Author Topic: A new approach to reduce NTFS fragmentation (Read 23,598 times)

MerleOne · « **on:** March 25, 2010, 03:15 PM »

Hi all,

I very recently stumbled upon this website, http://www.disklace.com. ; I got their 3 tools, could make work 2 of them (LaceDefrag & LaceLevel 2). They say they are at an early stage of their (entreprise-oriented) products. Does anyone know these products already. It seems that their purpose is to reduce fragmentation by using as little defragmentation as possible, quite the opposite of current commercial tools.

Any opinion on this ?

Eóin · « **Reply #1 on:** March 25, 2010, 03:43 PM »

Their english seems dubious at best, never a good sign.

Quote

When Fragmentation level increases, and you notice it yourself by the change in response time, it is too late and Defrag is not effective any more.

Is this even true? I wouldn't have thought so. And I can't make sense of what they're trying to say on some of the other points.

There's a fair bit of background given, basically it seems they've approached disk-fragmentation from the point of view of statistics and try to warn you when you're LaceLevel $:-\$ is getting too high and "the situation is getting dangerously close to an uncontrolled entropy".

Mostly sounds like nonsense to me. I do like how they sought to unify the disparate fields of Physics and Maths though

Quote from: http://www.disklace.com/Scientific%20Data.html

"Chaos" is a term used by mathematicians, while "Entropy" is related to Physics. We hypothesized that there might be an adhesion between the two that could be measured and enable implementation of preventive maintenance procedures adaptable to the storage area.

cmpm · « **Reply #2 on:** March 25, 2010, 04:04 PM »

Need more info on what they are trying to accomplish really.

Like this statement-

Quote

Many users has to format their disks "every now and then" for a fresh copy of the disk. This is an evidence that something is wrong with the current storage management system.

Makes no sense at all regarding fragmented files.
Automatic defrag programs are abundant.
Storage Management is the key topic I guess.
Perhaps something that monitors the state of what they are saying here-

Quote

changes in Data Quality measured by the fragmentation level is correlated to the activity rate of the computer

Eóin · « **Reply #3 on:** March 25, 2010, 04:33 PM »

They seem to be suggesting that if you wait too long to defrag you'll get to a stage where doing so won't work (for reasons they don't explain) so they're offering to sell you a monitoring program or something which will warn you before you get to that stage.

However such a 'too late to defrag' stage doesn't exist as best I know.

MerleOne · « **Reply #4 on:** March 25, 2010, 05:21 PM »

Hmm, I am not reading too many good things there. Still, I think they concentrate on the no/less refragmentation question. I have tried their software but my partitions are already well defragmented so I cannot check if this improves the situation or not.

To be more specific, they have a fragmentation mesurement tool (LaceLevel2) which gives some view on how is your disk performance, and a "basic" defragmenter, that only move a few files in my situation. This latter software is just a beta.

I would just like to know what is does on a heavily fragmented disk.

Regarding their third tool, LaceWatcher, I cannot get it to work : when I add my local PC/disks, I have a permission error at windows level that blocks any further action.

I don't pay much attention to all the marketing stuff, pretty terrible in that case I agree.

Thanks for having looked into it !

MilesAhead · « **Reply #5 on:** March 25, 2010, 06:28 PM »

Hmmmmmmm, after perusing their page it seems there's quite a high probability my magnesium fratus is not properly heterodyned when juxtaposed with the quality quotient of my bits... unicode extant of course. It appears a gratuitous investment in frivolous software is extant if I wish to maintain my gullibility index.

sajman99 · « **Reply #6 on:** March 25, 2010, 06:53 PM »

Well stated. I concur in the verbosity.

MilesAhead · « **Reply #7 on:** March 25, 2010, 08:48 PM »

edbro · « **Reply #8 on:** March 25, 2010, 09:23 PM »

It's true I tell you. I let mine get past the Lacelevel once and I had to throw out the hard drive and get a new one. I had uncontrolled entropy!! Never again.

And it's not just hard drives. Once I let my new Lexus go unwashed past the Lacelevel and, like the hd, I had to junk the car. Again, uncontrolled entropy.

MilesAhead · « **Reply #9 on:** March 25, 2010, 11:10 PM »

It starts out with uncontrolled entropy... leads to heroin abuse for sure!

PhilB66 · « **Reply #10 on:** March 26, 2010, 12:52 AM »

mouser, moderators, cody, anyone... the "Translate" drop down (up) menu at the bottom of this page doesn't seem to work on this thread... I just got bits and pieces but most is difficult to comprehend. HELP!!!

MerleOne · « **Reply #11 on:** March 26, 2010, 09:19 AM »

There seems to be some kind of consensus on the marketing capabilities of this company.

However, I still would like what you think about the products themselves. For those who experienced DiskTrix.com a while ago, with their Ultimate Defrag and DefragExpress product lines, there also have been a lot of controversy on their marketing, but the apps are quite decent, especially Defrag Express (IMHO).

f0dder · « **Reply #12 on:** March 26, 2010, 11:41 AM »

Quote from: MilesAhead on March 25, 2010, 11:10 PM

It starts out with uncontrolled entropy... leads to heroin abuse for sure!

Uncontrolled entropy is worse than heroin abuse, for sure!

Curt · « **Reply #13 on:** March 26, 2010, 12:31 PM »

Quote from: Eóin on March 25, 2010, 03:43 PM

Their english seems dubious at best, never a good sign.

I will try to be polite and just say that I do not agree with you on this.

f0dder · « **Reply #14 on:** March 26, 2010, 12:55 PM »

Quote from: Curt on March 26, 2010, 12:31 PM

Quote from: Eóin on March 25, 2010, 03:43 PM
Their english seems dubious at best, never a good sign.
I will try to be polite and just say that I do not agree with you on this.

And I will have to say that I agree 100% - when we're talking promoted products.

MerleOne · « **Reply #15 on:** March 26, 2010, 01:45 PM »

Sorry, my initial post seems to have caused some controversy...

I found something which is of interest to me in the free LaceLevel2 : this tool seems able to detect very quickly if a ntfs file system has some errors. It does that of one of my PC, saying some files are overlapped. I checked with chkdsk, and it was confirmed that some files had a few issues (cannot really tell what kind of issue since chkdsk messages are quite cryptic to me). When I force a chkdsk at boottime, this small issues were repaired.

Of course, it's not what the product is supposed to do as main purpose, but that's something anyway.

MerleOne · « **Reply #16 on:** March 26, 2010, 02:40 PM »

BTW, I found a way to make LaceWatcher run on my system : the Microsoft "server service" was not running. After starting it manually, LW started to work OK. Now whether it is useful or not is enterely another matter...

Eóin · « **Reply #17 on:** March 26, 2010, 03:48 PM »

Quote from: Curt on March 26, 2010, 12:31 PM

I will try to be polite and just say that I do not agree with you on this.

As f0dder suggested I only mean it in regards to situations like this where one of the target customers is corporations. Or where (also this situation) the product seems to be primarily promoted through marketing buzz or hype.

Show me any hobbyist project and I'd consider bad English an indication that the dev actually wants the product to speak for itself. That I'd see as a good thing.

sajman99 · « **Reply #18 on:** March 26, 2010, 05:50 PM »

MerleOne, what size disk are you running LaceWatcher on?

This proof of concept stuff has me really confused.

MerleOne · « **Reply #19 on:** March 26, 2010, 09:36 PM »

Quote from: sajman99 on March 26, 2010, 05:50 PM

MerleOne, what size disk are you running LaceWatcher on?

This proof of concept stuff has me really confused.

4 partitions, one is 20GB big, the other 85GB (excluded by the software - free version limitation) and the last one 37 GB.

40hz · « **Reply #20 on:** March 26, 2010, 09:51 PM »

Has anybody been able to find a creditable independent review of this product?

Everything I see up on the web is either a sponsored announcement, or what appears to be a reprint of a press release.

I'm surprised that there doesn't seem to be much info despite the claims being made and the amount of time this product has been on the market.

I would have thought one of the CMP or Ziff publications would have picked up on it by now.

bleh75 · « **Reply #21 on:** March 27, 2010, 09:25 AM »

Eóin l-
Their english seems dubious at best, never a good sign.

Heh agreed I really don't trust programs if they can't at least type in decent English.DesktopOK is about my only exception it restores your desktop icons perfectly without fail

Zero3K · « **Reply #22 on:** March 27, 2010, 09:14 PM »

The reason their English isn't that good is because the company that makes the product is located somewhere in Israel. Also, it seems that their programs havn't been updated for 2+ years. Maybe someone could contact koby@NOSPAMdisklace.com (its the email address for the developer of them) for more info (such as if a new version was made recently, etc).

MerleOne · « **Reply #23 on:** March 28, 2010, 08:51 AM »

http://disklace.fileburst.com/DISKLACE%20Whitepaper.pdf

I found this WP well hidden somewhere on their website. But is doesn't really helps I think.

sajman99 · « **Reply #24 on:** March 28, 2010, 07:02 PM »

Quote from: MerleOne on March 28, 2010, 08:51 AM

http://disklace.fileburst.com/DISKLACE%20Whitepaper.pdf

I found this WP well hidden somewhere on their website. But is doesn't really helps I think.

So the "inflection point" determines the "point of no return". OK, now I think I've got it. Uh...not so much.

I have to agree with 40hz. This is interesting and all, but I think we really need a paper/review/article from somebody other than Disklace Software to give this some legitimacy.