Defrag & Disksalv for os3.1.4

A forum for Classic Amiga specific support issues.
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desrat
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Apr 04, 2020 12:19 am

Defrag & Disksalv for os3.1.4

Post by desrat »

Looking for suggestions for defrag and re-org for os 3.1.4 as neither is suited for partitions larger than 4gb.
Gulliver
Posts: 28
Joined: Fri Sep 28, 2018 11:29 pm

Re: Defrag & Disksalv for os3.1.4

Post by Gulliver »

If you are using flash media you should not defragment those volumes
at all. This applies for example, to Compact Flash cards (CF), Solid
State Drives (SSD), Secure Digital cards (SD), MicroSD cards (TF), etc.

This is because flash media has a limited write lifespan due to its
nature. In addition, flash storage media uses random access, and this
means that it really does not make any difference where data blocks
are physically located; they will all take the same time to be
accessed, whether they are contiguous or not.

On magnetic storage devices like traditional hard disks, defragmenting
makes sense, and provides performance improvements, but you have to be
careful that the tool you are using is both compatible with the file
system and the size of drive to which you are going to apply that
operation.

Please carefully read the defragmentation's program manual to
understand its limitations in this regard, because otherwise you will
risk destroying your precious drive data.

In particular, many (dated) programs will not be able to work on
partitions that exceed the 4GB limit.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To diagnose your drive use the included DiskDoctor.

Just open a CLI/Shell and type:

DiskDoctor examine DH0:

Of course, you can replace DH0: with any other volume name.

If you find out that your precious data is at risk, and you want to
perform a backup you can open a CLI/Shell and type:

DiskDoctor COPY DH0: TO RESCUED:

Here DH0: is the source volume and RESCUED: is the safe destination
volume which will have all the files copied to it.
desrat
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Apr 04, 2020 12:19 am

Re: Defrag & Disksalv for os3.1.4

Post by desrat »

Thank you for that..still discovering 3.1.4.Works well..is there a command for defrag tho?
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nbache
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Re: Defrag & Disksalv for os3.1.4

Post by nbache »

The all-time best and safest defrag on more or less any platform is:

- Back up (preferably to a different physical drive if not using SSD drives)
- Verify the backup
- Reformat the original volume (fast format, of course)
- Restore

Best regards,

Niels
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