NTFS/Microsoft really sucks.

[Boerseun]

Get this:

 

I have rebuilt my one machine, and low-level formatted the 160Gb drive on which I load the OS. I left the 320Gb drive as is, just data an' stuff.

 

Any case....

 

The 160Gb drive was cleaned and zeroed completely - and then I loaded XP SP2. No sweat.

 

Loaded my apps and whatnot, and after everything was done, I checked defrag. It should have been one solid blue line from front to back, right? 'Cause everything was written sequentially from a clean install - the machine have not been used at all since rebuild, there could not have been any funnies. Whatever - turns out my disk was fragmented to hell. So, I defragged. Could not understand how the heck it could get fragmented...

 

So, once it was defragged, everything was nice and dandy...

 

...and then I installed Microsoft Flight Simulator X.

 

After installing FSX, I analyzed the disk again using Defrag. And since the last defrag I just installed FSX - haven't used any apps or anything, and the disk was fragmented worse than ever!

 

I thought that maybe it's a cock-up with Microshaft (WHAT?!?! THEY MAKE COCK-UPS?!?!) and then loaded DiskKeeper, and ran a fragmentation analysis with it - same story.

 

Installing Microsoft Flight Simulator X have fragmented a perfectly solid defragged drive to hell and gone. Something like 60% fragmented.

 

How the hell...?

 

Is it just me, or is there something seriously wrong with this?

[Tormod]

U.....nix....

[ronthepon]

Must have used microsoft's defragmenter. Well, you shouldn't Try JK Defrag. Kinda wierd to use, but it's just great.

 

Freeware made by Emiel Wieldraaijer -GUI to make the usage much simpler. I suggest you try it out.

[alexander]

here's a quick fix

 

download this here

write it on a cd, reboot into it, install... you will never have to defrag, ever again

 

and then install a realistic flight simulator

 

seriously, even on windows you should not have to run the M$ flight sim, it SUCKS soo badly...

 

Lets see what x-plane has on M$ flight sim:

a realistic flying model

better physics

better models

more detail

all that equals proper feel of the plane

ability to land on water and fly on different planets and land space shuttles, etc

seven dual layer DVDs of scenery, actually 9 if you count their new Washington State scenery pack upgrade, this covers from +60 to -60 degrees lattitude

It's actually rather cheap for what you get

used by pilot training schools, us airforce is developing a version for themeselves based on x-plane engine, and its FAA certified, one of very very few flight sims ever certified by the FAA.

[Overdog]

When you say you low-level formatted the drive, what exactly did you do? Do you have the same fragmentation issues with the 320 gig drive that you did not low level format?

 

The reason I ask is that modern drives are low-level formatted at the factory, and are not intended to be low level formatted. That's why I'm asking what you mean by "low level format".

 

Low level formatting went out when ide drives were introduced 10-15 years ago.

[C1ay]

Have you tried ext3 or ReiserFS? Both perform better than NTFS.

[alexander]

lol, overdog, i low level drives all the time... well, i have to, with multiple passes (7 for work, 34 for home) and random data and a zero over, over the top of that. nothing wrong with low-level format, besides, ide's used to come with low level format utils, and most makers recommended it. It does not hurt the drive, and nothing in the design of the drive prevents you from doing it, or detects that instead of writing data, you are writing randomness, and breaks it :)

[alexander]

clay ya know it :) tried and used ext2, ext3, reiserfs3, reiserfs4, hfs, hfs+, xfs, cryptfs, jfs, gfs, coda. Ofcourse i have obviously used fat12,16,32 and ntfs, but they just blow...

 

Always wanted to try Andrew, but i dont have multiple offices in other countries to reak the benefits of performance :)

[Overdog]

lol, overdog, i low level drives all the time... well, i have to, with multiple passes (7 for work, 34 for home) and random data and a zero over, over the top of that. nothing wrong with low-level format, besides, ide's used to come with low level format utils, and most makers recommended it. It does not hurt the drive, and nothing in the design of the drive prevents you from doing it, or detects that instead of writing data, you are writing randomness, and breaks it :)

 

It's possible we're not talking about the same thing when we say "low level format" which is the reason I asked.

 

Low-Level Formatting

[alexander]

lol right, you were talking about a true low-level, like writing sections and tracks, etc (check the link a bit later)? Yeah, modern HDs come with integrated controllers, well some do anyhow, and, well some controllers do more then others too, that take care of all of that. I wouldn't think that most modern day utilities would run on the disk that could potentially be damaged by it, i mean, generally if there is a controller, the controller decides where to put the data, and keeps track of sections, etc.

 

Most utilities that are called "low-level" format tools, today anyhow, don't do that however, they only "wipe" the drive, about all they do...

 

Manufacturers DO, do low-level formatting, the thing is, since they have eliminated the platter that contained the track/zone and other layout info, the formatting utilities have become more and more complex. They still have to put this data on, though for speed, etc reasons they have started putting it on the platters themselves. this ofcourse increases the mechanical speed of the drive (less movement) and simplifies the design. Some manufacturers still provide tools for a low-level format, but, some no longer allow you access to that info, and a format of that level is simply no longer available, without specialized equipment, and thus the utility will no longer run, period. In either case, it shouldn't damage the drive....

 

gonna check out the link when i get home, or something...

[Overdog]

Yes, and there may still be some utilities floating around out there that will attempt to do a true low level format. In the past, I've seen these utilities screw up the drive, but that was in the few years immeadiately following the release of IDE drives. I admit I haven't heard of any cases of this in recent years, however.

[alexander]

Oh, yeah, i have heard of drives being screwed up too, what i found is, well there are 3 standards to disk allocation, if you use the wrong one, might as well just order a new hard drive, generally i wouldn't recommend using a utility that did not come from the drive manufacturer... and i've had IDEs screw up, IDEs used to have to be low-leveled for a long time too, though the problems described in the original thread are more likely due to ntfs fragmentation then low-level format, generally, if that screws up, you drive is toast and you just can't use it...

[Boerseun]

Well, not going into technicalities or anything, but from a NTFS point of view (yes, it DOES blow), a 'format' simply deletes the Master File Table - the file that tells the OS the location of all other files on the drive. On a standard NTFS installation, 12.5% of the drive is dedicated to the MFT, and its the one part of the drive which cannot be defragmented. This space isn't reserved, though - it stays intact until you fill your drive past 87.5% - in which case additional MFT entries gets written to any available tracks, fragmenting the MFT to hell and gone. A simple 'format' then doesn't help - the MFT stays fragmented, because all you do then is to clear the "pointer" to the beginning of the MFT. That's all a standard "format" does, in fact. After a 'format', you'll have an empty disk with pieces of the MFT scattered all over. Fun and games, and REALLY BLOODY STUPID. But it saves time, I guess. That's also why NTFS claims to be able to "recover" lost data - the data was never gone to begin with; you just have to figure out where the files begin and end. Many data recovery applications does just that.

 

A "low-level" format on an NTFS drive not only clears the entry point to the MFT, it writes a zero to each and every point on the harddrive - regardless. There will be no reserved MFT fragments lying all over the drive. After zeroing the disk, the MFT is once again solid, and you slap yourself on the forehead and promise yourself you'll never fill your drive to capacity, ever, again.

 

But the technicalities of 'formatting' and 'low-level' formatting is going a little off-topic here. My gripe is that after the disk was zeroed, and NOTHING ELSE WAS DONE ON THE COMPUTER, another Microsoft product was installed. And after the installation, the drive was fragmented something crazy.

 

MS Flight Sim X takes around 15Gb on a drive. From install, I'd reckon that you'd see a continuous 15Gb stripe on the harddrive - apart from a few minor registry entries. I haven't even executed the game yet, NOTHING. It was just straight from install. And between Microshaft and NTFS, they decided to install the game in little segments all over my pristine, freshly-zeroed drive.

 

I fail to see how such data sloppiness can be intentional. But then again, considering that it was basically (for all practical purposes) a 15Gb file-copy plus a few registry entries, I battle to see how it could not be...

[alexander]

A "low-level" format on an NTFS drive not only clears the entry point to the MFT

low-level format on any drive is what me and overdog have been discussing ;) low-level is a low-level

 

If you mean a wipe, aka something that will overwrite all the data on the drive with randomness, and you will haev to create partitions, etc, from scratch again. You may mean that, but it's not a low-level format... ;)

 

All file systems have an MFT, this is what tells the hard drive where to find data, just some filesystems manage it waaay better then others :)

 

drive is almost always fragmented. installation is nothing more then copying files from the cd, onto your hard drive, linking and relating them. and they do get moved more then once in the process of windows installation. Yes, there will be fragmentation after a windows install, fragmentation is ntfs/fat's first and middle name...

 

FAT = Fragmented Allocation Table

NTFS = New, Totally Fragmented ****

 

MS Flight Sim X takes around 15Gb on a drive.

Please, buy and install X-plane, as a hypographer, you will enjoy it more.

 

Flight Sim has a static flying model, that gets determined by the sim, and prior. They can get away with a bad plane model, and static values, and call it a sim.

 

X-Plane has a dynamic flying model, it breaks the plane into pieces, about 2x2in in size, and then calculates the airflow around it, and by that, vector forces generated by that air, and that is how lift is calculated, and how your plane flies.

 

Oh did i mention it does that thousands of times a minute?

 

So this makes them have extremely accurate plane models (or else they wont fly), and this makes it possible to do things like, attempt to land a shuttle, because the flying model is dependent on height, which gives you either better or worse lift, and different flight characteristics, world in X-plane is modeled after the real earth too, so, when landing a shuttle, you will hit the upper layers of the atmosphere, which, if not entered at the right angle, will make you bounce off of them, then there is the chance that you will overcompensate for the bounce and enter at too high an angle, to burn up in the atmosphere.... oops, been there, done that :)

 

plus, like 85 gigs of scenery data, really add a nice twist to it, 25,737 airports, from the remotes of africa to nyc, etc. And it runs on every platform, Linux, Windows, Os X, once you have a license, you can install it on either of all of the platforms.... and its only $60 (price will be going up)

 

Did i mention up to date weather information, detailed 3d cockpits. Lastly, did i mention that big plane manufacturers allow their potential customers to download x-plane airplane models, generally for a little money, to see if they like the way that plane flies?

[C1ay]

In an effort to do things the hard way there may still be an option:evil:

 

I'm thinking you could zero the drive. Partition the drive making the first partition only big enough to install your flight sim. Leave the rest of the drive unpartitioned and unformatted. Format the partition and install the flight sim. Use ntfstools on a Linux Live CD to resize the partition to get back the rest of your drive or incrementally as you install software.

 

If you'd like I could probably dream up some more hoops to jump through ;)

[alexander]

B, can you post screenshots of your disk fragmentation, i am not saying you dont know, but fragmentation, or defragmentation, and knowing how the data on NTFS is generally positioned, is a sort-of an art.