "Dave Onex" <d...@onex.com> wrote:
> Here's what I do (I weighed out all the same concerns plus a few
> more)
>
> On most machines I set up an automatic defrag once a week during off
> hours. This minimizes impact felt by users and tends to keep the
> disks in an efficient layout.
>
> I do find that automated tapes backups are faster when the disk is
> defragged as is general machine performance but I'm sensitive to
> these things.
>
> In any event, I weigh out defrag implementations on a per-machine
> basis. So if I had one that had a lot of file creation and erasing
> going on I would probably defrag it more.
>
> If you defrag once per week then you're probably cutting down on the
> amount of times the head on a drive travels. If you do it on a
> continual background basis then you'll have speedy disks but you've
> dramatically increased the amount of work that they are doing (as
> you found out).
>
> Given that all my machines are on RAID 5 arrays and each one has a
> dedicated spare (that means I can experience two drive failures
> before I'm up the creek) I'm not too worried about how hard the
> drives work.
>
> My servers are all 'old' in comparison to modern machines and many
> of my drives have been in use for 5 years. I buy them (literally)
> off e-bay for very little and keep spares. For $50 I can get (5) 15K
> Seagate's with trays so.....
>
> But of course it all depends on budget/application etc. At any rate,
> for most of my machines a defrag once a week keeps the fragments
> from getting out of hand and minimizes the impact to the end users
> :-)
>
> Best! Dave
>
> "AndyHancock" <AndyMHanc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I looked into defragging utilities in order to minimize the wear on
>> my hard drive. This differs from most people's main motivation,
>> which is to improve the speed of data acquisition from the hard
>> drive. For me, that is a beneficial side effectg.
>>
>> So far, I've found that freeware doesn't cut it. The short story
>> is that they don't use the proper security privilege so as to be
>> able to access and derag all files, regardless of the account to
>> which they below. I ended up trialing Diskeeper, which seems quite
>> awesome in that it defrags all the files that the freeware could
>> not. It also defrags in the background, making use of otherwise
>> lull times in CPU usage. In addition, the premier pro version
>> supposedly has some intelligence which figures out which files you
>> access most, and optimizes the access to them.
>>
>> Unfortunately, the background defragger seems to go against my
>> reason for defragging, which is to minimize disk wear rather than
>> speeding up file access. The background defragging seems to keep
>> the hard drive perpetually spinning, even in the absence of
>> activity that would cause defragmentation. So basically, I'm going
>> to forgo that feature and possibly continue comparing commercial
>> defraggers.
>>
>> Are there any considerations that I may be overlooking in this
>> decision?
>>
>> In the absence of background defragging, would once a week be
>> frequent enough for defragging? I don't use the machine for video,
>> audio, or any kind of media. Just plain old surfing and email.
 
AndyHancock said:
Unfortunately, the background defragger seems to go against my reason
for defragging, which is to minimize disk wear rather than speeding up
file access. The background defragging seems to keep the hard drive
perpetually spinning, even in the absence of activity that would cause
defragmentation. So basically, I'm going to forgo that feature and
possibly continue comparing commercial defraggers.
Click to expand...

I use a third party (paid) fully automatic real-time defragmenter on my laptop, and it's really nice. Unlike the Vista defragmenter, it does not go on a defragging spree every time it gets a chance. Instead, from what I see, after it has defragged the drive the first time after installation, it needs to work only for a few mins a day ..maybe 2 or 3 mins, cleaning up that day's fragments. I find it very convenient and effective compared to scheduling defrags the old fashioned way. It's resource consumption is also very low, so CPU usage is miniscule. I don't even need to leave the laptop on for the express purpose of defragging since the auto defragger does everything transparently in real-time in the background.

My laptop runs just as fast as the day I bought it (and removed all the bloatware:D ) although the 160GB drive is more than 60% full.

BTW, no such thing as 'too much defragging'...if there is no fragmentation, the defragger will not have anything to do, so no "unnecessary wear & tear" on the drive. Although, I don't see how defrag itself is any extra wear and tear on the drive..it's just like any other random access drive operation.:)
 
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