Fragmentation what is it? Why is BY DEAN BIELANOWSKI

Transcription

1 UFF BY DEAN BIELANOWSKI Fragmentation what is it? Why is defragmentation important, and as flight simmers, why should we even care? Well, since a great deal of us are obsessed with flight sim performance and making things run as smoothly and as quickly as possible, this factor alone demands we care about how our hard drives are performing, because these drives are the very book that our PC hardware reads to produce the story we experience every second in our virtual aviation world. If I haven t confused you already, please allow me to try again in the next few pages, but rest assured that 80 by the time you finish reading this article, you should have learnt a heck of a lot about your hard drive, and the reasons why it s vital to keep it in good order. Plus, you ll have a bag of tips and tricks to use to not only keep your hard drive in optimum running order, but also to use to make your flight simulator load quicker than it ever has before! Note that most all the information here relates to the use of traditional hard drives, i.e. those with a spinning platter. Solid State Drives are not referenced here and this information generally does not relate to them as they use a different memory technology to store files.

2 What is fragmentation? Fragmentation of your computer s hard drive is a natural phenomenon that occurs when deleted files leave empty spaces amongst your drive s data. When the operating system needs to write another file back to the hard drive it generally looks for the first available free space and writes the data to that free space. If the data to be written does not fit in that space it will fill the space with data and then move onto the next free space and continue to write the data until the file is completely written the result is parts of a file scattered in a fragmented (non-contiguous) manner. The reason why this is bad in terms of hard drive read performance is that when you next open a program that uses those files that are now scattered in various parts of the hard disk, instead of having to move the read head of your hard drive (like the head on a record player) to just one spot to read the entire block of data for that file, it might have to move to 5 or 6, or even 10 or 20 different locations on the hard drive to read all the parts that make up that file. If one read (seek) cycle takes 13ms (milliseconds), as an example, ten seek cycles will take 130ms, and 20 seek cycles will take up 260ms. So a fragmented file might take 260ms to read while a non-fragmented (contiguous) file may take just 13ms. Add up hundreds or thousands of files to be read to open a program or when flying into a new scenery area in your sim, and that fragmentation amounts to a much LONGER load time on a fragmented drive which can also result in temporarily lower sim frame rates, and potentially the occurrence of micro-stutters which will ruin anyone s sim experience, not to mention cause a lot of unnecessary frustration and angst! traditional hard drives have a spin speed specification, which will usually be either 5400RPM, 7200RPM, or 10,000RPM. These drives spin their platters at one of those three speeds in rotations per minute. Higher RPM translates into faster reading of data, so a 10,000RPM drive will read a block of data (assuming it is non-fragmented / contiguous) faster than a 7200RPM or 5400RPM drive will read that same block of data. Since you have a spinning disk holding your data, naturally, the speed on the outer segments of the disk will be higher than those on the inner segments (the outer edges have to cover more ground than the inner parts in the same time period. So, relating this fact, if you want the fastest possible read times from your disk, you should place critical data on the outer edges of your hard disk where the spin speed is greatest. That s a very basic summary of hard drive function. There are certainly other factors in play, but in terms of maximizing disk performance, these are the most important. So, to date, we have learnt that it is of crucial importance to keep your files defragmented and contiguous (not scattered and split across your hard disk) to maintain current disk performance, and to increase performance and lower read times, we should place our most often used files, or software we want to load in the fastest possible manner, on the outer tracks/segments of the disk. Great you say, but how do I do this? Let s get into it! Hard Drive Basics There are just a few important aspects and features of the traditional hard drive you need to understand for all this information to become relevant. I ll sum those up right now. Firstly, your standard hard disk drive has a spinning disk (platter) onto which all your data is written, stored and read. You might have noticed that most The Software You Need A Defragger! When you hear someone saying they need to defrag their drive, they are referring to use of a software program that defragments their files on their hard disk. These applications are often called defraggers. There are many defraggers available on the market, and of course, Microsoft Windows has its own default defragger built in, but many of them, like the default defragger simply don t have the 81

3 advanced features needed to maximize the read and seek speeds your hard drive is capable of producing. I am going to use Ultimate Defrag 3 (by Disktrix Inc.) here to show you the basics of defragmenting a drive, what various defragmentation method are available and which are suited to a range of different users, and then show you how you can move files and folders to the outer edges of a drive, something which only a very few defraggers can actually do (Ultimate Defrag3 being one of the best and easiest to use in this regard). Remember, the whole aim of this article is to try and maximise the performance of your flight simulators, reduce their loading time, and hopefully prevent micro-stutters or other performance issues that can be related to hard disk access while flying. The best part of the defragmentation process, however, is that it will improve and speed up the load times of just about every software package you have on your PC. Note: Some defragmentation methods discussed here may be available in other defrag software programs, but specifics are related directly to Ultimate Defrag 3, used here to demonstrate the various methods employed in the process. Please consult your defrag software manual for specific information and procedures relating to that software. Using Your Defragger Most all defraggers will have an Analyze function. You can use this function to analyse any or all physical hard disks installed on your PC. This function once run and completed will give you an idea of the current level of fragmentation on any given hard drive. Ideally, you want fragmentation to be as low as possible. In most cases, regular defragmentation (once a week) will help keep fragmentation at low levels. If it gets too high, your PC performance will be noticeably slower, and in some cases where fragmentation is existent at very high levels, you can start to suffer more serious complications. A low fragmentation level might be 5% or less on any drive. Anything over this is considered high. I once had a drive on an old PC years back that I didn t defragment in over 4 years, and when I first analysed it with a defragger it showed 48% fragmentation! It is a wonder that drive survived as long as it did. I do recall it taking 5-10 minutes to load up some graphics software though I had enough time to go make a cup of coffee and be back before the splash screen disappeared and I could actually use the program. Needless to say, the first defragmentation run on that drive took 36 hours! You will find that with regular defragmentation of a drive, the actual time it takes to defragment will be smaller than with the first couple runs if you haven t defragmented it before. So, always first analyse each drive in your system to give you an idea of the level of fragmentation. Once it reaches more than 5%, schedule a time to defragment it. Some drives, particularly your C:\ or the one running your operating system will suffer more fragmentation than others as more files may be moved and deleted as a natural occurrence of running software. Additionally, most defraggers will not touch any files currently in use, like your core operating system files, so your C:\ will generally be analyzed at a higher fragmentation level. As you can see in my screenshot, my C:\ is currently showing as 12.55% fragmented. This is not overly bad for that drive, probably not good either, but I should be able to get it well under 10% and closer to 6% which I would be more than happy with. Most other drives on my system have fragmentation levels at or near 0.00% for my file storage drives or below 1% for my nonoperating system drives. I HAVE ENLARGED THE DEGREE OF FRAGMENTATION SECTION OF THE ANALYSIS REPORT WINDOW HERE FOR EASY VIEWING. THIS DISK IS IN NEED OF DEFRAGMENTATION. NOTE THE DISK IMAGE WHICH SHOWS A FAIR DEGREE OF FREE SPACE (LIGHT GEY) IN AMONGST THE CONTIGUOUS BLOCKS (PURPLE). RED BLOCKS INDICATE FRAGMENTED FILES. THIS DRIVE, ONE OF MY STORAGE DRIVES, HAS NO FRAGMENTED FILES. NOTE ALSO HOW THE FILES ARE ALL GROUPED AND LOCATED ON THE OUTER EDGE OF THE DRIVE FOR FASTEST POSSIBLE SEEK/READ SPEED. Defragmentation Methods Most simple software defraggers will only have one or two methods of defragmenting a drive, and very little or no options to configure. Better defraggers are more flexible. Again, here I am describing those options in Ultimate Defrag 3 only but other defraggers may have similar options or defrag methods that may perform similar functions. AUTO Mode This mode sounds like the easiest to use, and it certainly can be, but it is also very flexible and in UD3 it offers the option of moving more frequently used files to outer tracks (High Performance) and less frequently used files to the inner tracks (Archive). Ultimate Defrag 3 offers a nice performance factor scale to estimate performance improvement with changes to defrag options in this mode. It is recommended to check the option for Put directories close to MFT to ensure fastest file access performance. To select defrag mode, click on the mode box in the Defragmentation Mode window on the left side of the screen. A drop-down graphical menu will pop up with all available defragmentation modes on offer. Just click on the desired mode. Once the mode is selected, to select options for that mode, click the Options button just to the right. 82

4 If you come across an option screen that includes FragProtect, be sure to click it on. While this adds a little to the defragmentation time on initial runs, it actually helps slow the rate of fragmentation on your drive, which could save that time back on later runs in the future. It s a nice option certainly worth using. A CROP OF THE UD3 SCREEN SHOWING THE LEFT SIDE MENU WITH DEFRAGMENTATION MODE WINDOW OPEN AND DEFRAG METHOD OPTIONS SELECTABLE. CONSOLIDATE Mode This is the defrag mode that most defraggers will use and is one of the more basic modes for new users to get their heads around. With repeated use it will result in faster defrag runs. Different software will have different options in regard to this mode and most defraggers will just pack all your data to the outside tracks of the platter with little regard to what files go where. So, if you have a full disk, and run Consolidate on these other defraggers, there is a good chance some of your most used files and applications may still be located on the inner tracks where performance is slowest. Better defraggers give you more options here. UD3 allows you to consolidate data to outer tracks, but at the same time retain or move the most frequently used files and folders on/to the outer tracks for best performance and move the least used or Archived files to the inner tracks where performance is not critical. You can select any percentage of frequently used and less frequently used files to move to respective parts of the disk. It is very versatile indeed. The next and final three modes are really there for the power users that want to maximize the effectiveness of the defragmentation cycle. FOLDER/FILENAME Mode This will layout files on your hard drive according to Folder Name Order and then within each folder the files are sorted based upon name order. This method of ordering files on your hard drive will promote performance since files are sorted in strict order and directory look-ups are faster when in alphabetical order. RECENCY Mode This option gives you extensive flexibility in ordering files based upon last access dates, modify dates or file creation dates and then extensive flexibility in placement of these files. This method is suited perfectly for drives that may consist exclusively of data files as in a file server situation. This method is also perfect for situations where a hard drive is getting full and you want and need performance for particular files with room to grow and with fast subsequent defrags. THE OPTIONS WINDOW FOR THE AUTO DEFRAGMENTATION MODE. NOTE THE PERFORMANCE FACTOR ESTIMATES AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS DIALOG BOX. FRAGMENTED FILES ONLY Mode This method is the quickest of the bunch, and great if you don t have the time to sit through a full defrag pass, or you don t like leaving your system on overnight or when you are away from it. While this method will leave holes in your data if all you require is a quick defragmentation of fragmented files simply use this option. UltimateDefrag will move and defrag only the fragmented files that it finds - with speed and ease. It will place the defragmented file in the first available gap on the drive that will fit each particular file. You will notice that there is only one option setting available with this mode (put directories close to MFT), simply because for the fastest defrags possible, you have to disable the more time consuming options available in the other modes. For flight simmers, I would only advise to use this mode if you don t have time to run the other modes. If time is of the essence, then this mode is better run than not defragging at all. Run this mode, and then as soon as you have time later down the track (but not too far into the future) run a Consolidate or Auto Mode to again reap the maximum benefit from your hard drive. Note that this method can take a long time to complete and is rarely warranted for flight sim users. I have never personally used it, and probably never will. VOLATILITY Mode This method is a variation on Recency method and uses the concept of folder volatility or frequency of change of a folder and files within it. This method acts to compartmentalize folder and files within based on how often the contents of that folder will change. This promotes the tendency for infrequently changed files/folder to remain in place on the hard drive making subsequent defrags faster since the folders that never/rarely change, and all files within, will stay in place. Best Use of Ultimate Defrag 3 for Flight Simmers If you want to get the best out of running your preferred flight simulator off your traditional hard disk and want to go beyond just the Auto or Consolidate mode and make sure your sim files and folders are located on the very most outer tracks, then please read on. Make sure you are running the latest version of Ultimate Defrag 3 (version at time of writing) to follow along below go to to obtain the latest version, or check for availability of boxed versions from your local software retailer. 83

5 Method 1 Moving the whole flight simulator folder to the high performance area This is a quick and easy way to improve performance and can be used with most of the defrag modes, but stick with either CONSOLIDATE or AUTO for the sake of simplicity. 1. In Ultimate Defrag 3, click the SETTINGS button at the bottom of the left side menu. 2. Find and select the drive that contains your flight simulator and its files from the DRIVES section on the left. In my case this is X:\ 3. To the right of the DRIVES box are more options, look for the High Performance area at the top of the box, and here, turn ON the options for Fast Placement (consolidate) and next to it, turn ON FragProtect. 4. Just above these is a CUSTOM checkbox. Put a tick in that box and then the Select Files button lights up. Click Select Files. HERE I HAVE LOCATED MY FSX FOLDER AND PLACED A TICK IN THE BOX TO SELECT IT, THEN USED THE << BUTTON TO MOVE IT TO THE LEFT HAND WINDOW. I HAVE BLURRED OUT THE OTHER FILES AND FOLDERS ON THAT DRIVE AS THEY ARE OF NO IMPORTANCE HERE. 8. Click OK on this screen and then in the main UD3 screen, make sure that particular hard drive is selected (in my example, X:\). 9. Change the Defrag mode to CONSOLIDATE and click the Options button just to the right of it. 10. On the Consolidate Options box, click ON the option for Respect high performance and then click ON the option for Complete high performance then stop. Further down, turn ON options for Put directories close to MFT, Very fast placement (if you want the process to run faster at the expense of small free spaces possibly being introduced), and FragProtect. Click OK on that screen. I HAVE LIGHTENED THE AREAS OF INTEREST HERE TO ALLOW YOU TO FOLLOW ALONG A LITTLE EASIER 5. A new window pops up showing the folders and files on the disk drive previously selected. In my case it is showing the files and folders on my X:\ 6. Navigate via the folders views to where your flight simulator folder is located. This might be for FSX, FS2004, X-Plane or another sim. In my case it is simply the FSX folder as I customplaced my FSX installation when I originally installed it to simplify things. My FSX software is simply located at X:\FSX. 7. Put a tick in the little box next to your FS folder (whatever it may be called) and then to the left of that window is a << symbol. Click that to move the selected folder to the far left box (as shown in the screenshot). TICK THE OPTIONS IN THE CONSOLIDATE SETTINGS BOX AS PER THIS SCREENSHOT. 11. Now press the START button to run the process. 12. That s it. The FSX folder should now be moved to the outer parts of the platter where read performance is maximized, while at the same time, the files in that folder are also being defragmented and made contiguous so only one seek action is required, also reducing read times, and ultimately, load times of your simulator. 84

6 Method 2 Placing your FS folder on the very outer tracks for best performance, and keeping it there! While Method 1 will certainly help put your FS folder on the outer tracks, if your drive hosting your FS folder is full or near full, that method may still only place those files some way in from the edge. The High Performance area could consume a large portion of the disk to begin with. The best method of ensuring your FS folder is indeed right on the outer tracks is to simply drag and drop it there. UD3 is one of the only defraggers I know that offers this drag/drop functionality to place individual files and folders anywhere you like on the surface of your disk. Enough talk, let s do it! 1. Firstly, ensure the drive your flight sim installation is installed on is selected as the current visible and active drive using the top drive listing menu. Again, for me this is X:\ (yours will likely be different). 2. Next, in the top UD3 menu bar, go to TOOLS, and then in the Tools menu click on Highlight a File. folder. Note that some files within the FSX folder may not be in the same location on the drive, depending on previous defrag methods and options used. But if you ever wanted to know where any file on your disk is actually located on the disk surface, this is how you can do it a great feature. 6. Getting back to it What we will do now is click and drag that folder (in my case the FSX folder selected) from the Highlight File window and drop it over one of the blocks on the outermost ring on the hard disk view, where performance of the spinning disk is greatest (see screenshot). You will notice on that screenshot that there is a band of files sitting in the middle of the disc. This is my FSX folder after I moved it from the high performance area on a previous action using the same folder drag and drop method. Note the grey gaps in the outer segments as a result showing that even though the FSX folder and the files it contains where near the outer sections of the disk, they were still scattered in that region because I used a more simplified High Performance file move previously. When we move the entire folder to the outer edge, all the FS files in the folder will be grouped together as shown in that inner ring of contiguous files. 3. A new window will open up which will show the folder contents of that selected drive, which you can navigate around. Navigate using your mouse and any relevant expansion + boxes next to folders to open that folder to show subfolders as required. Because my FSX installation is in its own folder, I have easily found it in the list, as shown in the screenshot. Click once on the folder itself to highlight it blue. CLICK AND DRAG YOUR FS FOLDER FROM THE HIGHLIGHT FILE WINDOW TO THE OUTER RING ON YOUR DISK VIEW. NOTE THAT THE ENLARGED VIEW OF THE DROP LOCATION APPEARS TO SHOW I AM DROPPING IT ON THE SECOND OR THIRD RING, BUT WHERE THE TIP OF THE MOUSE ARROW IS LOCATED IS ACTUALLY WHERE THE FILE IS DROPPED (THE MOUSE ARROW DIDN T CAPTURE IN THIS SCREENSHOT). I HAVE SELECTED MY MAIN FSX FOLDER AND IT IS HIGHLIGHTED IN BLUE. 4. Now, with that folder highlighted, make sure you can still see your main hard disk view in the primary window. 5. OPTIONAL If you like, you can click the HIGHLIGHT button on this window at the bottom left. When you do so, your main UD3 window showing the disk and file layout will flash one of the small blocks on the disk view to show the actual location of the FSX 7. As soon as you drag the folder to the desired location (it will land wherever the tip of the mouse pointer arrow is located) and then drop it by releasing the mouse button, a new window will appear Adjust New Position. It is important to make sure you TICK the options for both Exclude this file from subsequent automatic defrags so the FS folder and files are not moved away from the outer tracks later on, and TICK Move all files and subfolders located in this folder. This second option ensures everything in your FS folder is moved to the outer tracks and not just the folder reference. While power users and those more tech savvy may want to move only the most-used parts of an FS installation to the outer edges, I am showing you how to move EVERYTHING in the FS folder here for simplicity s sake. If you use your PC for flight simming only or if your FS install is on its own drive separate to the operating system (as it is in my case), then this is a quick and easy way to guarantee best performance. 85

7 aircraft selection screens and others, and then the actual load time of the aircraft/scenery etc via the load counter screen before your aircraft appears ready to fly). If you are also suffering micro-stutters during your sim session that are related to poor file access and slow read times from your hard disk, then these can be eliminated too with a properly defragged drive. The reduction in load time you will see with a properly defragged drive and placement of the FS files/folders to the fastest part of the drive is a direct result of the defragmenting processes as outlined above. TO ENSURE THE FSX FOLDER IS NOT MOVED AWAY FROM THE OUTER TRACKS ON FUTURE DEFRAG RUNS, TICK THE EXCLUDE OPTION AS PER THIS SCREENSHOT. WE ALSO WANT EVERYTHING IN THE FSX FOLDER MOVED, SO TICK THAT OPTION AS WELL. 8. Once you have ticked those two options above, then click on the MOVE button and the process of moving your FS folder to the chosen location on the very outer track(s) will begin. Allow UD3 to complete the move process without interruption. Depending on the size of your FS folder, this could take as little as 5 minutes, or as much as an hour, but the end result will be certainly worth the effort in reducing FS load times and ensuring you get the best possible performance from your current technology. Note also that if you drop the folder onto a location where files already exist, UD3 has to also move these files elsewhere first so the process can take longer than if you dropped the FS folder on an area of the drive that is simply free space (grey blocks). 9. That s it! Allow UD3 to complete the move and defrag process on your FS folder and it will now be located, in a contiguous manner, on the very outer edges of your drive. Because of the exclude option selected earlier when moving the folder, the FSX folder will not be moved from that location on subsequent automatic defrag runs. Remember that while defraggers will not really give you better performance in your simulators in actual frame rate improvements, they will certainly decrease the initial load times of the simulator (i.e. time to load FS menu screen from Windows desktop, time to load Don t underestimate the value of a defragmented hard drive when running FSX. Grab yourself a quality defrag software (Windows default doesn t cut it if you want to see good improvements) and not only will your simulator benefit from faster load times, but every other piece of software on your hard drive, including the operating system itself will show performance improvements. We have just scraped the ice really on the tech stuff of hard drives and file fragmentation and defragmentation. If you would like to see more in-depth geek-level information on this subject, shoot me an (editor@computerpilot.com), and if I get enough interested readers, I ll produce a follow-up to this article that will explore other ways of managing your hard disk to improve your sim load times. For now, happy defragmenting! HERE S A SCREENSHOT SHOWING A NEARLY COMPLETELY DEFRAGMENTED DRIVE. IT SHOWS THAT EVEN AFTER JUST A SMALL AMOUNT OF USE, FILES HAVE A TENDENCY TO BE FRAGMENTED. HERE THERE ARE 29 FRAGMENTED FILES, WHICH IS JUST 0.01% OF THE TOTAL FILE COUNT. NOT TOO BAD AND NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. THAT LEVEL OF FRAGMENTATION WILL NOT CAUSE ANY NOTICEABLE PERFORMANCE DECREASE. 86