Lately my video files seem to be corrupt after I transfer them to my harddrive since they stop playing at a certain point and if I try video redo transcode or quick stream fix it also fails in the same place. Do I have a failing hardrive? How can I diagnose harddrive? I've also been noticing winrar files I've been downloading onto this harddrive have been failing to extract sometimes. I have two harddrives in my computer. The one in question is a 750gb drive I have set as one mass partition to store media. It is full of stuff right now and has been for a long time. Might it be suffering from defragmentation since for sometime now I've been keeping hardrive full and erasing a little at a time before quickly filling up the empty space with new data. My understanding is defrag can't be done unless there is lots of empty space. I'm using vista which is set to auto defrag but I can't seem to get it to show me a chart so I can see severity of fragmentation like XP.Will it help to go into disk managment and apply error checking at system startup and put checks beside the two options- -automatically fix file system errors -scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors I'm afraid I may have caused my harddrive problems since I recently relocated my PC to rest atop my subwoofer. I know the vibration wasn't advised but I don't usually turn it up very loud.
My subwoofer under my PC is logitech z5500. I noticed in z-5500 manual it said the magnets in the subwoofer could cause problems for computers in close proximity and I wonder if this could also be problematic.
If your drive is full it will cause you problems. I have a media PC with 4x hard drives (500gb/750gb) and when those drives get full, I have drop frames/corrupt recordings. I use ultimatedefrag to do my defrags, it is very accurate. They have DiskTrix UltimateDefrag v1.72 (the older version available as freeware now). But even a defragger will have problems with a full drive. I don't think your subwoofer has anything to do with it especially if it is a computer compatible speaker. A full drive will always be 30/40 percent fragmented, normal should be under 10 percent.
Thanks, So since my drive has been full for over a year now then it is likely to be heavily fragmented and this is likely causing my files to be corrupted? Is there a way for me to see on a chart fragmentation severity on a chart like I could on XP? Or needn't I bother with this and just presume it's heavily fragmented to the point it's corrupting my data? Should I buy an external harddrive to temporarily move all the data off of my suspect drive from in order to do a propper defrag of the suspect drive before putting the data back on the drive? Would doing this to my harddrives every six months or so be considered a good way to maintain the health of my drives.
you don't defrag an empty drive, for what purpose. you defrag a drive that has data on it to consolidete it not compress it so that the drive runs faster & finds the info you are looking for quicker.
I see, so to completely defrag a disk I would completely remove all data and then do a format right? I really just want to know how I can prevent my shows from being corrupted. Or if there are some simple guidelines I can follow. If I had 100 GB free in my 750gb drive, would that be enough free space for me to do a defrag. If so then as long as I do this once a month- remove 100gb and do defrag. Am I ok to keep HD mostly full the rest of the time.
you defrag with the data still on the drive not off. even a drive with fresh installed windows & programs are defragmented so defrag it.
If downloads are getting corrupted, it is not because the drive is full. Probably because of that subwoofer you have the system sitting on, but maybe because of some other problem. A defrag isn't going to help you.
On my media pc drives, I usually can do a good defrag if I have at least 200gb of free space available. No need to remove all your data, just offload some of the files to get some space. I try to defag my mediapc every 2 weeks to keep it in good condition. The first time you defrag will take several hours (large drives) but after that the defrags will go quicker. My advice is to use ultimatedefrag, it's the only defragger that I've use that shows a round graph showing the fragmentation of your drive. Most defraggers show square blocks which doesn't tell you anything. Also if you are using your hard drive to store only video files, it's recommended the drive be NTFS and use 64kb sectors, that's how I have my mediapc hard drives setup. Doing regular defrags every 2 weeks or monthly shouldn't cause too much wear and tear, my mediapc has been running 24/7 for 3 years and I haven't lost any hard drives to failure. Before I never use to defrag because I read that it wasn't needed, but it does help especially when your drive is nearing it's max capacity. http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-6502.html
Yes my drive is almost entirely video media. Mostly HD tivo files which are mpeg2's and are about 5 gigs per hour long show so my hardrive fills fast. Yes it's ntfs. I believe it came that way. I'm curious about your advice for useing 64kb sectors. I need to reformat hardrive to do this right? How much better would this be? What kind of advantages does it have?
according to sagetv (the media software I use), using 64k blocks helps in video playback and that's what is recommended for best performance. You will have to wait until the next time you format, to resize the sectors. For the time being a good defrag should help you.
A defrag isn't going to fix file corruption! When I say "some other problem" I mean that you may have a physical error on the drive. I would go to to the drive maker's website, and download their diagnostics tool. This can find physical errors, and sometimes can re-write the drive so that it writes around the errors and nothing is lost.
