Global Disk Defragment day

[gogoblender 3,069]

sigh

 

lol,it's that day again...I hardly ever do this, but one of my programs opened up accidentally while I was working on something else... turns out it was a free version of Advanced System Care which Brad one day pointed to me as something quicker than what comes with Vista.

 

said I had to upgrade with with free software for the prog which I did... and this really surprised me about 9 minutes later the defrag was done, with a noticeable fleetness to my computer.

 

I hereby all this global disk defrag day, let's go peeps!

 

 

gogo

[podgie_bear 184]

Gogo, I love you man.

 

I had never heard of Advanced System Care until I saw this thread, but decided to try it for myself. Including the iObit Gamebooster.

 

WOW!

 

My games have never worked so well. One game that was particulary slow and jerky is now running as smooth as silk and recording a 380% increase in game speed.

 

I highly recommend this program to everyone out there. I would never have believed that a free program could make such a difference to my system.

 

[gogoblender 3,069]

Ah haaaaaaaaaaaa...another convert! It's actually all cuz of Schot...he's da genius who roped this one in...I'm so happy you got so much better performance... my comp is post defrag zippy as well all day.

 

Let's see more success stories!

 

 

gogo

[Dobster 39]

Just downloaded it but I'm a little wary due to the fact I have dual OS's.

 

Win7 is on one HDD and XP on the other. If I defrag from XP could it screw up things on the Win7 install?

 

I tend to agree with the old saying "if it aint broke don't fix it"

[stubbie 21]

Win7 is on one HDD and XP on the other. If I defrag from XP could it screw up things on the Win7 install?

 

I have exactly the same set up dobs.

You can defrag the Win7 hard drive using a XP defragger no problem.

 

Though I totally agree with you and the "old saying"

Edited October 2, 2010 by stubbie

[Stormwing 40]

If I defrag from XP could it screw up things on the Win7 install?

 

I quite highly doubt that. Used to have a dual boot with xp and 7 when 7 was still a release candidate and the two really didn't mess up with each other.

Though on the other hand, when I removed xp, I'm quite sure that messed up things a little.

 

Regardless, let's give this babe a try. Might even beef some things up.

 

*Edit*

Gotta say, at least the process was very fast. ^^ But too bad it didn't help with problems with Sacred 2. Looks like I'd need more memory or something. That annoying lag in some cities, etc...

Edited October 3, 2010 by Stormwing

[wolfie2kX 528]

Just downloaded it but I'm a little wary due to the fact I have dual OS's.

 

Win7 is on one HDD and XP on the other. If I defrag from XP could it screw up things on the Win7 install?

 

I tend to agree with the old saying "if it aint broke don't fix it"

 

For what it's worth... NTFS is NTFS is NTFS is NTFS. NTFS, of course, being the NT File System.

 

As long as you're not dual or triple booting using Linux or some other OS, you should be fine.

 

There is one major gotcha when it comes to defragging using XP. That would be using the RTM version and trying to defrag a large hard drive that's beyond 137 GB. They added support for larger partitions in SP1 if I recall correctly. So an RTM version of XP will not only NOT defrag a larger than 137 GB drive, it won't even be able to read it - so there's really no danger. Then again, no one in his right (or left) mind would be using XP RTM.

 

There have been minor tweaks to NTFS, but for the most part, the partitions themselves are identical.

 

I quite highly doubt that. Used to have a dual boot with xp and 7 when 7 was still a release candidate and the two really didn't mess up with each other.

Though on the other hand, when I removed xp, I'm quite sure that messed up things a little.

 

Regardless, let's give this babe a try. Might even beef some things up.

 

*Edit*

Gotta say, at least the process was very fast. ^^ But too bad it didn't help with problems with Sacred 2. Looks like I'd need more memory or something. That annoying lag in some cities, etc...

 

How much RAM do you have installed? I had the same general problem - Sloeford was like a slide show. I had 1 GB of RAM installed so I bumped it up to 3 GB (2 x 512 MB DDR 400 RAM sticks in one channel and 2 x 1 GB DDR 400 RAM sticks in the other channel) and amazingly, no more slide show.

 

I also upgraded this old box to a dual core chip (the original was a single core) later on. It helped a bit, but not nearly as much as adding that extra RAM.

[Stormwing 40]

Wolfie: 2gigs atm. It's the culprit most likely. Processor should be alright; AMD Athlon X2 5800+ clocked to bit over 3GHz per core.

Once I get more money, I'll get a better mobo and more memory. At least 4 gigs if possible.

Somehow whenever there's some nearly slideshow-effects, the HD is reading/writing(?) like there's no tomorrow. Might be the virtual mem settings or something, though I didn't set it to use any of the HD where the games are...

[Spunky 16]

I've just installed this program and did tons of different sweep ups, seems like I needed it as I had gazillions of things that needed sorting out.

 

Great find here Schot/Brad, and thanks for letting us know of it gogo!

[chattius 2,523]

NTFS is not NTFS if you use Windows NT and Windows7. NTFS4, NTFS5, ... The new one can read the old, but the old not the new. But XP, Vista and 7 have no Problems as far as I know and if I remember right.

[wolfie2kX 528]

Wolfie: 2gigs atm. It's the culprit most likely. Processor should be alright; AMD Athlon X2 5800+ clocked to bit over 3GHz per core.

Once I get more money, I'll get a better mobo and more memory. At least 4 gigs if possible.

Somehow whenever there's some nearly slideshow-effects, the HD is reading/writing(?) like there's no tomorrow. Might be the virtual mem settings or something, though I didn't set it to use any of the HD where the games are...

 

Hmm.. An Athloon X2 5800+ should be more than enough to make things run very smoothly - even at it's stock clock speeds. I've only got an Athlon X2 4200+ and I don't see slide shows any more.

 

It IS a virtual memory issue - when you start out with only 1 GB of RAM, and the OS is taking up like 30% of that, it's gonna start hammering memory like crazy and it'll run real slow when you get to a place like downtown Sloeford or whenever larger mobs show up. It's gotta cache all the people, the sounds, the people blathering endlessly about how great it is to see the other person, the street performer, etc.. et al, ad nauseum.

 

I'd try the cheap solution - adding 2 x 512 GB sticks of RAM - if you can. Keep in mind that putting 4 GB of RAM into your system isn't going to guarantee that you'll HAVE 4 GB available if you use a 32 bit version of Windows. Since all of your peripherals like your video card need to exist within the 4 GB boundary, the amount of RAM your video card has on board will be subtracted from your memory total.

 

Also, it's probably best to keep the number of programs and other things running to a bare minimum. If your computer is a name brand, get rid of any apps that get preloaded that don't need to be running. Stuff like QuickTime needs to be removed from being preloaded or killed after it loads. The more free RAM you've got, the more will be available to Sacred 2 - which IS a memory hog.. I've checked it's footprint - it likes to use a minimum of 1 GB of RAM for the game client - not including the server.

 

NTFS is not NTFS if you use Windows NT and Windows7. NTFS4, NTFS5, ... The new one can read the old, but the old not the new. But XP, Vista and 7 have no Problems as far as I know and if I remember right.

 

NT 4? Seriously.. That's pretty darn old. Eh.. I suppose there's some people out there still using it. And yes, it doesn't have the ability to see partitions larger than 137 GB - or maybe even smaller than that depending on the version. But for all intents and purposes most people are using XP, Vista or 7. And as long as your XP is SP1 or greater, there shouldn't be any problems with it. And I think most XP users are on SP 2 or 3 by now.

[Stormwing 40]

Wolfie: Running an x64, so limit isn't the issue. Too bad I had to buy a cheap one, when I updated my mobo. Can only hold 2 sticks. Well, gonna bear with what I have until I can update it to betterm with DDR3 memory. Also, looks like I remembered the processor incorrectly; it is only 5400+. Still, adequate enough.

 

About the program, didn't really do that much to my system. Though, truth to be told, there where heaps of things for it to solve.

[chattius 2,523]

You don't buy new stuff you don't know when you work with explosives. Our process controlling machine at work is 6 years old and runs QNX operating system. We need guaranteed response times from the operating system.

Our secretary says she will get retired in 2 years cause of age and there is no need to replace her computer (PentiumPro at 200MHz running NT). Thats the reason I said NTFS is not NTFS. A student doing a summer job last year nearly got killed by the secretary when he used HIS repair disc after a blue screen and not HERs.

[rnarchlord 0]

Just downloaded it but I'm a little wary due to the fact I have dual OS's.

 

Win7 is on one HDD and XP on the other. If I defrag from XP could it screw up things on the Win7 install?

 

I tend to agree with the old saying "if it aint broke don't fix it"

 

Actually Win 7 does continuous defrag in the background or when the system is idle so you shouldn't need to defrag that drive. My Win 7 drive never shows more than 3% fragmented when I check it. And both OSs use the same file system so the XP defrag will work as Stubbie stated.

[chattius 2,523]

Vista and Windows7 do not defrag files which are in use, certain system files, the recovery bin ( always empoty it before doing defrags), pagesys ,.....

They do not defrag files larger than 64MByte.

 

I think you have to force the defragger with -b option (b for at boot) to run before windows takes control on these files ,at least for Vista.

-w is for files larger than 64M (most games)

 

Understanding Windows Vista Disk Defragmenting Utility

 

For XP and 2000 the free PageDefrag was good at boot time system file defragging.

Edited October 5, 2010 by chattius