Posted on 08/17/2018 5:32:15 PM PDT by Eddie01
It’s been a while since I defragged — years, probably, because these days for a number of reasons computers don’t really need to. But perhaps it is we who need to defrag. And what better way to defrag your brain after a long week than by watching the strangely satisfying defragmentation process taking place on a simulated DOS machine, complete with fan and HDD noise?
That’s what you can do with this Twitch stream, which has defrag.exe running 24/7 for your enjoyment.
I didn’t realize how much I missed the sights and sounds of this particular process. I’ve always found ASCII visuals soothing, and there was something satisfying about watching all those little blocks get moved around to form a uniform whole. What were they doing down there on the lower right hand side of the hard drive anyway? That’s what I’d like to know.
Afterwards I’d launch a state of the art game like Quake 2 just to convince myself it was loading faster.
There’s also that nice purring noise that a hard drive would make (and which is recreated here). At least, I thought of it as purring. For the drive, it’s probably like being waterboarded. But I did always enjoy having the program running while keeping everything else quiet, perhaps as I was going to bed, so I could listen to its little clicks and whirrs. Sometimes it would hit a particularly snarled sector and really go to town, grinding like crazy. That’s how you knew it was working.
The typo is, no doubt, deliberate.
The whole thing is simulated, of course. There isn’t really just an endless pile of hard drives waiting to be defragged on decades-old hardware for our enjoyment (except in my box of old computer things). But the simulation is wonderfully complete, although if you think about it you probably never used DOS on a 16:9 monitor, and probably not at 1080p. It’s okay. We can sacrifice authenticity so we don’t have to windowbox it.
The defragging will never stop at TwitchDefrags, and that’s comforting to me. It means I don’t have to build a 98SE rig and spend forever copying things around so I have a nicely fragmented volume. Honestly they should include this sound on those little white noise machines. For me this is definitely better than whale noises.
https://www.twitch.tv/twitchdefrags
Strangely mesmerizing.
I used to like watch my old ones clean themselves but SSD’s put an end to that.
Much preferred the Win95 defrag routine.
or 98SE
On a clear disk you can seek forever.
the astounding peeks and pokes made possible by cutting edge small scale electro-mechanical technology is fascinating
the progress graphic provides a window into a defrag
you see how much information is fragmented and what it takes to put it back in sequential order
...and root for the yellow boxes of tidiness and efficiency, “Yes!”
I don’t know anyone who did this that didn’t end up watching it. BTW, do NOT defrag an SSD.
funny
try convincing an OCD person of that!
Windows 10 will intelligently defragment your ssd once a month, along with a trim. It's debatable as to how much of a performance increase you will actually receive, but the danger and risks to your ssd lifespan has been far overstated, I myself defrag my ssds using the windows 10 tool and have experienced no ill effects to my system.
The real and complete story - Does Windows defragment your SSD?
This is the only thing I hate about SSDs. I’d like a program that at least pretends to defrag. Just made you feel better, like taking a hot shower.
For Linux users, use a live CD to run fsck (fsck -fn [/path/to/your/partition]). A live CD will ensure all partitions are unmounted. The fsck will report the percentage of fragmentation. Anything above 20% would indicate a possible need for defrag. And anything that high would be a rarity. Usually it reports in the 3% range.
If it’s unnecessary why does windows 10 do a trim on the ssd then?
as far as lifespan, they are rated to withstand 100gb a day writes (typically) for the warranty period (3 to 5 years). Even if you defrag an ssd once a week I would bet that your ssd would outlast every other component on your computer except for maybe the ram.
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