laptop advice, disc defragment has taken half my free space

Started by deano_ue, January 26, 2009, 05:07:22 PM

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deano_ue

my current laptop is coming up to near 3 years old, but it's memory that worrys me most as i'm down to about 20 gb of a 100 gb memory

i know that still a good size but with working with large image and photographs i don't know how long it will last

i've been looking at this model HP G70-2112

Quote
    *  Intel Pentium Dual Core Processor T3400
    * (2.16GHz, 1MB Cache)
    * Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
    * 3GB Memory
    * 250GB Hard Drive
    *  Lightscribe Super Multi DVD Writer
    * 17" BrightView Screen
    * Built-in webcam
    * Wireless Enabled
    * 5-in-1 cardreader

so has anyone any past experience with this laptop or what do you think. the cheapest i've seen it is around £420, i'm at the moment using a hp compaq v6000

randyripoff

Couldn't you just get an external hard drive?  That should make your storage problems go away.

Vertex

what he said, I've got 2 and I love em.. and nowadays they really are cheap!
A wise man knows, he knows nothing
I must be the wisest man on Earth,
cause I don't know squat

deano_ue

#3
true i thought about that, but in honestly i'm thinking about set up, i already have my laptop, plus my intuos, would an external be that large in size(desk space not memory) and easy to carry round


edit looking at some online and honestly i'd be getting 250GB for around £50 to £65, that a good deal?

Vertex

a "passport" external is about the size of a calculator and they hold LARGE size and don't need a power supply.
A wise man knows, he knows nothing
I must be the wisest man on Earth,
cause I don't know squat

randyripoff

Also, personally not a fan of 17" laptops.  They're so heavy that they kind of defeat the whole portability aspect.  At least, that's my opinion.

If I need a screen that big, I think a desktop is a much better option.

zuludelta

Quote from: the_ultimate_evil on January 26, 2009, 10:34:00 PM
true i thought about that, but in honestly i'm thinking about set up, i already have my laptop, plus my intuos, would an external be that large in size(desk space not memory) and easy to carry round

If you've got an old laptop lying around, you can use its old hard drive as an external hard drive (you just need to buy an external HD enclosure... which should run about $15 to $30). The Dynex hard drive enclosure for laptop drives is only slightly bigger than a pack of cigarettes (Virginia Slims, not Marlboros).
Art is the expression of truth without violence.

deano_ue

can any recommend any particular brand of external, it about standard for reviews on line for every good there is one bad

randyripoff

I recently picked this up, and I'm reasonably happy with it.  I would suggest reformatting it before using it, however, as for some strange reason it comes formatted as FAT32 instead of NTFS.

deano_ue

i'm leaning to wards this one at the moment, what do you think

i may still get a new laptop as like i said my current on is nearing 4 year old but i'll wait towards the end of the year nov/dec time

stumpy

I am a fan of the external USB drives. They are a good way to keep you laptop HD from overflowing, they are part of a good backup option, they are pretty cheap, and they are handy for cloning drives.

Speaking of which, another option is to swap the HD in your laptop with a larger one. 160 GB laptop drives drives are like $70. There are larger ones, too (obviously), but unless you are planning to create some large files soon, the 160 GB size may take your 3+ year old laptop to the end of its useful life.

Plus, when you get a new drive and clone your old drive's programs and data over, your old drive becomes an automatic and bootable backup of your current system in case Murphy comes calling...
Courage is knowing it might hurt, and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. And that's why life is hard. - Jeremy Goldberg

deano_ue

ok this is worrying me, when i started the defrag i had around 20GB of space, i just checked on the progress and i now only have 12GB and dropping

what the hell, i'm not 100% computer literate but i know that shouldn't happen

M25

Haven't done a defrag for a while, but a defragmentation program will use what space is available to it to move things around.  You have to shuffle blocks out of the way to make room for the ones that are supposed to be there.  Your free space should go up again as it gets closer to finishing.



zuludelta

I probably wouldn't recommend doing disk defrags, particularly if you're using an NTFS-based file system (which is the default system for most Windows NT, 2000, XP, and Vista machines). One of the key advantages of NTFS, as opposed to the less space-efficient FAT32 system found on some Windows 98 and virtually all Windows 95 and the DOS-based older versions of Windows, is that it makes defragmentation something of an afterthought (NTFS basically has limited built-in protection against file fragmentation).

Doing a disk defrag on a Windows NT or newer machine isn't going to free up much usable space (if any), and the wear-and-tear the process induces on your hard drive, not to mention the time it takes to reallocate all those blocks of data, just isn't worth it IMHO.     
Art is the expression of truth without violence.

Panther_Gunn

I must respectfully disagree with ZD (rhyme unintentional).  Having had plenty of suckers guinea pigs "customers" to sample from in my current job, I can attest that NTFS drives can get fragmented, sometimes horribly so.  And while I can't say that you'll get a ton of space back from a badly fragmented drive (typically 1-5% of a drive, size dependent), what you should get back from doing it is processing time, as more of a program that's running is now located in sequential sectors on the HD, rather than spread around, causing the head to travel back & forth just to get it all.

Not something you need to do too frequently, perhaps once every 6 months to a year, depending on the rate at which you delete files off of the HD & put new ones on.  Don't forget to empty the Recycle Bin before you start the defrag.
The Best There Is At What I Do......when I have the time.

zuludelta

I'll defer to PG on this one, as he's probably the more experienced hand at this, and he's got the experience of maintaining other people's hard drives to confirm it. I do recall Microsoft touting the fragmentation-resistance of Windows NT (the first Windows OS designed specifically to use NTFS and whose code Windows 2000 and XP are built on) when it came out years ago... it was allegedly one of the reasons Windows NT didn't come with a built-in defrag utility (at least not initially). Of course, the fact that Win2K and XP have returned the disk defrag feature probably means that NTSF isn't as resistant to fragmentation as Microsoft led us to believe  :doh:

EDIT: Having thought about it a little more and at the risk of further derailing this thread  :P, I think the reason that we're seeing rampant file fragmentation despite the touted improved file-handling abilities of NTFS-capable OSes like Windows 2000 and Windows XP is just the plain fact that we're working with relatively huge files these days. As we all know, larger contiguous file = increased likelihood of file fragmentation. Back when Windows NT first came out, when 64Mb of RAM and a 5Gb hard drive were considered a top-of-the-line set-up, your average Windows user probably didn't do multiple read/writes on large (> 400 kb) files to the extent that we do now, so at that point Windows NT probably did look immune to normal, everyday fragmentation.     
Art is the expression of truth without violence.