Will defragging HDD make a difference in P3D v4?

[captain420 3,099]

I have Prepar3d installed on one of my internal HDD. It's a 2TB drive and i have about 20GB left. Which is very low on space. I heard that defragging your drive to rearrange all those data chunks to be in consecutive order will greatly enhanced loading. On FreeMeshX's site it said this, and then I read comments from others that tell me it doesn't make a difference. So what is true and what's not?

Sometimes there's noticeable autogen or texture/mesh popups when flying. It's not really a big deal and isn't so bad, but I do notice it when I'm flying and its there. I am trying to cut down on these annoying and sudden random popups. If I can get rid of it all together, then that would be best.

[vgbaron 3,586]

20 minutes ago, captain420 said:

I have Prepar3d installed on one of my internal HDD. It's a 2TB drive and i have about 20GB left. Which is very low on space. I heard that defragging your drive to rearrange all those data chunks to be in consecutive order will greatly enhanced loading. On FreeMeshX's site it said this, and then I read comments from others that tell me it doesn't make a difference. So what is true and what's not?

Sometimes there's noticeable autogen or texture/mesh popups when flying. It's not really a big deal and isn't so bad, but I do notice it when I'm flying and its there. I am trying to cut down on these annoying and sudden random popups. If I can get rid of it all together, then that would be best.

you have two things going on here. If you only have 20G left on a2TB drive no amount of defragging will help. Typically on HDD's performance starts to degrade when they get over 50% full and will get worse as they fill.

On an HDD drive with 50% left it could help by defragging but it usually is not something that you'd notice. It's sort of - fix a lot of small things and they will add up but  no one alone will make a major difference.

Anyhow - delete or move but get some space on that drive.

Remember do NOT defrag SSD's. And as far as space goes SSD's don't start to be affected until they're 90% or more full.

Vic

[Oliver_Cooksey 4]

For a physical hard drive it should make some difference to your smoothness and reduce blurries slightly, though I doubt it would increase your FPS. The articles that state it is useless are probably referring to an SSD, which do not need defragging due to the nature of them being flash based memory.

Overall, my suggestion would be to firstly use a disk overview tool to locate and then remove space hogs (likely old driver files, backups and operating system updates), then defrag. In the long run you really should be looking at a 256gb SSD. You’d be surprised at how little they cost these days.

[ShawnG 1,823]

ssd's are definitely the way to go, and I love mine,  but theres no way my p3d install would fit on a 256gb (although obviously not everyone has all the stuff I do, probably for the better)  and you can get multiple terabytes of hdd for the same money.

But Vic has it correct.  your issue is how full the hard drive is, and defragging will not fix it (and when it's that full, defragging has nowhere to go to optimize the files)  Imagine having to rearrange pallets in a warehouse with a forklift when the warehouse is 99 percent full,  there's no way to move anything anywhere.  whereas if the warehouse is half full, you can zip around and move the pallets no problem.   If you can afford a good size ssd (Mine is 1tb) get that, but either way, you need more space.

 

[fluffyflops 1,856]

I got a Samsung evo 1Tb for my 40th when I upgraded to p3d v4.  It was about 250 gbp and a very worthwhile purchase I would never go back to a regular hdd now

[Egbert Drenth 250]

3 hours ago, vgbaron said:

If you only have 20G left on a2TB drive no amount of defragging will help

How's that?
Defragging has nothing to do with disk space, it puts blocks in sequence so loading times will improve.
In order to put those blocks in sequence, it temporarily swaps blocks to free space and back. IMO 20GB is more then enough to defrag, although it may take a lot of time due to size.
As far as I know, there is no way the cluster size of an NTFS drive is too large so 20GB would be too small.

[Indy511 686]

Not only are SSD's the way to go but they look great in the case.

[sillyflyer 11]

For some reason, Vic's advice from the old school world of thought is the most sound when it comes to the technology in question, but of course its a different day and age where the esperts understand disk physics.

http://www.simforums.com/forums/the-fsx-computer-system-the-bible-by-nickn_topic46211_post281367.html#281367

The laws of physics or engineering with spinning metal platters hasn't changed in 20 years until the advent of SSD and some hybrid tech.

Dump everything but about 60-70% off the 2TB and then properly defragment it, not the Microsoft defragmenter because that will not do the job.

QUOTE:  heard that defragging your drive to rearrange all those data chunks to be in consecutive order will greatly enhanced loading.

If you want that that quality of defragmentation, you need special 3rd party defragmentation that does exactly what you were told. It is called a: NAME DEFRAGMENTATION

http://www.simforums.com/forums/topic34799_post202329.html#202329

 

It works.. has for many years on strait mechanical needle read drives.

...  anyone here that tells you different, ...   is somewhat 'lost' ( I used the word LOST because the word IG-NOr-ANT cant be posted on this site or it is censored..   too funny because it could be used quite a bit)

 

as for sudden random popups   well, that's part of the P3Dv4 beast. It was no where near as bad in P3Dv3 but they found in their infinite wisdom to do away with 'alpha-fade' in order to WOW folks with a ridiculous autogen radius.  Its like when they sold us on Tune-Port Injection back in the early 80's and our direct inject or even quad-dual carbs still ripped the snot out of the Corvettes but the vets were sold for 50+ grand  LOL

 

I know, too old for this subject...   hope it helps! 

 

 

[vgbaron 3,586]

10 hours ago, Egbert Drenth said:

How's that?
Defragging has nothing to do with disk space, it puts blocks in sequence so loading times will improve.
In order to put those blocks in sequence, it temporarily swaps blocks to free space and back. IMO 20GB is more then enough to defrag, although it may take a lot of time due to size.
As far as I know, there is no way the cluster size of an NTFS drive is too large so 20GB would be too small.

You are correct but you missed my point. I'm not saying there's not enough room to defrag. The OP is looking at defragging to speed up performance. My point is, with the drive being 99% full any performance "gain" from defragging will not be noticeable.

I'm saying that even if he did the NAME defrag mentioned above and all the files were in the optimum order - with a 95% full HDD - it might make a difference but too little to matter.

Vic

[downscc 1,327]

16 hours ago, ShawnG said:

 but theres no way my p3d install would fit on a 256gb

That's not the only size they come in, and the price differential is getting smaller. A 500 MB Samsung is only $30 more than the same size WD Blue HDD.  Why is anybody still using HDD except for archiving?

[pmanhart 176]

35 minutes ago, downscc said:

Why is anybody still using HDD except for archiving?

 

Because that may be true of the Samsung SSD to WD Blue HDD, but for the price of one Samsung 256GB SSD, I can buy one Seagate 2TB Firecuda HDD...

256GB for $100 = $0.39 per GB

2000GB for $100 = $0.05 per GB

For me, waiting twice as long (measured in seconds) for the scene to load, is worth the cost savings... 

[downscc 1,327]

28 minutes ago, pmanhart said:

 

Because that may be true of the Samsung SSD to WD Blue HDD, but for the price of one Samsung 256GB SSD, I can buy one Seagate 2TB Firecuda HDD...

256GB for $100 = $0.39 per GB

2000GB for $100 = $0.05 per GB

For me, waiting twice as long (measured in seconds) for the scene to load, is worth the cost savings... 

Sure but you are comparing apples and oranges unless your objective is to pay as little as possible for storage.  A fair comparison is when both are same capacity, since cost goes down per unit as capacity goes up. At 500 Gb the comparison is 0.30 vs 0.36. at least be fair in your comparison.  I wouldn't have a HDD except for specific applications where I want several TB.  HDD failure rates are pretty good compared to what they were several decades ago but are still orders of magnitude higher than SSD. Then there are speeds which do matter.

[udidwht 133]

On 8/1/2017 at 2:00 PM, downscc said:

That's not the only size they come in, and the price differential is getting smaller. A 500 MB Samsung is only $30 more than the same size WD Blue HDD.  Why is anybody still using HDD except for archiving?

The cost of SSD's has come down but they are still overpriced given they cost less to manufacture than traditional HDD's (far fewer parts to assemble)

[downscc 1,327]

4 minutes ago, udidwht said:

The cost of SSD's has come down but they are still overpriced given they cost less to manufacture than traditional HDD's (far fewer parts to assemble)

And how do you know this?  The capital investment in equipment to produce the key components in an SSD is incredible.  Assembly is only a small part of an item cost to manufacture.

[udidwht 133]

14 minutes ago, downscc said:

And how do you know this?  The capital investment in equipment to produce the key components in an SSD is incredible.  Assembly is only a small part of an item cost to manufacture.

Quite simple....they do not build new plants to manufacture an item such as an SSD that can be put together in a traditional clean environment that memory manufactures have already been using for years to produce memory. I've walked these plants plenty of times.