Defrag Recording Partition

[Phizal]

Hi,

I need to defrag my recording partition. I've done this in the past and ran into some trouble with DAWs finding the files. I would have to have the DAW refind each audio file on different partitions even though I only defrag the Projects drive. Has anyone else run into these problems?

[Alan Moon]

Originally Posted by Phizal

Hi,

I need to defrag my recording partition. I've done this in the past and ran into some trouble with DAWs finding the files. I would have to have the DAW refind each audio file on different partitions even though I only defrag the Projects drive. Has anyone else run into these problems?

Which DAWs are you running?

My understanding is that the memory may be corrupted if you are experiencing this. I'll have to leave the really technical answers to Ladia, though.

Ladia?

[Phizal]

Well this time I defragged and didn't have any problems.

[Ladia Svajcik]

You certainly should have no problems doing Defragmentation as long as your hardware is in stable condition. All that defragmentation process does is to collect scaterred parts of a data file and places them together for faster seek time and reading time. Why is the data inconsistent in a first place? Well, simply when system writes data onto a Hard drive it uses first available free space while the disk spins 5400 - 15k rpm. Try to rev up your sport car to 10k rpm and write consistent message to a disk attached to it's wheel.
Anyway, so the system collects the data and writes them to RAM, clears the space and writes it back down in one continuous file, if your RAM has issues you will end up with a corrupted file.
BTW, SSD is the future, multiply the peformance of a conventional drive, has no moving parts, creates very little heat, NO NOISE and has no fragmentation issues

[RDMS]

One of the best defrag programs out there is Iobit Smart Defrag.

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

Fast and thorough, just remember to disable the "start with windows" in options.