Making use of multiple physical disks

[Mohaine]

It might be nice if MyDefrag could use multiple physical disks, if available, when reading and writing large files when vacating space.

I recently saw MyDefrag move some large (2 GB) space hogs from the start of the disk up to close to the end of the disk, rearrange the files in the middle of the disk, and then move the space hog files back down to the end of the newly shuffled files.  It would have been quicker to temporarily move the large space hogs to my second physical drive (space allowing), so that one drive is reading while the other is writing, and then finally move the files back to their final locations on the first drive.

[jeroen]

Thanks for sharing your idea, I appreciate it. But I am sorry, I do not like the idea. It is not sure that it will give more speed, it all depends on the speeds of the harddisks, and whether or not the harddisk controller can handle 2 simultaneous operations at the same time. But more importantly, it would not be safe. Suppose that some files were temporarily moved to another disk. What if they happen to be important files and another program needs the files (Windows is multitasking)? Or perhaps the user decides to stop MyDefrag in the middle of such an operation, leaving the files stranded in a temporary folder on a different disk. Brrrr. No, absolutely not.

[Mohaine]

Yep, good points.

[MessyBlob]

Bad idea for ordinary disks without careful programming, and needs to be supported in the defrag API before it could be used.

One scenario where it could work: if a logical volume is actually two physical drives, with the second drive continuing where the first stops in a linear block sequence, then shuffling across the boundary would bring speed benefits. Unfortunately, I don't know if/where such arrangements are used (and safely; it's twice as vulnerable to failure).

(Mohaine) In response to the scenario given in the first post, and appreciating that it's not a technical answer, is it possible for you to store the spacehog on the other drive anyway?