Somewhere on teh intarwebs BillW50 wrote:
> In news:h15gbj$m1o$1@news.eternal-september.org,
> ~misfit~ typed on Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:55:11 +1200:


[Big Snips]

>> I find that I can defrag the OS prtition (I
>> use PerfectDisk) every few days and it only takes seconds and defrag
>> the programmes partition every couple of weeks, likewise it doesn't
>> take long. It keeps my system tidy and responsive.
>
> Okay that makes sense. Although do you really see an improvement with
> all of that defragging? I wait a couple of years before I do it and I
> haven't seen any performance increase since the old MFM hard drive
> days. I always suspected the real bottleneck is the bus, not the seek
> time.

Hi Bill.

I find that, using PerfectDisk set to 'Smart Defrag', it makes a big
difference. Smart Defrag puts all the files needed for booting at the
fastest part of the drive, then categorises the remaining files into three
groups, depending on when the were last altered. 'Rarely Modified' are put
next, "Occasionally Modified' follows with 'Freqently Modified' left at the
end of the data on the drive so that, when it is modified, it's not squeezed
into little gaps left where, for instance, you may have deleted a file that
had been on the drive since the begining.

The times for the different groups are user-adjustable but I find that the
defaults work well. The bus isn't the bottleneck. For instance this R51 has
an ATA100 IDE interface that is theoretically capable of moving
100MB/second. The HDD, even though it's been upgraded from the original
4,200rpm to a 5,400rpm, would be hard-pressed to hit 40MB/second on a
sustained read and far less that that when seeking all over the disk for
scattered (fragmented) files. Therefore, IMO, the bus isn't the bottleneck.

>> When good quality 250GB SSDs in 2.5" format are of a similar price to
>> their mechanical cousins I'll buy one. <g> Care to estimate when
>> that'll be?
>
> Fair enough Shaun. And that is just a few years away. ;-)

Cool! Thanks for the estimate. I *do* hope that they make them
backwards-compatible (or a small enough adapter) so that I can fit an SSD
into my R51 that *is* capable of saturating the bus at 100MB/second. That
would be a massive improvement over the current set-up.

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and
he`ll be warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchett, Jingo.