Berke Posted February 12, 2006 Report Share Posted February 12, 2006 (edited) It just occured to me that I can defrag my hi-md disc! It uses FAT and it shows up just like a regular hard disk drive on WinXP. I realized I can defrag when I was thinking how the MD recorded data in the first place. When I had my first walkman MZ-r50, I got to learn how the unit recorded music on the disc, and how it retrieved data from the fragged structure of the disc. I mean as we all probably know, when you have some music, and delete some tracks in the middle, it just adds up to the remaining time automatically. I was very fond of this system as the system automatically filled the blanks. I thought about the fragmentation issue years years ago back then and I thought if defragmentation would improve the performance.I haven't tried it actually yet, as it's very late at night, and all the himd's I have are at least %95 full (the defrag program wants at least %15 to function properly).The thing is, while I think defragmentation would be a very good thing to do, as it'll improve performance by avoiding multiple seeking attempts of the laser head when looking for the scattered data, I also think of the rewritability of the media. Defrag means data being copied and rewritten several times (especially with FAT systems), so I'm asking myself if it would degrade media's quality, or at least shorten its life.Any comments ideas suggestions on this? I want to try defragging when I come home from work tomorrow. Edited February 12, 2006 by Berke Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenmachine Posted February 12, 2006 Report Share Posted February 12, 2006 I haven't tried it actually yet, as it's very late at night, and all the himd's I have are at least %95 full (the defrag program wants at least %15 to function properly).If you're talking about unencrypted data content, you could move the data to a temporary drive, wipe the disc and copy back. I don't know if it would work with encrypted audio files though, if they would be still readable.The thing is, while I think defragmentation would be a very good thing to do, as it'll improve performance by avoiding multiple seeking attempts of the laser head when looking for the scattered data, I also think of the rewritability of the media. Defrag means data being copied and rewritten several times (especially with FAT systems), so I'm asking myself if it would degrade media's quality, or at least shorten its life.I'd rather worry about the durability of the device's mechanics. Discs can be relatively easily replaced for relatively little money, while your unit cannot. Standard MDs are rated for (theoretical) 1 million rewrite cycles iirc, i don't know about 1GB discs though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raintheory Posted February 13, 2006 Report Share Posted February 13, 2006 Fill up a disc once with some tunes and check it with windows defragmenter... The whole thing is fragmented. Even if you start from a fresh disc.The only benefit I could see to defragmenting a HiMD disc is that your recorder will definitely get a good work out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danielbb90 Posted February 13, 2006 Report Share Posted February 13, 2006 (edited) If it was benifitial to minidisc to defrag the media you would think sony would add a defragger* to sonic stage!? no?*I don't know if this is really a word!!! Edited February 13, 2006 by danielbb90 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pata2001 Posted February 13, 2006 Report Share Posted February 13, 2006 (edited) I don't understand why people are so fascinated in defragging MD. What's the point? You're only going to bust up your HiMD recorder's head by forcing it to read, write, and move back and forth like crazy during the process. Also, there is no "performance" issue in HiMD/MD, especially in music use. The unit has enough buffer to read ahead, preventing skipping in case the track is "fragmented." So, unless you want to shorten your recorder's life in a significant way, I don't see any point in defragging.Even if you use HiMD solely for data, its sub USB1.1 speed is the bottleneck. Edited February 13, 2006 by pata2001 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damage Posted February 13, 2006 Report Share Posted February 13, 2006 Actually, you'd not be able to do anything worthwhile since the audio data is presented to the OS as a single huge file. There may be some internal fragmentation, but as far as the OS know or cares, it's a single file. You could move the file here or there, but that itself does not do anything for the internal defragmentation within the file.Finally, unless you literally pick and choose files here and there during uploads (rather than deleting or formatting yoru disc and reuploading your file) you really have no reason to worry about defragmentation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Berke Posted February 13, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 13, 2006 Well, I guess you're all right about this. But even if it's only one file we're talking about, defrag process still corrects it afaik. But then again, I agree defrag is not very useful and too much of an effort the machine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauljones52 Posted February 13, 2006 Report Share Posted February 13, 2006 I tried this just for laughs, and it does not move anything because as Damage says it is one single file which is still presented as fragmented after i had defragmented it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonny mac Posted February 13, 2006 Report Share Posted February 13, 2006 It is one big file so can't be defragged through the Windows defragger. If you're often editing a disc and moving data around on it then you could initialize the disc and re-transfer all the music (both usinf Sonicstage). I suppose in theory it's possible a HiMD could become so fragmented as to ake performance suffer but it would take a lot of work to do it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danielbb90 Posted February 13, 2006 Report Share Posted February 13, 2006 I don't understand why people are so fascinated in defragging MD. What's the point? You're only going to bust up your HiMD recorder's head by forcing it to read, write, and move back and forth like crazy during the process. Also, there is no "performance" issue in HiMD/MD, especially in music use. The unit has enough buffer to read ahead, preventing skipping in case the track is "fragmented." So, unless you want to shorten your recorder's life in a significant way, I don't see any point in defragging.Even if you use HiMD solely for data, its sub USB1.1 speed is the bottleneck.Well I woulden't sony have put a warning in the manual if it would damage it that much!? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Posted February 13, 2006 Report Share Posted February 13, 2006 Well I woulden't sony have put a warning in the manual if it would damage it that much!? No, but on the other hand if it was really necessary they would have said so. Common sense is all it comes down to - I don't know anyone who defrags their USB pen drives... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danielbb90 Posted February 13, 2006 Report Share Posted February 13, 2006 I don't know anyone who defrags their USB pen drives...I do sometimes... Lol it sometimes frees up a tiny bit more space (its 1gb)... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Berke Posted February 13, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 13, 2006 Being a single huge file that's fragmented in itself doesn't render defrag program useless. Defragmentation is already about the files that are fragmented in themselves. Moving whole files from one place to another is not dfragmentation. This was only to clear things up, otherwise I agree that MD defragmentation is not necessary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Top Cat Posted February 13, 2006 Report Share Posted February 13, 2006 An interesting observation: one day I thought to try out a Shuffle play mode on a 300MB disc filled with mp3. To my surprise the unit didn't seek when changing tracks! and the songs were not very small - 8MB avg, I guess no more than 1 such song is just enough for a unit's buffer.....I mean not only it didn't seek, it didn't spin up the disc! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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