Best HD DeFrag Utility for SONAR ?

[mark4man]

Crew,

In reading Martin Walker's excellent article on hard drive defragmentation for PC musicians (in last month’s S.O.S.), he concluded that, ideally...the major sequencer manufacturers could go a long way in suggesting (or providing) a utility suitable for rearranging audio files on a drive, corresponding to their own particular file system requirements.

Keeping that in mind...I thought I'd ask for member opinions on what the best defrag utility is for SONAR; & why?

I'm running both XL 2.2 & 4 on XP HE; & utilize a separate drive for audio files (at present, that drive is only of a single volume...since it's only 1/3 full.)

Thanks,

mark4man


Dell Dimension 8250 / Windows XP
Intel 850E Motherboard/Chipset
Intel P4 2.53GHz CPU (512 KB L2 Cache, 533 MHz FSB)
1024 MB PC1066 RDRAM
Ultra 60GB Primary HD / Single Volume (OS, Apps, Files/Folders.)
Maxtor DiamondMax 9+ 80GB Secondary HD / Single Volume (Audio Data only)
nVidia 64MB GEFORCE4 MX420 AGP
Echo Audio Layla 24/96 PCI Audio Interface
Universal Audio UAD-1 DSP Plug-In System
KRK Rockit RP-8 Studio Reference Monitors
SONAR XL 2.2
SONAR4
WaveLab 5

[punkin]

bump......

[mark4man]

that's really nice, punkin...

but what does that have to do with the f'in topic?

mark4man

[Rstiltskin]

Originally Posted by mark4man

Crew,

In reading Martin Walker's excellent article on hard drive defragmentation for PC musicians (in last month’s S.O.S.), he concluded that, ideally...the major sequencer manufacturers could go a long way in suggesting (or providing) a utility suitable for rearranging audio files on a drive, corresponding to their own particular file system requirements.

Keeping that in mind...I thought I'd ask for member opinions on what the best defrag utility is for SONAR; & why?

I'm running both XL 2.2 & 4 on XP HE; & utilize a separate drive for audio files (at present, that drive is only of a single volume...since it's only 1/3 full.)

Thanks,

mark4man


Dell Dimension 8250 / Windows XP
Intel 850E Motherboard/Chipset
Intel P4 2.53GHz CPU (512 KB L2 Cache, 533 MHz FSB)
1024 MB PC1066 RDRAM
Ultra 60GB Primary HD / Single Volume (OS, Apps, Files/Folders.)
Maxtor DiamondMax 9+ 80GB Secondary HD / Single Volume (Audio Data only)
nVidia 64MB GEFORCE4 MX420 AGP
Echo Audio Layla 24/96 PCI Audio Interface
Universal Audio UAD-1 DSP Plug-In System
KRK Rockit RP-8 Studio Reference Monitors
SONAR XL 2.2
SONAR4
WaveLab 5

but you want the best....the only ones I would trust to handle NTFS are NORTON, DISKKEEPER, and MS's own.

you MUST know how a defragger will handle a power failure in the middle of the dfrag, and I know these have handled it gracefully in the past.

I don't know of a defrag utility made specifically for any audio software. I think calkwalk has put everything into one project file, no matter how many tracks and midi files, etc. if the different info is all under one directory entry the defragger can only treat it as one file.

If you find out something specific please pm me, as I would be very interested. thanks.

[Qwerty]

Norton is not certified for use on XP - they have not done any development on it and actually EOL'ed it around Windows SP3 timeframe.

DiskKeeper is recognised as the best of breed - whether it is any better at the audio equation or not is a moot point. Most of the standalone utilities allowed you to organise the directory structure so that you could specify which tracks were encoded at the edge of the disk. This was supposed to be the area of the hard drive with the shortest access times.

Bear in mind that this logic was developed over the early and mid 90's when hard drive speeds were significantly lower than today. I seriously doubt this type of configuration would show any sort of substantial improvement in the number of tracks you could handle at low latencies unless you are using 5,400 rpm drives... (even then I would have my doubts).

I haven't read the article you are referring to but I am guessing the author was speculating as to improvements garnered as it related to track interleaving and striping the information to hard drive in the same format as written by the sequencer.

I really can't see making that much of a difference provided you are regularly defragmenting your hard drive using XP. If you aren't defragmenting regularly then I would guess you would see a degradation in the time taken to buffer all the tracks after you have pressed play and before you actually hear any sound.

I'd save my money for some more GEAR!!

So said, there is a shipload of supposition in my post and is largely opinion - (although I was the product manager for the Norton products during the timeframe I talked about up top...)

Ciao,

Q.
Q.

[fraserhutch]

Originally Posted by mark4man

that's really nice, punkin...

but what does that have to do with the f'in topic?

mark4man

Actually, he did that to keep YOUR thread at the top of the list.

Sheesh

[punkin]

Originally Posted by mark4man

that's really nice, punkin...

but what does that have to do with the f'in topic?

mark4man

I too was intested in the topic. I noticed that the thing hadn't gotten a reply and it was falling lower in the list...just didn't want the thread to drop off the map...just wanted to keep it up on top.

Cmon...I'm one of the nice guys.

[mark4man]

punkin...

my sincere apologies !!!

Guess I'm the asshole, here.

mark4man

[mark4man]

Q...

Thanks.

(you know...I've watched your posts over the years & I must say...you've turned into one hell of an engineer.)

(or...maybe you always were...I guess.)

Anyway...XP's stock defrag utility is actually a watered down version of Diskeeper; & doesn't permit the defragging of the Master File Table & various other system files (I know this is only relative to the primary drive...but still troubling...'cause I wanted to also optimize my C drive & move the Cakewalk program files to the outside of the disk in the process.)

I was going to with the full version of Diskeeper; & then realized that Speed Disk (which I have on my machine as part of Norton System Works 2004) was also recognized as a premier app in this area; & that I was able to configure optimization to locate select folders/files to the outside of the disk.

So I did...& I understand what you're saying about technically not making a difference...but I have seen a quantitative performance benefit (for both SONAR & my basic OS functionality.)

And also...I think you're correct (in paragraph 4 of your post.)

Thanks (& also thanks to Rstiltskin); & I'm glad positive consensus points toward Symantec. If anybody wants to know how to configure Speed Disk for (what I believe to be) better audio performance...I'll be happy to share.

mark4man

[Qwerty]

Originally Posted by mark4man

Q...

Thanks.

(you know...I've watched your posts over the years & I must say...you've turned into one hell of an engineer.)

mark4man

Once again proving that you CAN fool some of the people some of the time!

Q.

[Rstiltskin]

Originally Posted by mark4man

Q...

Thanks.

(you know...I've watched your posts over the years & I must say...you've turned into one hell of an engineer.)

(or...maybe you always were...I guess.)

Anyway...XP's stock defrag utility is actually a watered down version of Diskeeper; & doesn't permit the defragging of the Master File Table & various other system files (I know this is only relative to the primary drive...but still troubling...'cause I wanted to also optimize my C drive & move the Cakewalk program files to the outside of the disk in the process.)

I was going to with the full version of Diskeeper; & then realized that Speed Disk (which I have on my machine as part of Norton System Works 2004) was also recognized as a premier app in this area; & that I was able to configure optimization to locate select folders/files to the outside of the disk.

So I did...& I understand what you're saying about technically not making a difference...but I have seen a quantitative performance benefit (for both SONAR & my basic OS functionality.)

And also...I think you're correct (in paragraph 4 of your post.)

Thanks (& also thanks to Rstiltskin); & I'm glad positive consensus points toward Symantec. If anybody wants to know how to configure Speed Disk for (what I believe to be) better audio performance...I'll be happy to share.

mark4man

digital audio and video files, i think (if I'm not out of date). They (The Hearsay Experts for You) always used to say 42k or whatever, as big as you can go, rather than 2k.

big clusters are very ineficient for lots of small files, like word processing, but can speed things up on long strings of bits (audio or video).

I would be interested in Qwerty's opinion on this. Ya know, I once talked to Paul Mace, over the phone. Really.

I was very interested in your post.

Mark4man, thanks for your thanks, but not necessary, glad to help, if it is help.

[punkin]

Originally Posted by mark4man

punkin...

my sincere apologies !!!

Guess I'm the asshole, here.

mark4man

Too harsh on yourself...it's all good. This format of communication can sometimes twist the intent.

You get a rep point for the concern and for the valuable stuff you've posted on this subject.

[Qwerty]

Originally Posted by Rstiltskin

big clusters are very ineficient for lots of small files, like word processing, but can speed things up on long strings of bits (audio or video).

That seems to be the collective wisdom.

Again - being a cheapskate bastard and knowing how many small files I create and knowing how much slack space is then wasted by a large cluster size, I have never actually performed an A/B test with a normal cluster size.

My gut feel says that modern hard drive technology is fast enough that I don't have to care. Therefore, I just use whatever quiet-ish, large 7200 rpm drives I can lay my hands on and save my real $$ for audio gear.

Ciao,

Q.

[punkin]

I donno...my interest in this topic has been non existent until recently...I've got several hard drives which have been lumbering along but lately I've taken on a couple larger project and the drives are filling up...less than 10% remaining...thing have really slowed down. Previously I would have been with you on that it didn't seem to matter but now that I'm running a little leaner, defrag seems to help but then things sort of pile up again. There's a sweet spot there somewhere.

Looking at a couple 300GB SATA drive to "deal with it" right now.