...rather than defrag?

[guy.fi]

I'm confused about what some of you guys do instead of defragging. Do you cut and paste your folders aound different partitions of your audio drive? Do you copy the entire drive to another drive ?(and if so do you use another utility like ghost?)

Also, I swear with my old system I defragged a lot without problems, so is there anyone doing it without it being the kiss of death?

Guy

[Aussie Scott]

I believe the thing to do is:

1. To save the contents of your drive onto another drive or partition
2. Reformat drive or partion where the files once resided
3. Relocate everything back on to your working drive.

...but wait for Inteldoc or Rail or one of the other gurus to confirm that

Cheers, Scott

[guy.fi]

Can you reformat just a partition of a drive? And if so, is this adviseable?

[JCBigler]

Can you reformat just a partition of a drive? And if so, is this adviseable?

Yes, you can reformat any primary, or logical partition on any physical drive without reformatting the other primary or logical partitons on that same physical hard drive. If you repartition the drive, either within Windows XP, in the Disk Management console, or with FDisk, then you will obliterate the paritions that you are working on. Kep in mind that if you reformate, or repartition the hard drive, or the partitions on that hard drive, you will loose all the data on said partitions. (You can recover this data--SOMETIMES--but it's a pain in the ass and/or very expensive).

Defragging a hard drive is just making sure that all the separate chunks of the same file reside on contiguous clusters on the physical disk. You can do this without damaging the data on that drive.

I believe the thing to do is:

1. To save the contents of your drive onto another drive or partition
2. Reformat drive or partion where the files once resided
3. Relocate everything back on to your working drive.

This is sort of a manual defragging. On Unix and Linux mainframes and minis, where you rarely have a need for defragging like in Windows, this is the usual method of defragging the hard drive.

However, Windows Ships with a built-in defragmentation tool called Disk Defragmenter, go to START>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmenter. Also, many system utiliy suits, like Norton System Works have a defragmenter tool, Noton's is called Speed Disk. I prefer to use the Norton Speed Disk.

[Aussie Scott]

Yes you can format a partition - each partition is treated as a separate drive (in a way) by the OS. It is a very scary thing if you have archived onto the other partition on the drive. I have used another drive in order to archive before reformating - much less scary!!

Cheers, Scott

[jwd65]

Hey guys,
Does no one else defrag their audio drive?
I backup everything on an external drive, of course. But, since DUC members said, "sure, no problem, go for a defrag," I did.
And it worked. No problems.
What's the story?

J.D

[Mariner]

I defrag several times a week for 2 or 3 years now and have never had a problem.

Mariner

[spkguitar]

Some older threads that you might find enlightening:

From DigiTechSupt

A semi confusing discussion

interesting info

Personally, I would trust the advice from Rail Jon Rogut from that second link.
neomodo's info/advice is also very eye opening.

[guy.fi]

Thanks to all respondents. I got the "drive too slow may need defragging" error and started defragging when my computer crashed. It would only reboot properly (without BSOD) with the drive disconnected. I took the drive to a techie friend and he said there was an error in the file system. Apparently he was able to fix it because it is running properly now.

[JMS40]

In the "for what it's worth" catagory...
I've defragged audio drives successfully for years. However, due to the recent discussions here, and my level of respect for those who have contributed, I've stopped defragging and gone to Rail's method.

If there's even the slightest chance of corruption as suggested, believe me, somewhere down the line, I'm sure it would jump up and bite me in the *****.

I just have that kind of luck....