# defrag on RAID-0?



## steiner666 (Aug 27, 2008)

I used diskeeper (latest version) to defrag my raid0 array.  Whenever I do, the next time i reboot it just sits at the vista loading bar screen for an indefinite amount of time.  I restart it in safe mode and it loads up the desktop, then i restart into normal mode just fine.  I'm wondering what could be causing this and what I could do to prevent it.  I'm constantly installing/uninstalling programs on this array and I'm very picky about keeping drive defragmented, so I'd like to know a better way to defrag my RAID0.  Thanks


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## Lillebror (Aug 27, 2008)

You dont have to defrag much - once a month on a heavy used machine is more than enough


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## kenkickr (Aug 27, 2008)

Have you tried defraggler?  Nice, simple utility:  www.defraggler.com


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## steiner666 (Aug 27, 2008)

kenkickr said:


> Have you tried defraggler?  Nice, simple utility:  www.defraggler.com



No, but that does look like a pretty convenient programs, I'm a sucker for non-installing small exe utilities 

I know I defrag more often than i probably need to, but even so, I just really want to know what the best defragger is for RAID-0.  Most ppl I've talked to say that it doesn't make a difference because everything but your RAID controller see it as a single drive.  Obviously it does matter though since my next reboot always messes up when i do.  And I would think that a defragger that works at the hardware level with the controller would be best since it would be able to not only put the files together properly, but know where the individual drives start and end to position them for faster access... I dunno.  Guess I'll google some more for now...


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## Pinchy (Aug 27, 2008)

I just use windows defragger, lol.


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## Scrizz (Aug 28, 2008)

Pinchy said:


> I just use windows defragger, lol.



same


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## ntdouglas (Aug 28, 2008)

Well, try windows defrag and see what happens.


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## thebeephaha (Aug 28, 2008)

Pinchy said:


> I just use windows defragger, lol.



Eessh... there are free ones that do a better job...

Personally I dislike diskeeper, I prefer O&O.


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## Pinchy (Aug 28, 2008)

thebeephaha said:


> Eessh... there are free ones that do a better job...



LOL Hey it works OK ...


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## Scrizz (Aug 28, 2008)

I like how it does it automatically


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## theeldest (Aug 28, 2008)

JKDefrag is my personal favorite

Wikipedia Page

Author's Page


It's a very lightweight app that runs quickly. It's designed to be a scheduled task. Here's a quote from the site that describes what I like about it:

"However, defragmenting and optimizing is work, so excessive defragmenting and optimizing can actually cause more wear and tear than it prevents. JkDefrag is therefore set for "fast" optimization by default, intended to be used on a daily basis. The other optimizations should only be used occasionally."

It's made to run everyday. It does a light defrag on a daily basis. I've got it set to run once a day, it takes about 2 min to cover 500GB.


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## mab1376 (Aug 28, 2008)

Maximum PC did an article about defraggers

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/the_disk_defrag_difference



> Don’t Waste Your Money or Time!
> 
> You shouldn’t break the bank for negligible performance gains
> 
> ...


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## alexp999 (Aug 28, 2008)

I dont even both degragging now i have vista, it does it for you, when your PC is idle. Thats another reason why the HDD light never seems to go out.


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## DiskeeperRep (Aug 28, 2008)

steiner666 said:


> I used diskeeper (latest version) to defrag my raid0 array.



Hi,
Just a couple of questions: 
Has SP1 been installed on your Vista installation? 

Are you using the latest build (781) of Diskeeper 2008? If not, can you update to build 781 and check if the problem persists?



> And I would think that a defragger that works at the hardware level with the controller would be best since it would be able to not only put the files together properly, but know where the individual drives start and end to position them for faster access... I dunno



A defragmenter functions  at the file system level; it cannot not directly communicate with the drive controller and ask it to place files at specific blocks on the platter. If you are interested, these white papers describes disk I/O and fragmentation in a RAID environment.
http://downloads.diskeeper.com/pdf/new-storage-technologies.pdf
http://files.diskeeper.com/pdf/FileFragmentation_SANsNASandRAID.pdf

Hope this helps.


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## steiner666 (Aug 28, 2008)

DiskeeperRep said:


> Hi,
> Just a couple of questions:
> Has SP1 been installed on your Vista installation?
> 
> ...



Thanks for the information.  I ran diskeeper last night (it is the most up-to-date build) and rebooted immediately after it completed and encountered no problems getting back into the OS this time.  Pretty weird how it started working w/o me really doing anything to fix the issue, but I'm not going to complain.

One thing I did do was disable the system restore.  I like having it to fall back on, but I felt that my disk usage was a bit high, even considering all the programs i have installed.  Sure enough, I disabled system restore and I went from having ~260GB free to ~325GB... quite the difference.  I'm wondering why it's using so much space when I haven't even had this Vista installation up and running for a week yet.  Maybe something to do with the shadowing feature?  I also remember there being a notificaiton is diskeeper there can be issues with drives with shadowing enabled, something about size increasing with defrags.

Anyways, for now it all defragmented and running good.  I will probably just buy another drive in the near future to preform incremental backups on rather than messing around with this system restore stuff, but I'd like some way of having restore enabled but not so storage-hogging until then.


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## DiskeeperRep (Aug 29, 2008)

steiner666 said:


> Thanks for the information.  I ran diskeeper last night (it is the most up-to-date build) and rebooted immediately after it completed and encountered no problems getting back into the OS this time.  Pretty weird how it started working w/o me really doing anything to fix the issue, but I'm not going to complain.
> 
> One thing I did do was disable the system restore.  I like having it to fall back on, but I felt that my disk usage was a bit high, even considering all the programs i have installed.  Sure enough, I disabled system restore and I went from having ~260GB free to ~325GB... quite the difference.  I'm wondering why it's using so much space when I haven't even had this Vista installation up and running for a week yet.  Maybe something to do with the shadowing feature?  I also remember there being a notificaiton is diskeeper there can be issues with drives with shadowing enabled, something about size increasing with defrags.
> 
> Anyways, for now it all defragmented and running good.  I will probably just buy another drive in the near future to preform incremental backups on rather than messing around with this system restore stuff, but I'd like some way of having restore enabled but not so storage-hogging until then.



No problem. Glad to be of help.
Yes, you are right about shadow copy and defrag. Unfortunately, there is an 'issue' with Vista shadow copy and defragmentation (not specific to DK) on Vista volumes that are formatted with a cluster size of less than 16kB. It's a carry over from Windows Server 2003, and also affects Windows Home Server. Briefly, the defrag file movement process triggers creation of shadow copies, which may grow quickly and purge older ones. This is explained better at the links below. Diskeeper's special VSS compatible defrag mode minimizes defrag file movement to an extent and tries to preserve shadow copies, at the cost of some  'thoroughness' of the defrag.

http://www.diskeeperblog.com/archives/2007/12/dk08_feature_sp.html
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312067


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