i heard that defragmenting can be bad for audio files

[Hard2Hear]

I'd never heard of it either until I did it on a customers system, messed it up, repeated the test on another system, spent lots of time griping to Adobe, and re-doing the systems. Ive verified it in testing as well as with the people at Adobe. Their file and directory structure is a house of toothpicks.

 

[acidrock]

IMHO,any program that gets messed up by defragging is pretty worthless.

 

[fraserhutch]

I'd never heard of it either until I did it on a customers system, messed it up, repeated the test on another system, spent lots of time griping to Adobe, and re-doing the systems. Ive verified it in testing as well as with the people at Adobe. Their file and directory structure is a house of toothpicks.

File and directory structure is independent of the actual underlying disk allocation scheme. Defragging should NEVER alter your file and directory structure, only the inodes (or win32 equivalent thereof, sorry, I don't recall the particular term offhand). Any program that is dependent on disk allocation schemes is not only worthless (as mentioned by Acidrock), but potentially harmful.

I have been using Adobe products for years, and I defrag relatively often and have yet to have any issues.

 

[Hard2Hear]

Creative Suite, PremierePro/Audition. Multiple platforms and computers. I can repeat this test over and over and get the same result.

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

Creative Suite, PremierePro/Audition. Multiple platforms and computers. I can repeat this test over and over and get the same result.

If this is indeed the case, then these programs have some severely shitty code running around in 'em...

 

[fraserhutch]

If this is indeed the case, then these programs have some severely shitty code running around in 'em...

Absolutely. Not only have I in all my years as a software engineer never heard of such a thing, but there is NO way I would ever let such code run on any of my machines.

 

[Llarion]

If youre using ADOBE defragging will mess up your files and hose your system. Outside of that, youre better off doing it on a regular basis.

Certainly not in my experience with Audition, CS2, or any other application... Defrag weekly, clean up your temp files regularly, backup regularly. Use a goor registry utility like CCleaner or Tuneup Utilities 2007 to keep your registry and filesystem healthy.

I've never had an issue at all by defragging a drive (that was not already failing). The Adobe license key is stored in the registy and it does not map a physical block on your drive. I've completely migrated Audition sessions and session files from one physical drive to another, and they open reliably every time.