Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II

[Atticus]

Disk defragmentation?

As you save and delete stuff on your hard disk, it will eventually be scattered around. Say, you had files A,B,... saved like this (x is for empty space):
AAAAABBCCCCDDEEEEExxxx
Then you delete files B and D:
AAAAAxxCCCCxxEEEEExxxx
and save file F which takes space of 5 there:
AAAAAFFCCCCFFEEEEEFxxx
Now the file F is all over the place and handling it is slower than if it were not.

Defragmentation is putting the files neatly together.

 

[Iranon]

If you write and delete data, chunks that belong together don't end up together. Naive example:

a, b, c and d represent files on your hard drive or other storage medium, dashes stand for free space.
aabbccc----
After you delete file b and write a larger file d:
aaddcccdd--

File d is now split in two, a case of fragmentation. This causes a loss of performance in hard disk, less so in Solid State Drives but it may cause more wear.
Hard drives are slow and often the limiting factor in sluggish, unresponsive systems.

Most modern operating systems either defragment with little need for user interaction (simplifying: Windows) or prevent excessive fragmentation in the first place (simplifying: OSX, Linux).

In case of the former, you only need to deal with it when the system is busy defragmenting and slowing everything down while you have something urgent to do... this shouldn't be too common, and often the best course of action is "suck it up, next time defrag before you need your computer at peak performance". It's usually scheduled at antisocial hours, leave your PC on at the appropriate times or do it manually.

In case of the latter, you have even less to bother with under normal circumstances, but you can run into serious trouble if you entirely fill up a drive/partition beyond 95% : eventually the safeguards WILL fail, and there may not be a good defragmenting solution because the problem shouldn't exist in the first place.

 

[Zelig]

I'm not aware of any additional wear on SSDs due to fragmentation.

Defragmenting an SSD results in a great deal of wear, and wrecks the controller's ability to manage the drive's regular wear, for no benefit.

 

[Iranon]

SSDs don't like many (even small) writes, which is exactly what defragmentation does... so while to my knowledge fragmentation is bad, the cure is worse than the disease. Benchmarks and realtime data molesters can be harmful for the same reasons.
Preventing fragmentation in the first place would be nice... but I'm not aware of anything practical that should require user interaction.

To my knowledge, Windows versions older then 7 can't tell the difference between SSDs and hard drives, and require tweaking to keep them from doing something silly.

 

[Zelig]

Yes, I mean fragmentation has no effect on SSDs.

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

Why didn't MS eliminate the need for defragging on win8?

 

[Zelig]

Well, they eliminated the need for manual defragging with Vista. ext2/3/4 essentially perform real-time defragmentation, I don't know that either approach is particularly better or worse.

 

[Gelion]

Is there a way to increase sound volume in an audio file?

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

You can do that with Audacity.

 

[Robert FIN]

Okay, if computer questions are not worth of a new thread, could you help me with this question?: Is it possible to play PC-Games, like Civ IV, on live USB-Stick with Linux OS (linux puppy for example)? We'll probably need Wine and Prayaya+other tools maybe? I don't wanna rush you guys but I kinda need this information quite soon. If you know how to do it, please let me know. Thanks!

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

It depends on how standalone the applications are -- some are fairly standalone (meaning you copy the folder and take the entire game with you) and others tend to put files everywhere and modify the registry. The only way to really find out is to try it or look it up:
For the Linux part, it's possible from a quick Google:
http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2009/03/10/civilization-iv-on-linux-with-wine-1116/

 

[Robert FIN]

Thx a lot for quick answer! I'll try it out today. If I have problems I'll tell ya!

 

[Gelion]

You can do that with Audacity.

Thank you! Looks like it could help.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Is there a way to compare the contents of two archive (zip, rar, etc) files without extracting them and comparing the folders? I'm just interested in checksums and/or file dates. I did a google and got a shareware program I cannot afford, and a Java program (I'm attempting to wean myself off of the Java platform as much as possible, what with all the ridiculous security issues going on with it).

 

[dutchfire]

You could probably just compare the files using your favourite file comparison program (diff on linux, dunno about Windows), but even if their contents are the same, I suppose the archives could be different (due to different zip settings).

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Yeah, that's sort of what I've been doing. Unpacking them into FolderA and FolderB and then comparing the folders. It's sort of a time-consuming solution at times especially when it comes to heavily compressed files.

Speaking of heavily compressed files-- Once or twice I've noticed that adding files to a compressed file made the entire archive smaller. What the hell happened here?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Preventing fragmentation in the first place would be nice... but I'm not aware of anything practical that should require user interaction.

If I recall correctly, the ext3 filesystem is able to deal with the fragmentation issue a little better than FAT (maybe NTFS, as well), simply because they tend to space the data a little further apart. Unfortunately, changing the filesystem isn't really practical for most people.

 

[Iranon]

Yes, technical capabilities of the filesystem matter less than being well-supported by the OS.
Usually one should just stick to the defaults, although Linux users currently have several valid choices.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I've been getting lots of random Data Execution Prevention popups from random programs. I did a memtest86 that came up clean. I'm not sure what to do next.

 

[shadowplay]

Would buying a Surface RT at this point be a bad idea? I wouldn't mind getting one, but I notice they aren't selling very well and the reviews haven't been so great. I'm worried they'll drop the price after I buy one. Thoughts?