donbrindles Posted August 8, 2021 Share Posted August 8, 2021 Hi All. I've just installed p3d5.2 to my 2TB HDD, and will be installing p3d4.5 soon. I guess I'll need to defrag the drive from time to time... Which defrag program to use? How often to defrag? Thanks for advice, Don. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renault Posted August 8, 2021 Share Posted August 8, 2021 (edited) 31 minutes ago, donbrindles said: Hi All. I've just installed p3d5.2 to my 2TB HDD, and will be installing p3d4.5 soon. I guess I'll need to defrag the drive from time to time... Which defrag program to use? How often to defrag? Thanks for advice, Don. Hi Don I've only ever used one - O & O Defrag . I use it to clean up my SSD's, to TRIM them and to defrag my HDD(s) which is where my scenery addons are kept. It does the job well and has a lot of options. There is a free 1 month trial available for it I believe. All I can say, is that it works well for me, does what is advertised and didn't cost a lot. Since there is only scenery on my large HDD (8 TB) and I usually only add to it (Orbx and the like) , it doesn't really need a defrag very often. I defrag it about every 6 - 9 months or so, but I don't really notice any change in performance. When I do defrag it , I defrag by "Name" , which I have found does make a difference in terms of access time on a mechanical drive. All my program executables etc are on a M2 SSD ( XPlane and MS2020). My C drive SSD is also an M2 SSD & only has Windows on it. My MS2020 & XPlane addons (not scenery) are on Samsung SSD's (2 TB ones) I also have a smaller HDD (4 TB) which I could best describe as a bit of a rubbish bin for stuff. That one I defrag once a month and sometimes, depending on what I did , defragging really does make a difference. It's also where I keep freeware scenery etc. so some stays and some goes. If I do have a freeware addon that I like after trying it, I usually move it over to one of the Samsung SSD's. For MS2020 I use addon linker to keep track of it all. For XPlane I use a symbolic link addon that Nick Cooper @Nick Cooper posted a long time ago. I think this is it . Link Shell Extension (schinagl.priv.at) This way I can keep things cleaned up nicely and if I ever have to do a sim install I don't also have to reinstall all my scenery and addons. For me that is the real advantage to using symbolic links to storage devices (Addon Linker and Link Shell Extension). Also, it means that I don't spend a fortune on large capacity SSD drives but can have inexpensive large capacity storage for the things that require that. And in my case, I don't notice or feel that the slower performance of the HDD for scenery compared with the SSD storage (the Samsung EVO's) has ever been a detriment . I have tried it both ways i.e. keeping scenery on the Samsung(s) and didn't really notice it made any difference when flying. Now I keep only sim addons (aircraft, paints, utilities etc) on the Samsung. Of course the M2 SSD's are blazingly quick which is why all my program executables are kept on those. And keeping only my OS on its own M2 SSD means that a reinstall is not a large issue at all. Hope this is of help Cheers Pete Edited August 8, 2021 by renault 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W2DR Posted August 8, 2021 Share Posted August 8, 2021 Good question. There is a lot of "defrag hype" that has carried over from the days before Windows went to the NTFS file system. Back in the "old days" defragging your drive(s)was much more important than it is today. There is no general answer as to how often a given drive needs to be defragmented. Drives which have few write operations can go for a long time without any defragmentation (even years). The more frequent the write activity to a drive the more the need to eventually do a defrag. For the average home user about once a month, at the most, is just fine. As far as what program to use, unless you have a known need for something more sophisticated the built-in defrag utility in Windows will do the job as well as anything. It's all that 95% of users will ever need. I have 47TB of HDD on this system and as most all of it is used purely for storage I seldom even bother to defrag these drives after the initial defrag is done. I have my flightsim(s) on a SSD but when they were on the HDD's I never worried about periodic defragging there either. As long as there is minimal write activity all will be well. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Sawatzky Posted August 9, 2021 Share Posted August 9, 2021 Hi Also have a look at the below topic and the post I included there. It is very important to use the O&O defrag "Name" function for flight simulators on HDD's. I also included a copy and paste document from Nick N's FSX Bible below. It is very long winded and dated, but still has lots of relevant info. I think he also mentions that when our PC is searching for files on a HDD that is not Name defragged, it is actually using more CPU cycles that contribute to overall performance. https://www.simforums.com/forums/the-fsx-computer-system-the-bible-by-nickn_topic46211.html From Nick N on Defrag of FSX.docx 2 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W2DR Posted August 9, 2021 Share Posted August 9, 2021 45 minutes ago, Doug Sawatzky said: It is very important to use the O&O defrag "Name" function for flight simulators on HDD's. Interesting. I never found any noticeable difference between Name and Stealth. Probably just my lousy eyesight. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donbrindles Posted August 9, 2021 Author Share Posted August 9, 2021 Ok All, some great advice - thanks very much, Don. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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