Disk management

[adamnp]

Hey fellas, i'm hoping someone here might be able to help me out, I'm drawing a bit of a blank of how I can do what I want todo here.

 

I use a program called 'DiscKeeper' to run onboot defrag's and to maintain our discs, it works wonderfully.

 

The only issue is, it does not allow for me to set more than 1 scheduled boot defrag. (I can't make them recurring) I can login, set it to run 15 days from now, and it will reboot the system and run...But the next time again, I need to re schedule that.

 

As you can see, what I'm attempting todo is take this off my workload, and have it automated, the developers of the program obviously told me to go search for golfballs in the lake.

 

I'm just curious if any of you might be able to shed some light on how I can achieve this, as the number of machines I have is growing weekly and this 15 minute task is now taking hours.

 

Thanks in advance fellas! Check out the app too if you haven't already, it works great.

 

Adam

[JasonF]

Have you just tried the regular Task Manager built into Windows?

[Todd Holley]

My disks are defragmented once a week and it is scheduled with Scheduled Tasks. It works perfectly.

[adamnp]

Yeah, I don't use the windows disk defragmenter for a few reasons, mainly a good defrag is done with nothing running, as running processes can't be moved.

 

This is why I love this program and its ability to defrag on boot (Defrags before windows starts)

[JasonF]

Adam, could the software be set to defrag after it is exec? If so have the scheduled tasks call that program 1 time a week.

[adamnp]

It can, I just don't want it to be. I want it to run prior to windows is booted...Thats my issue

[studeggle]

I would look into your command line options for the program. More then likely, and it might take some experimenting if the programer issn't being helpfull, you could write a simple bat file to handle scheduling the task. Then create a scheduled task to run the bat as often as needed.

[HIS-MOTHER]

Or just make a .bat file with the line "defrag.exe c:" or drive letter u want defragged. Put "pause on the next line. Set this as a task in windows.

 

As long as you don't set it to close you can see it was succesfully defragged next time you login to the box. Remove the pause for it to close when complete.

 

Disckeeper uses alot of resources IMHO.

 

Studeggle beat me to it he just left out the code.

[adamnp]

I was thinking way over the line here, I simply did what you guys stated, made a batch to run commandline, and then added that batch tothe autoexec.

 

Walla

 

Works like a charm!

Thanks for the brain-burp :] Appreciate it!

[kalyse]

Then you removed it afterwards?

 

Your server still needs to be rebooted?

 

Just to see.. You are doing

Schedules Task - once every week

shutdown -r -f -t 0

 

autoexec

defrag.exe c:

 

Slight problem that it runs everytime you reboot, but that can be fixed easily anyway, I just wanna see if thats what your doing.

[adamnp]

no, made another batch file thats scheduled to run first, then another that runsshortly after thats been executed (I have it set for 6 hours later), the first one renames the program-run batch to the file in the autoexec, the second one renames it to a different name....so therefor the file just gets flopped from name to name and it will run from autoexec if its present, and wont run if its not.

 

Haha, butch style!

[Monk]

In all honesty, it's a waste of time to defragment servers these days. Why? Because most of the time, you're reading from the drive, not writing to it (game servers read more than they write). Plus ntfs is designed to reduce file fragmentation when it writes to the drive..

 

Drives over the years have gotten faster, more memory, bigger platters, faster platter speeds, so therefor any negative impacts from 'filesystem fragmentation' are not even noticeable, only in microanalysis.

 

The best thing you can do to keep your machines running in decent shape is to reboot it every once in awhile (windows).

[adamnp]

Hmm, thanks for the reply Gary, one last question.

 

while NTFS and most *ix filesystems are designed to decrease liklyhood of fragmentation on the drive,

combined with modern improvements such as RAM Cache, the faster platter rotation speeds, and mainly the

large capacity of discs today, isn't it still safe to say that a somewhat routinely defrag should be

maintained? The majority of files I see that are all over, are game log files. Talking mainly about our

machines that house our insanely utilized public servers, once I delete these logs during our routine

cleanup I notice that the disc access times are increased, mainly I figured this would get worse over time

which is why I add it to a routine cleanup task.

 

Also, would this still apply to a smaller disc, say a 37GB SCSI that is near full?

 

Even though I knew what you stated, I guess I never put 2 and 2 together. Hmm!! Time to throw away dos

 

Am I completely wrong here? Or is what I'm doing just not completely necessary?

[TheHeartSmasher]

I'd suggest keeping up the regular defraging, as without it the harddrive will get fragmented with the large zip files and other system and user files that over time it may cause disk error that are not fixable or cause data corruption which will slowly lead up to an OS reload or putting in a new hard drive.

[jbiloh]

I would recommend defragging the drives if your on Windows Adam.

 

I know when we used 74GB/36GB SCSI's we always had issues like that on Windows.

 

PS: TheHeartSmasher, how can I contact you off board?

[Monk]

I'd suggest keeping up the regular defraging, as without it the harddrive will get fragmented with the large zip files and other system and user files that over time it may cause disk error that are not fixable or cause data corruption which will slowly lead up to an OS reload or putting in a new hard drive.

 

This is not possible.

[Monk]

Hmm, thanks for the reply Gary, one last question.

 

while NTFS and most *ix filesystems are designed to decrease liklyhood of fragmentation on the drive,

combined with modern improvements such as RAM Cache, the faster platter rotation speeds, and mainly the

large capacity of discs today, isn't it still safe to say that a somewhat routinely defrag should be

maintained? The majority of files I see that are all over, are game log files. Talking mainly about our

machines that house our insanely utilized public servers, once I delete these logs during our routine

cleanup I notice that the disc access times are increased, mainly I figured this would get worse over time

which is why I add it to a routine cleanup task.

 

Also, would this still apply to a smaller disc, say a 37GB SCSI that is near full?

 

Even though I knew what you stated, I guess I never put 2 and 2 together. Hmm!! Time to throw away dos

 

Am I completely wrong here? Or is what I'm doing just not completely necessary?

 

I would defragment once in awhile, but not all the time. Defragmenting IDE drives can hinder I/O because most IDE/SATA suck at writing to disk, because tagged command queuing can't disconnect during a write, only a ready, so writes serialize and reads don't. On SCSI neither reads nor writes serialize, at least when you get to your tagged command queue depth.

 

Personally, I'd just try and run drives with smaller platters, as opposed to drives with large platters and large cache tables. Smaller drives win, because they have less moving parts and are generally good for the system.

 

If you want to get creative, and have the money, get some solid state disk arrays, then you won't have to worry about any rotational delays

[Daersun]

Actually for about $800 you can get a 2xi-Rams fully loadded in raid 0 (only 8gb)

 

The graphs were like 14000x the speed of HDs

[TheHeartSmasher]

This is not possible.

 

You would be surprised what problems the zip files can cause over time. The defrag utility does not come with Windows for nothing most systems will do well with little to no fragmentation of the hard drives and others will not. It very simple to test just run an analysis with defrag one in a while if you see the that the amount fragmentation is the same or increases then that particular drive needs to be defragged more often.

 

A really old but reliable article on why you should defrag your hard drives. As for systems that need OS reloads would be systems that are constantly accessed but the hard drive defragmentation is never done. Which can leave almost 90% of the drive being fragmented, including the pagefile. You can attempt to recover by taking running diskeeper on the drive but if the MFT get's corrupt, and other 3rd party or Windows tools, cannot fix the corruption. Most of the data you put on that drive will return a CRC error, or in some cases stop responding during the transfer of files. Some may say defragging is not necessary which it is not if you do not receive any fragmentation on your hard drives.

[Monk]

If the MFT is corrupt, it won't cause CRC errors. The worst thing that can happen is the MFT will stop working correctly and then your drive will become more fragmented, because the MFT's main job is to prevent filesystem fragmentation.

 

You have a better chance of the harddrive having a mechanical failure and crashing than having the drive 'die' because of filesystem fragmentation.