defragmentation considerations

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Sun Nov 04, 2001 10:18 am

Didn't know where to post this one, it contains some tips and questions too... here it goes.

Follow this: Suppose you record audio, simultaneously, 12 tracks. They will be written chopped up, on your hd they will be written in one big aera, perfect for playback again (suppose you started from defragmented hd).

Now you defrag the disk. Defrag program will write every track as one straight 'line', each track consecutively one after the other. If you decide to play the song w youre sequencer, the hd will have to jump constantly from one thrack to the other (which fysical position on hd may be way off the first one now since defrag).

Is there an app that defrags keeping in mind the sequence? Ehhr... in fact there should be no sequence but all tracks interleaved (nothing to do with interleaved stereo) on hd for easy reading.

Norton Speed Disk will let you decide what files to put in the beginning, or at the end of yer hd. It's a start, but it will not write-mix multi track audio.

The only other concrete solution i have in mind is to have lots of different partitions, let's say 1GB large, one for every project. Start with a new partition for every recording. Then no defrag will be necessary 'cos no interference with other projects on the partition will exist.
But then again, if you add recordings later, they will not be written 'inbetween' the old files to be ideal for playback.

Is there any app that lets you decide to interleave write somme audio tracks? Would be to advanced hé. So my suggestion is not to delete recordings from your hd untill the project if finished, with recording as much as possible tracks at once on a defragmented hd.

Think about this, defragmenting your disk AFTER you recorded the files might not lead to higher performance, certainly not when all tracks have been recorded simultaneously.
Defrag will be required BEFORE every serious recordings though.

Some subject i had been peaKing about for a while... and i found it worth to mention.

kensuguro · Post by **kensuguro** » Sun Nov 04, 2001 1:19 pm

If you want to write into chopped up files, why not try raid striping.. that'll chop up your data and write them to multiple physical HDs. That'll give you lots of bandwidth and speed since it's easy to simultaneous access different physical drives.
Usually, it's a RAID card that does this.. I've heard rumors about a software that lets you do this.. I'm not very sure cuz I don't use one. (the Avid workstation at work uses an 8 disk raid and it's FAST)

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Sun Nov 04, 2001 2:12 pm

On 2001-11-04 13:19, kensuguro wrote:
...
why not try raid striping..
...
I've heard rumors about a software that lets you do this..

-- RAID disk doesn't show up here, it only works in Single Processor mode, I run dual.
I have a disk installed on the RAID, but it's not found in MultiCPU config.

-- RAID is on PCI bus1 here, IDE on PCI 0 i have 2 pci busses

speedy gonzales

-- I hear the same rumours, about 4-7 yrs ago. I am wondering if it is around, and if if is, wether it is still supported and updated.
It should be quite advanced if it exists, giving adequate user input on project/folder defragmentation options.

a t

m i c

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Sun Nov 04, 2001 10:52 pm

YEAH BABY!

I FOUND IT!!

AnalogX has a freeware app called Interleave. You can find it at AnalogX in the audio software section. It's in the Misc Utilies near the bottom. I'm not sure how customizable it is but i'm gonna play around with it and see where we end up

a t

m i c

Immanuel · Post by **Immanuel** » Sun Nov 04, 2001 11:59 pm

This is how I believe (but do not know) tracks are recorded on the harddisk (in logic).

I put a track length - say 5min
I record 4 tracks simultaniously - each 3 min
min 0-3 is for track 1
min 5-8 is for track 2
min 10-13 is for track 3
min 15-18 is for track 4
This leaves gaps at 3-5, 8-10, 13-15.

I havent tested it though.

Immanuel

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Mon Nov 05, 2001 8:59 pm

That would be not logic

cos your hd's head would be jumping around between 4 positions: track 1, track 2 (wich comes 5mins@44.1kHz= +/-50MB later on hd), track3 (another...),...

What a multitracker does, is that it interleaves wavs on the disk (not to confuse w interleaved stereo!). This means that 4wavs are written, if you have 128kB clusters, a block of 128kB per wav will be written, in next sequence: 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,...

This multitracker behaviour is very time saving for your hd's read/write heads, but also makes importing of 'old recorded' wav less efficient. Your hd's head may now have to jump from one folder to the other, to restore the 1,2,3,4,1,2... demand for the memory and mixer and so on.

Following this mindwave, it might not be advisable to temporary record, for whatever reason, in one folder and later copy it to somewhere else, on a dump partition or so.

So I'm gonna try the application from AnalogX the next time I format a partition, that way I can safely experiment without doing damage and with best test results.

a t

m i c

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Tue Nov 06, 2001 2:47 pm

If you use Norton Speeddisk you can add a joker to 'Files that will not be moved': ***.wav or so.
Speeddisk will leave the multi track recorded files in their interleaved position.