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[d0wnlab]

QUOTE (Sauron-Jin @ Jun 20 2004, 12:31 AM)

dankydoo, please, don't talk about defrag if you don't know how it works, the truth is that if you can actually use a harddrive in a system, then the system is capable of defrag that harddrive, faster or slower, but capable.

He still had a valid point to make, so what's wrong with his post.

and.. I really don't get why my earlier post doesn't effectively summarize how a defrag utility works.

QUOTE

it works from the start of the disk to the end, and every time it hits a sector (might be wrong terminology, not sure) that's not in the right place, it moves it to a free sectore somewhere else on disk. It replaces it with the proper sector.

[skel924]

Darn I accidently clicked null vote, wasn't thinking. My answer is actually YES, so add one more.

my hard drive crashed on me a few days ago. could this have anything to do with a very cheap white label drive being too fragmented, and therefore stressing with the many seeking operations it had to perform over time? i dont know but id certainly like to overrule it just incase... I'd love a defragmenter for that reason.

same for a chkdisk

[stevenr2185]

I know this is probably not possible...  But could you map the xbox drives to your computer and try to defragment that way?  I am too smart with stuff like this, but it seems like it might work.

[dankydoo]

QUOTE (Sauron-Jin @ Jun 19 2004, 11:31 PM)

dankydoo, please, don't talk about defrag if you don't know how it works, the truth is that if you can actually use a harddrive in a system, then the system is capable of defrag that harddrive, faster or slower, but capable. I will not enter into details, but this is TRUE. To write a program to do this is another story   If Team AVA or someone else has not released a defrag utility yet, i suppose it is because it must requiere knowledge of how FatX filesystem works or something like that, and this project will not be much trial-error friendly   My vote is for "YES", A program like this would be really welcome and useful for me.

I never denied knowing how defrag works.  I didn't spell it out because it can be readily found on the internet.  Im only saying, that it is very complicated and many complications can arise.  Why do you think there isn't already a defragger?  Not because it is easy, but because it can ruin the data on a drive.  If anyone can do it, Im sure that team Avalaunch can, and they have stated repeatedly that they are working on it, they are highly skilled and very knowledgable about many different things.   I also was saying that it can't be partially complete or experimental because if people start losing data, they will start to complain and accuse the writer of the defragger of not paying attention to this or that.  Would you wanna be the person getting flamed for that???  I don't think so.

[antiflag1980]

Dude that's the most fragmented drive I've ever seen.  Where is the 19% free space?

[BlueCELL]

Hello,

Im guessing you guys dont understand how it all works.

First of all this is how a Drive becomes Fragmented.

A - File 1 (3 Bytes)
B - File 2 (8 Bytes)
C - File 3 (6 Bytes)
D - File 4 (6 Bytes)
E - File 5 (12 Bytes)

DOTS ... << Free Space

Now lets say we have a Brand New HardDrive and we wrote the files to the Hard Drive in order, so it looks like this

AAABBBBBBBBCCCCCCDDDDDD..................

Ok, so now you delete File 2 which is letter "B", so now the Hard Drive Looks like this

AAA........CCCCCCDDDDDD..................

Now everything is still good and Dandy, but lets say we add File 5 (which will be represented by letter "E", which has 12 Bytes).

Ok so what the Xbox will do is add the First 8 Bytes in the Open place off the Hard Drive and the rest at the next aviable space.  So it would look like this

AAAEEEEEEEECCCCCCDDDDDDEEEE..............

Ok, Now File 5 ("E") Is Fragmented into 2 Parts.  So now the Hard Drive would have to read the First Part then the Second Part.  Now the more Fragmented Parts of a file the longer it would take to read that File.

So now the Defragger Program goes in and ReArragnes the Fragmented File(s).  Ok now this part I guess seems Pretty Simple.  But here comes the interesting Part.  Each and Every Hard Drive with a File System has something called the Master File Table (MFT).  

Now this MFT keeps a Record of ALL the files on the Hard Drive, it also contains Files Offset and Lengths and Read/Write Stuff.  Not sure how the FATX File System works but as far as NTFS whenever you first format a Hard Drive the MFT gets Reserved 13.5% of the Paritions Size (Just to give you an Idea 13.5% from a 120gb Hard Drive would be 13.5gb). Now If you have more Files then the 13.5% of Paritions Space can hold the MTF becomes Fragmented too.  This is where it all becomes super tricky because you have to know where to Read/Write from and if you messed up once then pretty much the hole Hard Drive can be Reformatted.

Ok with all that said this will give you a pretty good idea of how it all works.  Just Storing the MTF would be hard and then managing each Seperate File, its just crazy.

If I'm wrong please feel free to correct me!

BlueCELL

[BlueCELL]

I could go into more Detail about the Clusters and Everything but I dont have the time right now, maybe later...If yall have any more questions please feel free to ask!

BlueCELL

[Monoxboogie]

If your HDD is really fragmented, do as previously suggested...copy the contents of your drive to another machine.  Delete them from the Xbox hard drive.  Copy the files back to the Xbox hard drive.  Hell; that's how we had to (still have to?) do it with a Mac.

Other than that...

Wait for a defragmenter to come out.  

As for claims that defragmentation may not speed things up; that may or may not be true.  It depends on quite a few things...size and speed of the drive are very important.  People have claimed that 7200 RPM HDDs have little if any speed difference based on fragmentation level.  I don't exactly buy into that; I still defrag my SCSI drives, and they're much quicker than any IDE HDD out there.  Also, whoever made that claim; your drive is NTFS, not FAT X.  NTFS is quite a bit more complicated, and as such, has some ways to manage file loading speed issues and the like.

[adil786]

QUOTE (Monoxboogie @ Jul 15 2004, 11:12 PM)

If your HDD is really fragmented, do as previously suggested...copy the contents of your drive to another machine.  Delete them from the Xbox hard drive.  Copy the files back to the Xbox hard drive.  Hell; that's how we had to (still have to?) do it with a Mac. Other than that... Wait for a defragmenter to come out.   As for claims that defragmentation may not speed things up; that may or may not be true.  It depends on quite a few things...size and speed of the drive are very important.  People have claimed that 7200 RPM HDDs have little if any speed difference based on fragmentation level.  I don't exactly buy into that; I still defrag my SCSI drives, and they're much quicker than any IDE HDD out there.  Also, whoever made that claim; your drive is NTFS, not FAT X.  NTFS is quite a bit more complicated, and as such, has some ways to manage file loading speed issues and the like.

good post,

i would have expected one to be out to be used with a linux distro as more and more peeps are getting big hds and filling it up so needs to be defragmented to let it run more smoothly.

[BlueCELL]

Antiflag....Why dont Linux need to be Defragged?  I cant argue w/ you b/c I dont know jack about there FS.

BlueCELL

[devlkore]

Couldn't the X, Y and Z drives be used as storage for the data that was being re-arranged/sorted, along with the memory of the Xbox, wouldn't that be enough space for a defragger to run?

I'm not assuming that it's that simple, otherwise we'd have a working defragger by now, but couldn't using the temp drives of the Xbox make it a lot easier to do (defrag).

[BlueCELL]

Not exactly sure how big the XYZ Drives are but there not over 1 GB and even if they are it would still be to small.  Because think about it, todays huge 120-200+ GB harddrives..64MB of Ram and few Gb of XYZ.

I mean yes it would help but alot of work.

BlueCELL

[devlkore]

QUOTE (BlueCELL @ Jul 31 2004, 05:16 PM)

Not exactly sure how big the XYZ Drives are but there not over 1 GB and even if they are it would still be to small.  Because think about it, todays huge 120-200+ GB harddrives..64MB of Ram and few Gb of XYZ. I mean yes it would help but alot of work. BlueCELL

I'm pretty sure the X,Y and Z drives are 768MB each, which would give us over 2GB of "swap file" and 64MB of RAM. How much space is really needed?

I figure that the amount of space probably isn't a percentage thing because only so much data can be sorted at once anyway, so even with a 200GB HD, if the Xbox copies files from all over the HD (fragmented) into the XYZ drives in order then puts them at the beginning of the HD and so on, would it be feasible?

I guess that's what defragging is anyway, but how long would it take?

Thanks for your input BlueCELL.

BYEEEEE!!

[x-monkey]

Here is a easy way if you dont find a defrager..
Copy all the files you want to a pc.
Then reformat the partion that needs defraging,
Copy the files you want on pc over to xbox.

It may take a lot of time and work but it will get the job done :-)

[Heet]

No offense dude, but that's blatantly obvious.