Defrag and Contig Approximately Equals PerfectDisk?
My Dell drama led me to the issue of defragmentation of really, really big-ass files. As of today, a really, really big-ass file is upwards of five gigabytes. These are my VMware virtual hard disks.
The default Windows (XP) defragmentation utility defrag (featured in Jeff Atwood’s “Automated Hard Drive Defragmentation”) is no frickin’ match for really big-ass files. The master of hard drive recovery, Steve Gibson, says, “I like PerfectDisk, and I like Vopt.[Security Now! #108]” Since even I can be a sucker for the ‘superficial,’ I prefer PerfectDisk because the Web site shows trouble was taken to actually explain what the software does in powerful detail.
This means my money is going to be spent on this issue. Damn! What might just be a delaying tactic on my part is the use of Mark Russinovich’s Contig. Not that I am cheapskate, but why spend money that can be used for a tank of gas when contig (and PageDefrag v2.32 with defrag) can do (almost) the same stuff that PerfectDisk can do?
The real solution to my fragmentation problem is to get an external hard drive (maybe the Western Digital WDME1600TN 160GB Passport Essential USB2.0 Hard Drive?). The assumption here is that an external HD totally dedicated to one or two virtual disks should not lead to the levels of fragmentation I am getting now. And when I say ‘solution,’ I mean that my files remain perfectly contiguous. My Linux virtual machine should handle this standard of perfection while my Windows VM fragments like a mufukka.
The contig utility makes a big-ass file with 12,000 fragments drop to just 12. You can see that in my screenshot. Instead of getting one ‘perfect’ contiguous big-ass file, these tens of fragments may just be the realistic success attainable in spite of Windows.