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Old 05-11-2009, 01:33 PM
cwm9 cwm9 is offline
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Join Date: May 2009
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Quote:
When you defrag your drive using a file level defragger - only the files within that current snapshot would be defragged. Why would you NOT want to defrag your system at the baseline?
Because I maintain multiple frameworks that I work in on a regular basis because they interfere with each other, and because I often want to roll back to uninstall some software without losing these alternative frameworks.


For example, I have one snapshot that contains only my CNC (Computer Numerical Control) software which drives my automated milling machine. This snapshot has just a few drivers installed, and cannot have any other software installed because the other software almost always has some sort of dongle protection or other drivers which can interfere with the very delicate precision timing needed to correctly control my steel cutting system. When the computer is cutting through steel, that is not a good time for the computer to decide to lock up for a few seconds!

I have another snapshot that contains my engineering software, but all of that software has a lot of dongle-drivers and other things that cannot co-exist with the CNC snapshot. I don't use this snapshot on a regular basis because all of the drivers have a bad habit of freezing the system.

I have a third snapshot which is my general purpose snapshot that I play games with and do my web surfing in.

Because I spend almost all of my time in my general purpose snapshot, I'd like to be able to defrag it without losing the other snapshots. Since the snapshot is only 30GB in size but is stored on a 1TB hard drive, I couldn't care less if I lost 30GB in order to defrag the drive.


I use multiple 1TB drives to store my data in, so my system partitions remain very small, on the order of 10-50GB.


I think eventually I will just upgrade to a solid state drive for my system drive, and then the whole question of defragmenting will be moot, but the technology is not qute mature enough for me to jump into it just yet.



My understanding of RB is that it will only redirect a sector if that sector is already occupied. After a RB defrag, the end of the drive is always free. Therefore, if I defrag each framework "to the end of the drive", all the files should be properly ordered and deframented. When I then have RB do an internal defrag, it will reposition the data to the front of the drive at the start of free space in the same order, preserving the defrag. I can then move on to the next framework and repeat. I will loose about 100GB of my remaining 600GB, but so what? I have 6TB worth of hard drives, and another hard drive is only $90. Of course, this means I have to move every single file on the drive twice to get a good defrag, plus each framework will occupy a different location on the HD, but at least in the end I will have a defragmented file system that boots quickly and the ability to switch back and forth fluidly between snapshots.

The alternative is to have three hard drives, each with a different framework, and RB installed on each. That means I have to purchase 3 HDs, 3 copies of RB, and have to select which HD to boot from each time I turn the computer on. It also means I lose the ability to transfer data between frameworks easily via the "explore snapshot" feature.

Saving space might be important for some of your customers, but not to me...
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