Quote:
Originally Posted by RyanC
@M-ManLA-
From what I understand this isn't the case. When you defrag, it only does it per file. So if say vocal take 17 is scattered in 14 places it puts it together. Now the problem comes when you have 200 files in your session, and because of defrag, they are all over the place on your drive. Now because of your fangled 1TB drive there is simply too much hay and not enough time to find all the needles.
The drive fills up sequentially, unless it has holes that are places where deleted files once were. And the files become fragmented when a single file is to big to fit the holes, right?
So if you are like me, I never delete anything on an active recording drive/partition, there should be very little reason for the drive to ever become fragmented right? My understanding is that the smaller partitions are good because the drive is split into multiple sequential sections, so now even that session that lasts two years and is segmented (per session) is only looking at the part of the hay that the needle has to be in.
I also notice a lot more "missing xyz file" when de-frag is turned on. Usually they are fade files that are really short, but reguardless it's annoying and doesn't inspire confidence in your clients.
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Yea that is what I meant. When Vox Track 1 is recorded, it could be spreaded on three platters. Defrag will let you put Vox Track 1 on one platter so that particular file will be together for better read performance. As for folder, it will not put the files next to each other in the session. Folder is just a way to organize your files personally. It is impossible to try and move each folder or files next to each other. There would be no real benefit to this anyway. Especially with drives that can't read from one platter fast enough. That is why they have processors in them. Folders are just bits of data that says this file goes here. It doesn't really move the file on the disk. That is why I always say get a speedy reliable hard drive.
Ex. I have a Western Digital 500GB Black drive. That thing has dual processors in it. Why you might ask? Well, better performance. The reason being that two processors can read, write, and manage data faster than a single processor. Also these black drives have a park zone for the reading arms, they never touch the platters (Longer life), and they have a 64mb cache. They also come with a five year warranty. Those are fast drives and I have not had one problem with it. Check them out. You can get anywhere between a 500GB-2TB drive in the Black line.
Also, data is fragmented as soon as it hits the drive. Mac or PC. It doesn't matter until you get a NAND Based Drive (SSD in other words). Because if spits out data, it is therefore "fragmented" and stays put. That is why they have to "Defrag" the drive in the first place. SSD's won't have this problem, but will have a problem erasing data, reason why Windows 7 has "TRIM", where it will erase the cells in the SSD, and report to the OS that there is space open on this drive. Without this (or some variation of this if you don't have W7), The cells would fill up, not get erased, and reduce performance greatly. There is a lot of tech in storage than what it seems. I stay on tech sites and forums a lot (including Anandtech.com, which can get really technical).