PT 8 LE writing every single file fragmented

[Rocker61]

I've googled this up and down I seem to be the first person on planet earth to be experiencing this. I've been having endless -9073 errors since I acquired this computer and system. I went through the usual gauntlet of standard solutions with no success. Just recently, by using a defrag program and tracking the fragmented files I have found that every single file Pro Tools writes, the session.ptf, session.bak.ptf, all the recorded .wav, any bounced MP3, the wavecache files, absolutely everything is written by PT fragmented from the moment it goes on disk. My D: drive is Pro Tools audio and session files only.

Anyone ever heard of this and where the solution might lie? As far as I can tell, if I save a file like a picture or document this phenomenon does not occur.

My system:

Rain Ion
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 2.81 GHz
8 GB Ram
Windows 7 Pro 64 bit
2 X WDC WD640 HD's
Pro Tools 8.0.5 LE
Digi 003

Thanks.

[Rocker61]

Sorry, I have to make a correction. Actually, upon taking a closer look, it appears almost everything that the C: drive is writing is fragmenting too. I defraged it maybe an hour ago and there's already 144 fragmented files including some previously saved images and all kinds of system and registry type files.

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by Rocker61

Sorry, I have to make a correction. Actually, upon taking a closer look, it appears almost everything that the C: drive is writing is fragmenting too. I defraged it maybe an hour ago and there's already 144 fragmented files including some previously saved images and all kinds of system and registry type files.

What are you using as a defrager? I'm assuming your Audio Drive is formatted NTFS?

[Rocker61]

Hi, thanks for the reply. The defrag is 'Auslogics Disk Defrag'. Yes, both system C: and audio D: hard drives are NTFS.

[Top Jimmy]

Would fragmentation be a Pro Tools issue or a disk drive controller issue? Personally I don't know, I'm just asking.


Buttdialed by me & Tapatalk

[sunburst79]

I asked because some products will play up fragmentation issues in order to get you to buy the product or make you feel that what you bought is doing something. Generally speaking I've never had any problem with the standard windows defragmenter utility. My personal experience is that NTFS is extremely resiliant to fragmentation and that for the most part fragmentation problems actually ceased being an issue with XP and the advent of NTFS. My opinion and my experience. YMMV. This is different than Win95/98/ME and FAT16/32 where defraging your drive would make a noticeable differences for the first couple boots.

Are you having a performance issue or performance anxiety because Auslogics is reporting fragmentation? I'm just curious.

What could be causing fragmentation? Have you changed anything recently? Installed any utilities other than Auslogics? These drives aren't a RAID array correct?.

Stuff that might have an effect.

Chipset drivers.
Old or outdated drive management tools.
HDD firmware.
Third party disk optimization tools.
Incorrect BIOS settings regarding the drive type or OS support.

The above list is just some guesses.

[Rocker61]

Nah, this was happening way before I even put on the Auslogics, and even if it were 'overstating' the fragmentation, the fact is that Pro Tools is virtually unuseable if I don't defrafg every 10 minutes. I've looked at the bios but I'm pretty sure it's all defaults. I think this smells like a windows 7 problem as opposed to just PT but not positive.

Thanks for trying though.

[Rocker61]

If this means anything here is a Sandra report on the disks:

SiSoftware Sandra

SCSI General Properties
Controller : 0
Bus : 0
Target ID : 0
Logical Unit No. : 0

General Capabilities
Model : WDC WD6401AALS-00E3A0
Manufacturer : Western Digital
Height : 3.5"
Interface : SATA
Rotational Speed : 7200rpm
Revision : 05.01D05
Serial Number : WD-WCAT********

General Capabilities
Channel : Master
Type : ATA
Interface : SATA
Removable : No
Manufacturer : Western Digital Technologies, Inc.
MAC Address : 01:50:E2:4E************
Model : WDC WD6401AALS-00E3A0
Revision : 05.01D05
Serial Number : WD-WC**********
ATA/ATAPI Version : 8.00
Cache Size : 32MB

Drive Geometry
CHS Geometry : 16383 x 16 x 63
CHS Total Sectors : 16514064
LBA Total Sectors : 1250263728
No. ECC Bytes : 50bytes
Capacity : 596.17GB

Properties
NCQ - Native Command Queuing : Yes
PEC - Physical Event Counters : Yes
LBA Support : Yes

Features
S.M.A.R.T Support : Yes
Security Support : Yes
Power Management Support : Yes
ACPI Power Management : No
Power-up in Standby : Yes
Packet Command Interface : No
Removable Media : No
Look-Ahead Buffer : Yes
Write-Back Cache : Yes
Host Protect Area : Yes
Microcode Update : Yes
Acoustic Management : Yes
48-bit LBA : Yes
Device Config Overlay : Yes

Active Features
S.M.A.R.T Enabled : Yes
Security Enabled : No
Power Management Enabled : Yes
Power-up in Standby Enabled : No
Look-Ahead Buffer Enabled : Yes
Write-Back Cache Enabled : Yes
Host Protect Area Enabled : Yes
Acoustic Management Enabled : No

S.M.A.R.T Information
Version : 1.01
ATA Commands Support : Yes
ATAPI Commands Support : Yes
S.M.A.R.T Commands Support : Yes

S.M.A.R.T Data
Raw Read Error Rate (01) : 200 (51 - 200) [00000000]
Spin-up Time (03) : 182 (21 - 176) [00000F1A]
Start/Stop Count (04) : 100 (0 - 100) [00000221]
Re-Allocated/Retired Sector Count (05) : 200 (140 - 200) [00000000]
Seek Error Rate (07) : 200 (0 - 200) [00000000]
Power-On Time (09) : 99 (0 - 99) [000003DE]
Spin Retry Count (0A) : 100 (0 - 100) [00000000]
Calibration Retry Count (0B) : 100 (0 - 100) [00000000]
Power Cycle Count (0C) : 100 (0 - 100) [0000021E]
Unsafe Power Off Count (C0) : 200 (0 - 200) [00000034]
Load/Unload Cycle Count (C1) : 200 (0 - 200) [000001EC]
Drive Temperature (C2) : 111 (0 - 102) [00000024]
Re-Allocated Data/Erase Failure Count (C4) : 200 (0 - 200) [00000000]
Pending Sector/Read Failure Count (C5) : 200 (0 - 200) [00000000]
Un-Correctable/Read Sector Count (C6) : 200 (0 - 200) [00000000]
CRC/Write Sector Count (C7) : 200 (0 - 200) [00000001]
Write Error Rate/Read Commands (C8) : 200 (0 - 200) [00000000]

Sensors
Power-On Time : 41 day(s), 6 hour(s)
Disk Enclosure Temperature : 36.00°C

Transfer Modes Support
I/O Queue Depth : 32
Block Size : 16
Maximum SATA Mode : G2 / SATA300

Transfer Modes Active
Current Block Transfer : 16
Current SATA Mode : G2 / SATA300

Translation Mode Disk Geometry
CHS Geometry : 77825 x 255 x 63
Bytes Per Sector : 512bytes
Capacity : 596.17GB

Cache Information
Read Cache : Yes
Write Cache : Yes
Prefetch Buffer : No

Partitions Information
Partition 1 : MBR Boot IFS-NTFS 70.57MB
Partition 2 : MBR IFS-NTFS 596.1GB

Logical Drives
Logical Drive : C:


SiSoftware Sandra

SCSI General Properties
Controller : 1
Bus : 1
Target ID : 0
Logical Unit No. : 0

General Capabilities
Model : WDC WD6402AAEX-00Y9A0
Manufacturer : Western Digital
Height : 3.5"
Interface : SATA
Rotational Speed : 7200rpm
Revision : 01.01V01
Serial Number : WD-WCAW********

General Capabilities
Channel : Slave
Type : ATA
Interface : SATA
Removable : No
Manufacturer : Western Digital Technologies, Inc.
MAC Address : 01:50:E2:4E************
Model : WDC WD6402AAEX-00Y9A0
Revision : 01.01V01
Serial Number : WD-WC**********
ATA/ATAPI Version : 8.00

Drive Geometry
CHS Geometry : 16383 x 16 x 63
CHS Total Sectors : 16514064
LBA Total Sectors : 1250263728
No. ECC Bytes : 50bytes
Capacity : 596.17GB

Properties
NCQ - Native Command Queuing : Yes
PEC - Physical Event Counters : Yes
LBA Support : Yes

Features
S.M.A.R.T Support : Yes
Security Support : Yes
Power Management Support : Yes
ACPI Power Management : No
Power-up in Standby : Yes
Packet Command Interface : No
Removable Media : No
Look-Ahead Buffer : Yes
Write-Back Cache : Yes
Host Protect Area : Yes
Microcode Update : Yes
Acoustic Management : Yes
48-bit LBA : Yes
Device Config Overlay : No

Active Features
S.M.A.R.T Enabled : Yes
Security Enabled : No
Power Management Enabled : Yes
Power-up in Standby Enabled : No
Look-Ahead Buffer Enabled : Yes
Write-Back Cache Enabled : Yes
Host Protect Area Enabled : Yes
Acoustic Management Enabled : No

S.M.A.R.T Information
Version : 1.01
ATA Commands Support : Yes
ATAPI Commands Support : Yes
S.M.A.R.T Commands Support : Yes

S.M.A.R.T Data
Raw Read Error Rate (01) : 186 (51 - 182) [00003DE0]
Spin-up Time (03) : 179 (21 - 172) [00000FB0]
Start/Stop Count (04) : 100 (0 - 100) [0000027E]
Re-Allocated/Retired Sector Count (05) : 200 (140 - 200) [00000000]
Seek Error Rate (07) : 200 (0 - 200) [00000000]
Power-On Time (09) : 98 (0 - 98) [000005B7]
Spin Retry Count (0A) : 100 (0 - 100) [00000000]
Calibration Retry Count (0B) : 100 (0 - 100) [00000000]
Power Cycle Count (0C) : 100 (0 - 100) [0000027D]
Unsafe Power Off Count (C0) : 200 (0 - 200) [0000002E]
Load/Unload Cycle Count (C1) : 200 (0 - 200) [0000024F]
Drive Temperature (C2) : 109 (0 - 105) [00000026]
Re-Allocated Data/Erase Failure Count (C4) : 200 (0 - 200) [00000000]
Pending Sector/Read Failure Count (C5) : 198 (0 - 198) [00000126]
Un-Correctable/Read Sector Count (C6) : 198 (0 - 198) [000000FD]
CRC/Write Sector Count (C7) : 200 (0 - 200) [00000000]
Write Error Rate/Read Commands (C8) : 198 (0 - 198) [0000017E]

Sensors
Power-On Time : 60 day(s), 23 hour(s)
Disk Enclosure Temperature : 38.00°C

Transfer Modes Support
I/O Queue Depth : 32
Block Size : 16
Maximum SATA Mode : G3 / SATA600

Transfer Modes Active
Current Block Transfer : 16
Current SATA Mode : G3 / SATA600

Translation Mode Disk Geometry
CHS Geometry : 77825 x 255 x 63
Bytes Per Sector : 512bytes
Capacity : 596.17GB

Cache Information
Read Cache : Yes
Write Cache : Yes
Prefetch Buffer : No

Partitions Information
Partition 1 : MBR IFS-NTFS 596.17GB

Logical Drives
Logical Drive : D:

[albee1952]

Not sure if this matters, but I think I have S.M.A.R.T. turned off in BIOS. Beyond that, I have to ask(not being a computer wiz), how do you know that all the files are fragmented?

[sunburst79]

Rocker61

This isn't a common PT issue. I'm not sure what's causing it and my advice wold be to throw a spare drive in and do a fresh install of Windows and see if that's the issue. If it persists we know its probably hardware related. Just a fresh install of windows plus pro tools and see what happens. Don't reinstall over your existing drive just yet.

I'm assuming you tried a clean uninstall and a fresh install of PT? Although I agree this seems to be a windows issue. You tried updating the chipset drivers? I would try that first.

You might be able to get by with a Windows repair install. I usually go for the nuke and pave approach my self. Make sure you have all your drivers before reinstalling

Is Rain Computers any help? I thought they were a DAW ready computer system. They may have some help for you too.