Good morning everybody, I was wondering if the defragmentation (+ optimization) of the HDD may have any bad consequence to our sample sound libraries.
I mean, defragmentation should just move files but what about the optimization function? I hope it didn't compress the sound files making them lose quality. I don't know if you got what I meant to say.
I've been using IOBIT Smart Defrag v3.4 and Auslogic DiskDefrag v5.1

Thanks for any reply,
regards

 

As you said, defragmentation moves files to be more "accessible" for your HD...
Maybe you can enjoy a lil' speed up while loading the sample. *yes*

On the other front i strongly suggest you to NOT compress your library folders because, in my personal experience, compressed file (for compressed i mean the "blue" named file in Windows) may slow down the performances of the software, especially with Kontakt and all the Native Instruments stuff. I always see this kind of compression as a last resort to be used when you are runnin' really low on space while waitin' for a new hard disk.

By the way, no quality will be loss in either cases.

 

So defragmentation moves files to be more accessible and do the optimization do the exact same thing?

Are you talking about Kontakt compress or what?

 

I understand it's disk compression (blue files and folders from Windows Explorer, as explained above), not NCW samples compression.

 

Yep.. You get the point!

 

Just defrag Your drives whenever You put something new on them, and everything should run "much" faster... it takes a minute or less if You do it regularly.
Disk keeper is a good utility to use for the job

 

If possible keep sample libraries on a dedicated drive separate from the DAW audio files, or use a partition for the samples. Samples are only being read so they never get fragmented, it is my understanding that you can actually get worse performance if you defrag samples because of the way it rearranges the samples. I defrag my C drive and audio drive but never defrag my sample drive, there is no benefit so you'll just be shortening the life of your hard drive if you do.

 

Actually, if you keep your hard drives defragmented, you're prolonging their lifespan, as they don't need to work that hard.

 

Yea but still I'm not sure on what's the difference between defrag and defrag + optimize.

I think I expressed myself badly in the first post, this was what I wanted to say...
as you can see there are 2 options for defragmenting:

http://s28.postimg.org/mxxonnw19/img.png

so since the defrag only moves files to be more accessible for the HDD, I'm not sure on the defrag + optimize, I hope it didn't compress the file sizes of my libraries with the result of a loss in sound quality :dancing:

 

If your samples are on a dedicated hard drive it will never need to be defragmented, so in this example defragmenting would actually reduce the life of the drive.

 

Bottom line (in my opinion) Keep samples on separate drive (or at least a separate partition) and never defrag them. This was recommended to me by more than one sample developer including fxpansion when I asked them, also the guy from Platinum Samples said the exact same thing.

 

There's everything you want to find out about "Defrag + Optimize" option in the program's manual.

Check it out here, page 38 : http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag-pro/manual/?source=disk-defrag-pro&registered=true

 

Defrag never loses quality. Unless the defrag app is badly written (ie, doesn't make a copy as it defrgs) or your cache isn't performing its job, and you switch off the HD while it's defragging. In which case you're losing content as well.

NCW compression should be a lossless compression scheme. Somewhat like WV/FLAC. Use it if you want.

Using filesystem compression may speed things up if the operations are IO-bound. https://www.citusdata.com/blog/64-zfs-compression

But if your data goes corrupt after you enable compression, your data is more toast than if you didn't.

 

I dont know if anyone is defragging their ssd's but its not really required from wwin7 and up. Here's a blog page that explains why, http://www.hanselman.com/blog/therealandcompletestorydoeswindowsdefragmentyourssd.aspx

 

Defrag puts parts of the same files close to each other, optimize puts the files that are most used in an easier to access area.

Don't ever defrag SSDs, they have have a write life cycle and you'll just be wasting them. plus fragmentation is good for them because most used files will wear the entire drive evenly.

 

About Kontakt, "batch resave" per library may bring more results than defrag ;)
Don't expect something obvious with defrag.
I stopped using defrag years ago with the last mechanical disks.
Too much hassle for almost nothing. And continuous stress put on drive when doing defrag.

If you want a real result, SSD is the way. After that, RAID (easy software RAID 0 or 1 can be done with Windows and Linux). After, hybrid disk (flash+mechanical).

 

Yep, that's exactly my experience too. A resaved Kontakt program rarely takes more than one second to load.
Might be a good idea to put sample libs to an external USB3 SSD drive so you can use the library on different machines and improve performance too.

 

Thanks all, even if I never asked about Kontakt compress

 

Do Not Defrag your HD at all especially if using for studio recording ! It does Compress your files moves your files around and compresses them, NEVER DEFRAG A STUDIO PC BAD MOVE SERIOUSLY

also another thing if you format your Hd a lot? another mistake! this takes away sectors,creates a mirror as your hd space gets smaller and eventually it destroys your Hd array,cycles every time you format! Keep it limited to format

 

Greetz Friend,

The best state of any Hardrive and/or Hardrive Partition is one in as good a state of defragmentation as possible. To Get This, We use Smart Defrag which is FREE.

http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html

It is an excellent defrag app considering it's free. Most Free Defrag App do not defrag one of the most important Files in an OS, the MFT (Master File Table) file which can slow down your system when it becomes defragmented. Smart Defrag does.

It has a very USER Friendly Interface az well.

OBTW: Don't bother with their Security Products, They S U C K.

Hope this helps. *yes*