My boyfriend blames SL for massive drive fragmentation...

My boyfriend blames SL for massive drive fragmentation...is this founded or is he trying to be a knowitall party poooper?

I think he is a party pooper! I can't see how SL would cause this. Sounds like he may need to defragment his computer, which you should do every few weeks!

It's my compy - and yes defraging is important- but there are now fragments that can't seem to be repaired (my hard drive is 4 years old and FULL of psd's, game files, etc....anyhow, Mr.knowitall claims that up- and downloading imagery and such fragments it...

Depending on how many fragments cant be fixed, it might be time to consider a new hard drive. I think the average life span of a hard drive is 4-5 yrs? Something like that.

Actually, your BF is right... sort of. Everything you do causes file fragmentation. Deleting, saving, opening files. Its just the nature of the medium.

Defrag about once a month. Twice at most. It takes a toll on the platters doing it too often.

SL does fragment the harddisk, depending on how much cache you allowed it to use. But it always uses the same 500mb (or whatever you set the cache to). Even tho that ,eans it wont continue to fill your HDD with file fragments until its full, it will still delete files and store others somewhere else, wherever it finds free space first. thats a general NTFS flaw. To reduce fragmentation, you could reduce the SL cache. That will force the virtual RAM (or RAM, depending on how much you got on your PC) more. Less fragmentation ^_^ Theres a downside tho. With less data thats readily available when you start SL, you'll have to download SL textures (rez wait) more often.

Btw, most defragmentation tool need 20% free harddisk space to be efficient.

-Asriazh

SL being designed as a game does fragment a drive. Any program with massive amounts of bits and bytes flying around will frag a drive. Photoshop fragments a drive heavily too (as does any graphics manipulation progrom). I would say if you play SL for 8 to 10 a week you can probably get away without defraging your drive except once every couple weeks........any more than that it's a good idea to do it once a week (mostly because if you wait too long and your drive gets real fragmented ,it could take hours to do.......instead of 5 to 10 mins). Defraging your drive also helps all your programs run better. It's not a bad thing.

Another suggestion I might make, and that is something that has worked well for me, is to delete your SL cache just before running defrag, and then running SL, to recreate the cache, file immediately afterwards.

This accomplishes two things... First, it creates a lot of free space on your H/D that defrag can use to do its thing. Second, when you restart SL after defrag, and SL recreates the cache file, its more likely to have lots of contiguous drive space to use.

- Ace

sl is no worse than browsing the web for the same amount of time

its all text images and sounds, 1's and 0's on and off the hard disk

a 4-5 year old hard disk full of 4-5 years of random stuff had 4-5 years to corrupt and you wouldnt know it becuase (and we both know) you dont access each and every thing on a daily /weekly basis

Well, if he is a know-it-all, then make him fix it and he should buy you a new disc!

Assuming you're running Windows, you really, really, really should get Diskeeper from Executive Software. They wrote the guts of the existing built-in defragmenter, but the aftermarket version is *much* better and can defrag *everything*, including swap files and the MFT.

One of the best things you can do to keep fragmentation down is to have lots of free space. If the OS can find big _contiguous_ chunks of disk space that are free, it won't have to break up files into fragment. SL does have lots of little files but since the cache maxes out at 1.5GB, it's really not bad if your disk isn't getting close to full..

How big is the disk and how much free space does it have?

Fabala, your bf is correct. I have also noticed excessive fragmentation from sl. I'm kinda a stickler for having a nice clean drive. The good thing is it's the sl cache that is the main culprit. so what i did was created a partition on another drive and set my sl preferences to use that partition for the cache. now the rest of my disks fragment at a more reasonable rate, and i have the ability to defrag the sl cache partition seperately and very quickly since i only bit off a 10gig chunk for this use (i know it dosent need this much). i'm not a fan of deleting the cache every time i run sl, only if there is a problem. but obviously deleting the cache eliminates the need to defrag it.

as far as defragers go, i prefer perfect disk for offline/system files. and i really like jkdefrag: http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/ because of the way it sets ups the files on the disk.

there is your problem. your hard drive is OLD. even if SL caused a fragmented drive, it won't make sectors 'unrepairable' - which you seem to indicate. Unrepairable sectors are a sign of a failing hard drive, and I'd urge you to back up immediately and buy a new one if you value your data.

boyfriends are smartasses. upgrade him while you're at it.

Yes, SL will fragment your hard disk, as will web browsing or any other activity which constantly stores/deletes a large number of small files on your hard disk. As to the importance of defragmenting your hard disk - you should do it only when it is necessary as the very act of defragmenting puts a heavy load on your hard disk and can/will reduce its lifespan. Of course leaving a hard disk badly fragmented can and does cause the same problem so there is no hard and fast rule as to how often you need to do it. It also depends on your operating system (I've never needed to defrag a Un*x box or an OS X Mac).

As to fragments which cannot be repaired, this really doesn't have anything to do with fragmentation at all. It could, as some have said, be a result of the hard disk reaching the end of its life cycle. It could also be caused by any number of other reasons. The best way forward would probably be to use software that can check for physical errors on the disk. Even if there are physical errors you may be able to reformat and use the disk but I wouldn't keep anything critical on it after that. If the errors are not physical, you may be able to find software to repair the disk or, if you can, back it up and reformat it completely.

And yes, as someone mentioned, deleting the SL cache (and browser cache, and anywhere else where files are stored temporarily and not cleared automatically) is a good idea before defragging.

Max

Get more system RAM, 1GB at least. Reduced cache size to 100MB in SL preferences. It's under Network.

Weather you like it or not, Second Life is a peice of software that has major MAJOR bugs that Linden Labs seems content to ignore, and add new content, rather then fixing the issues at hand.

Who knows what it does to your system. My suggestion is that you keep your cache cleared, your hard drive de-fragmented, and your virus scanner and adware scanner up to date.

I love Second Life, but the development team really needs to slow down, and take a look at what needs improving, rather then adding new features that no one is interested in. Seriously... voice chat?

If you have Windows XP, you don't really need to get Diskeeper, as Disk Defrag MMC for WinXP is *based* on Exec Software's Diskeeper already. ;D

The SL cache does result in some fragmentation, but a set-it-and-forget-it defrag program like Diskeeper will fix that. SL will NOT damage your hard drive though. If you have irreparable sectors on the drive you'd better think about replacing it soon.

There is only one way to prevent disk fragmentation.



Turn off your computer, and never use it


Fragmenting is just a natural process. Regular defrags will help keep you regular.

What can I add here? Nothing, just give that HD the boot. 4 years old and obviously youve been working it hard. If you lose those psd's you'll not be thinking of SL right? Get a new HD. your photoshop will be happier with it too.

get a cache cleaner like webroots windows washer
run a drive repair from mycomputer /c or your main drive letter/ properties/ tools/ error checking/ and check now button, then check both boxes in it and run , restart your comp and wait for the process t oend then try defraging your comp.