Well jwl812,
 
what you are describing is definetly not caused by NTFS. If you have any kind of respectable hardware you would not be able to notice the difference without some kind of makeshift test that some benchmark utility managed to conjure up, with no real possibility of occurring under normal operation of a computer. Even on 3D games
 
I suggest you look somewhere else. amount of files etc is usually a good reason and manages to degrade even the fastest UW SCSI drives.
 
For one simple example. If you have a 100GB Drive; standart cache settings for IE will take %10 of it as cache. Can you calculate the amount of 1Kb cookies or 5 Kb Jpegs or html to fill that up???
 
Try deleting some of your games, (you can't possibly be playing them all) clean out your Temp folders and use any defrag. How good they are does not affect the performance of your machine as an end result. Windows Defragger will do just fine for the moment. It doesn't screw anything up which is the important bit.
 
About Fat32, well i don't even remember number of times i had to rebuild partitions or to do a low level format because of that piece of crap. stick yo NTFS. Anyway you need to format to go back to Fat32.

"It's not the best defragger in the world but since you only have like 2 other alternatives when it comes to NTFS defragmentation tools it not too bad."
 
There are actually 7 commercial products capable of defragmenting NTFS partitions:
 
PerfectDisk - www.raxco.com
Diskeeper - www.execsoft.com
O&O Defrag - www.oo-defrag.com
FixIt Suite from Ontrack - www.ontrack.com
SpeedDisk (part of Norton Utilities or SystemWorks) - www.symantec.com
VoptXP - www.vopt.com
Defrag Commander - www.winternals.com
 
- Greg/Raxco Software
 
Disclaimer: I work for Raxco Software, the maker of PerfectDisk and a competitor to the defrag products listed above, as a systems engineer in the support department.

"The interface/GUI doesn't look quite as good, but that's just a minor quibble.
 
It can't move the swap file to the beginning of the partition."
 
What is the significance of placing the swap file at the beginning of the partition? As a hard drive is comprised of several platters and defragmenting occurs at the logical cluster level, where is the beginning of the partition? On which platter?
 
"Some people would argue that it isn't possible for defraggers to move folders like SD under 9x used to, but that is complete & utter BS."
 
On NTFS partitions, folders can be defragmented online. It is technically possible for any defragmenter that uses Microsoft's defrag APIs to defragment folders and consolidate them. Whether they choose to do so or not is a different issue. On FATx partitions, directories can only be done at boot time.
 
- Greg/Raxco Software
 
Disclaimer: I work for Raxco Software, the maker of PerfectDisk - a commercial defrag utility, as a systems engineer in the support department.

Quote:
What is the significance of placing the swap file at the beginning of the partition? As a hard drive is comprised of several platters and defragmenting occurs at the logical cluster level, where is the beginning of the partition? On which platter?If it's @ the beginnning of the partition [howver that's defined] & a fixed size, then it doesn't get in the way of other files.Quote:On NTFS partitions, folders can be defragmented online. It is technically possible for any defragmenter that uses Microsoft's defrag APIs to defragment folders and consolidate them. Whether they choose to do so or not is a different issue. On FATx partitions, directories can only be done at boot time.Well I use FAT32, & as I already stated I've proven that folders can be sorted whilst windows is running. Ok, so my method does involve a little cheating & wouldn't work on ALL folders, such as system ones like Windows, but for others it works just fine. There are a couple of drawbacks to my method, but then I'm not a programmer, so I'm sure someone else could figure it out. I've fogotten the exact details of how I did it as it was a while ago & I have no incentive to repeat the experiment. One of the possible drawback to it [aside from not being able to use it on system/protected folders] was that it would leave the folder with a different time & date of creation, though I know that can be tweaked as well.

back to the original problem... is disk logging active
did u instal ms office's llama find fast?
the 2 together wreak havoc

"If it's @ the beginnning of the partition [howver that's defined] & a fixed size, then it doesn't get in the way of other files."
 
Then by definition, if the pagefile is contiguous any other place on the partition then it is also not in the way of other files
 
 
"Well I use FAT32, & as I already stated I've proven that folders can be sorted whilst windows is running."
 
Using Microsoft's defrag APIs under NT4, Win2k and WinXP - No. Under Win9x/Me - Yes. SpeedDisk under NT4 and Win2k doesn't use Microsoft's defrag APIs and is able to consolidate directories online. Under WinXP, SpeedDisk uses Microsoft's defrag APIs and therefore can't consolidate directories on FATx partitions.
 
- Greg/Raxco Software

Quote:
Then by definition, if the pagefile is contiguous any other place on the partition then it is also not in the way of other files Not necessarily. If the swap file is the only file over about 10MB or so then you'd be right, but if you have some large files, eg video, then it may end up that the defragger decides that the startpoint for a file should be @ a specific point [due to what area it should reside on the HDD because of filetype or last date of access or whatever it's basing it's decisions on for file placement] & that point happens to be less then the file's size away from the beggining of the swap file then you end up with a fragmented file. Basically, having the swap file @ the beginning of the partition/drive means that the defragger [& the file system] doesn't have to work around the swap file.

Surely I can't be the only 1 to see the logic in this?Quote:Using Microsoft's defrag APIs under NT4, Win2k and WinXP - No. Under Win9x/Me - Yes. SpeedDisk under NT4 and Win2k doesn't use Microsoft's defrag APIs and is able to consolidate directories online. Under WinXP, SpeedDisk uses Microsoft's defrag APIs and therefore can't consolidate directories on FATx partitions.Exactly! I never said that what I wanted was a defragger to do what I wanted & to use MS's API - I just said that I wanted them to do it - I don't care how!

Alien, his response is simply stating that:
 
A. You are handling the swap file on a logical level rather than on a physical level, so rotational speed will not enhance the I/O of the file by "moving" it anywhere (which you aren't), and
 
B. Having the file in a contiguous state is far more important than fiddle around with the logical location of it.
 
I understand what you are driving at, but from what I have read over the last few years the concept of parking the swap (or any) file on a specific location on a partition is minimal at best, especially considering the I/O of even the slowest systems being released. Personally, I would (and usually do unless an app whines, *cough* Photoshop *cough*) can the swap file anyway if it isn't needed, and not fiddle with it.

ne one who still likes fat 32 hasn't gotten a big hard drive yet
i have an 80 gig and a 120 drive and a 150 gig raid array. You can't make a fat 32 partition over 32 gigs what a friggin joke. NTFS has security. It is the NT File System, FAT32 is really only there for backward compatability.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it simply disappears in the next version of Windows...

it outta disappear. how many people here run a min swapfile
just to keep the system happy

What's that got to do with what file system you're using?

Here's my pennyworth. I'm currently making preparations to change my Win2K FAT32 partitions to NTFSs. I've studied a number of detailed books on Win2K and the file systems and these are some of the facts I discovered:
 
1. If you originally had FAT32 partitions and you converted to NTFS by using the Convert command, then you will certainly permanently slow down your hard drive. This is because Convert will leave the Master File Table spread all over your partition, rather than in a neat contiguous block at the beginning. The MFT holds all the information about individual files. Instead, to convert, you should use Format. This also puts a buffer zone next to the MFT, so further reducing fragmentation of the MFT.
 
2. Even with careful formatting, an NTFS partition might not still run as fast as its FAT32 equivalent. You're likely to get slower NTFS operation with smallish hard disk size and where you're using lots of small files (and so the MFT is used that much more).
 
 
Although I've been spending a lot of time planning my conversion, I'm still wondering whether it's going to be worth it. I think the main advantage of NTFS will be in its better file recovery features, slightly better overall reliability, and ability to handle partitions in excess of 32GB. Beyond that, I can't see a really valid reason for using NTFS on a standalone machine.

There's a program that comes with the OEM Tools that will when run will format your FAT32 partition so that in the future if you decide to convert to NTFS then it will convert to the proper 4KB clustersize instead of the 512b Cluster size. It's pretty neat, also give's people an opportunity to test out both without having to repartition.

I have formatted, reformatted and reformatted again and installed XP on both NTFS and FAT32. FAT32 is noticably faster. Program launch times are less than half. My hardware is a 1.2gh Athlon T-bird, 384mb Ram, VIA KT133 system chipset, Geforce 2 Mx400 video card, 40Gb Quantum Fireball. I have noticed a huge performance difference between FAT32 and NTFS. I ran some HDD benchmarks on both files systems and NTFS cant come close to FAT32. I hate to say it but NTFS ain't all that. Just because M$ says it better doesnt mean a thing to me. NTFS runs like shite on my machine. FAT32 screams and I never had a problem on my older Windows 9X machines using FAT32. Its a tried and true system that has never failed me before. When or if FAT32 screws me then I will switch. Thanks for everyones input.

As stated by Hat Monster on www.arstechnica.com :
 

Quote:You want to go from a modern, hard linking, journalling, secure and reliable file system to an FS that routinely loses data, is a clumsy extension of a fifteen year old dinosaur, has no security to speak of and performs directory operations like it's on a PIO-0 1,100RPM hard disk? 

 
Your choice of course.

It's all very well you lot criticising jwl812 and producing quotes of one sort or another, but not one of you has produced a shred of evidence that NTFS is at least as fast as FAT32, or is only marginally slower. Could that be because jwl812 is actually correct in his/her assertion? If not, then what do you suppose jwl812 has or hasn't done, to have made his/her system so slow?
 
It's certainly true that M$ plays down the speed aspect of NTFS, in preference to promoting its security and recovery aspects. I guess also that, with some respondants, there's an element of "I'm not going to admit I didn't necessarily make the best choice". You get that with all sorts of products and services, not just computers.
 
For me, maintaining decent speed of operation is all-important (and no, I'm not a games person), so if it comes down to a choice between speed and security/recovery, I'll go for the former. To date, my FAT32 partitions have worked almost flawlessly; on the few occasions when a program's halted, Win2K has always recovered the situation without, apparently, any longterm damage. So, perhaps the argument for NTFS, rather than FAT32, is not as clearcut as one would at first suppose.

Could be something with their hardware. I for one have tested FAT32 and later went on to NTFS. I'd love to say I could tell you a difference, but I can't, at least not in real life.

Ah, perhaps the truth is now slowly beginning to emerge. Perhaps jwl812 really DOES have a point?
 
I'll personally stick with the alleged better speed of FAT32, unless and until such time that someone can demonstrate convincing evidence to the contrary. Thanks, jwl812, for causing me to think twice about NTFS. It's not always best to go with the crowd, eh?
 
Sure, if you're a commercial outfit, your leanings are probably going to be more toward the reliability/security side of things.

I'll admit, FAT32 has always been noticably faster than NTFS on my boxes yet, I still format my partitions as NTFS. Why? As well as the reason I mentioned earlier I'm also a firm believer in NTFS's ability to keep my data safe. Nothing hits that home to you like having a complete hard disk meltdown and being able to get every single one of your important files off the disk.