A New FileBoolean: Distance

[Lexar]

Distance(drive, 3221225472): selects directories and files that are 3GB or farther away from the beginning of the drive.

Distance(directory, 3221225472): selects direcotries and files that are 3GB or farther away from its parent directory.

Distance(mft, 3221225472): selects directories and files that are 3GB or farther away from the drive's MFT.

Distance(Name("C:\hoge.db"), 3221225472): selects directories and files that are 3GB or farther away from the file "C:\hoge.db".

[jeroen]

Thanks for sharing your idea, I appreciate it. Could you please explain why this would be useful? My first thought is that you are trying to speed up optimization by only selecting a small subset of files. But MyDefrag does not work like that, you have to select all the files for a zone.

[Lexar]

Suppose there are a directory "app" containing an executable "app.exe" and a database hive "app.db" in a 1TB drive. If "app" happens to be at the beginning of the disk, app.exe in the middle, app.db at the end, then the drive head needs to read "app", travel 500GB, read app.exe, travel  another 500GB, and finally read app.db.

You could pack them together on the drive if you sorted files by name. However, files are created daily. It is certainly an overkill to sort all the files in a zone every day.

I then hit upon an idea that for a light daily optimization, it should be wise to grab only those files that happened to be unacceptably far up,  and move them down.

[quanthero]

Suppose there are a directory "app" containing an executable "app.exe" and a database hive "app.db" in a 1TB drive. If "app" happens to be at the beginning of the disk, app.exe in the middle, app.db at the end, then the drive head needs to read "app", travel 500GB, read app.exe, travel  another 500GB, and finally read app.db.

What about using:

Code:

FileSelect
  FileName("app.*")
FileActions
  Defragment(fast)
  FastFill()
FileEnd

This way, all app.* (e.g. app.exe, app.dll, app.db, app.ini, etc.) will be close to each other on the disk.

[Kasuha]

After optimization, beginning of your disk will be quite full. After some using, it will become even more full because system will fill empty spaces between zones with new files. If you move something "down" to keep it together, you will have to move something else "up" to make room for it. There's good chance that things you move will become "too spread" now instead of these you optimized.

Another thing is, on modern drives, seek represents a few milliseconds. Also, seek time is highly nonlinear - seek over full cylinder range is much shorter than seek between neighbor cylinders multiplied by number of cylinders - track-to-track seek is usually somewhere about 1 ms while full range seek is usually about 20 ms (0.02 s). If it is only about a few new files time to time I think there's nothing to worry about.

There's no reason to be too paranoid about having the disk "clean". Main task is to have most of frequently used files together at beginning of the disk and most of the rest defragmented. And that's what standard MyDefrag scripts take care about.

[Lexar]

What about using:

Code:

FileSelect
  FileName("app.*")
FileActions
  Defragment(fast)
  FastFill()
FileEnd

This way, all app.* (e.g. app.exe, app.dll, app.db, app.ini, etc.) will be close to each other on the disk.

For one directory it does work, but if there are thousands of them, you will need a better solution.

Also, I should point it out that FastFill() moves directories and files that are already close enough together.

[Lexar]

There's no reason to be too paranoid about having the disk "clean". Main task is to have most of frequently used files together at beginning of the disk and most of the rest defragmented.

That's exactly what I am pointing out. And to pack frequently used files together, I need Distance() to select them. With Distance(), you could select files that are listed on Layout.ini and far apart.

[rjs_boy]

With Distance(), you could select files that are listed on Layout.ini and far apart.

Code:

FileSelect
   ImportListFromBootOptimize()
FileActions
   <Insert Sort Action Here>
FileEnd

Wallah!

Puts everything in the Layout.ini into the same area on the disk.

[jeroen]

I then hit upon an idea that for a light daily optimization, it should be wise to grab only those files that happened to be unacceptably far up,  and move them down.

Thanks for the explanation, that's what I thought. As I said before MyDefrag does not work like that. MyDefrag creates zones that ONLY contain the selected files. All other files are moved out of the way. So, you have to select ALL the files in a zone. You cannot select only a few files, for example files that are far away.

[Lexar]

With Distance(), you could select files that are listed on Layout.ini and far apart.

Code:

FileSelect
   ImportListFromBootOptimize()
FileActions
   <Insert Sort Action Here>
FileEnd

Wallah!

Puts everything in the Layout.ini into the same area on the disk.

No, that's not exactly what I want. I want to move down only those files that are too far up.

[Lexar]

I then hit upon an idea that for a light daily optimization, it should be wise to grab only those files that happened to be unacceptably far up,  and move them down.

Thanks for the explanation, that's what I thought. As I said before MyDefrag does not work like that. MyDefrag creates zones that ONLY contain the selected files. All other files are moved out of the way. So, you have to select ALL the files in a zone. You cannot select only a few files, for example files that are far away.

Fine, I would just put those files in a new zone, but a file that were far up would get moved down anyway. See the illustration below.

ACDFE_______________________________________________B

Each capital letter represents a file. File B happens to be far up.

If I should choose files ABCDEF and sort them, it will take a number of actions.

I would rather like to create a new zone for file B above file E, making the illustrated map like

ACDFEB_______________________________________________

[jeroen]

Fine, I would just put those files in a new zone, but a file that were far up would get moved down anyway.

See the FastFill action. It does not do exactly what you want, but very close, it only moves files downward from "far away" and not move files already there.