How far can I fill up a HDD?

[Gene E. Bloch]

BTW, a Harley is arguably the slowest motorcycle available today. Is
that really the example you wanted to use?

Now, come on - it *is* faster than a tricycle, unless the toddler is on
steroids.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

I have no problem with the parts of your post that I snipped, but I
completely disagree with the notion that defragging will help a video
play smoothly. Try this as a test: play your video and watch the disk
access LED. See how it blips every second or two? In computer terms,
there's tons of time in between each access. Defragging isn't going to
buy you anything with regards to playing a video.

Depends how fragged. Granted, if the drive has only been used for video,
then gaps on it will mostly be large; but if it is well fragged when the
file is written, then the light will be on a lot more than just a blip
once a second.

 

[Mortimer]

Depends how fragged. Granted, if the drive has only been used for video,
then gaps on it will mostly be large; but if it is well fragged when the
file is written, then the light will be on a lot more than just a blip
once a second.

Agreed. On my 1-year-old Win 7 PC (with a 1 TB SATA-2 7200 rpm drive, in
addition to the system drive), I have had occasional problems with videos
(.drv-ms files recorded with Windows Media Player) playing jerkily every so
often. In each case, I find that the affected files are fragmented, filling
in lots of small holes where I've deleted previous videos that I've watched.
Defragging the disk (or even just that particular file, which Defraggler can
do) always cures the problem.

 

[Char Jackson]

Depends how fragged. Granted, if the drive has only been used for video,
then gaps on it will mostly be large; but if it is well fragged when the
file is written, then the light will be on a lot more than just a blip
once a second.

To the extent that it affects video playback? I seriously doubt it.

 

[Stan Brown]

To the extent that it affects video playback? I seriously doubt it.

Or anything else, that I've been able to observe. My Windows system
at work seemed to be running slow in opening programs and files. IT
advised defragging, which I did, and it made no improvement than I
could see.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

Or anything else, that I've been able to observe. My Windows system
at work seemed to be running slow in opening programs and files. IT
advised defragging, which I did, and it made no improvement than I
could see.

Well, Mortimer in this thread _did_ see some - admittedly, it sounds as
if rare - stutters in playing video, on an only one-year-old machine,
that seemed to be fixed by defragging. I would certainly expect to see a
rarer and more even flash from the HD light, even if no actual
stuttering was evident before defragging.

 

[G. Morgan]

I'll start storing more TV movies and still more from
eMule

eMule is a terrific way of collecting virus/Trojans too!

I stick with torrents, looking for comments from users stating its
quality/legitimacy before I D/L.

 

[Char Jackson]

Well, Mortimer in this thread _did_ see some - admittedly, it sounds as
if rare - stutters in playing video, on an only one-year-old machine,
that seemed to be fixed by defragging. I would certainly expect to see a
rarer and more even flash from the HD light, even if no actual
stuttering was evident before defragging.

Just as everyone should take my posts with a grain of salt, I take
others' posts with a grain of salt, as well. I don't know what
Mortimer saw, nor do I know what was going on with his PC at the time.
When he noticed stuttering, was Windows running a half dozen
housekeeping chores in the background? I don't know. Did his video
stutter because his PC's video subsystem wasn't up to the task? I
don't know that, either. Was it something else entirely? No idea.

 

[Paul]

Just as everyone should take my posts with a grain of salt, I take
others' posts with a grain of salt, as well. I don't know what
Mortimer saw, nor do I know what was going on with his PC at the time.
When he noticed stuttering, was Windows running a half dozen
housekeeping chores in the background? I don't know. Did his video
stutter because his PC's video subsystem wasn't up to the task? I
don't know that, either. Was it something else entirely? No idea.

It could even be a bad sector on the disk, requiring multiple rotations
of the hard drive platter to resolve.

Paul

 

[Martha Adams]

Just copy to an empty drive and erase the original when done. All
defragged.
===========================================================================

Just copy to an empty drive and erase the original when done. All
defragged.

I disagree with that. About 1Tb has to have cost a lot of work to save
and edit it. Thus, I think better is copy to an empty drive *and save
the original* off the premises. To wipe and re-use is not an economy
here. Things happen.

Titeotwawki -- Martha Adams [Sat 2011 Sep 17]

===============================================
** Space Frontier Now! **
http://www.mhada.info
===============================================

 

[Bob I]

I disagree with that. About 1Tb has to have cost a lot of work to save
and edit it. Thus, I think better is copy to an empty drive *and save
the original* off the premises. To wipe and re-use is not an economy
here. Things happen.

Only has one copy now, shrug.