Windows Audio Problem (end of story)

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On Sun, 16 May 2004 11:41:03 -0400
edwardp at operamail.com wrote:

> People "in the know" have told me previously that a hard drive with
> the NTFS file system does NOT have to be defragged.  Guess they
> weren't too much "in the know"...  I ran the defrag utility under XP,
> discovered that the XP partition was 45% fragmented and it recommended
> a defrag.  
> 
> After the defrag completed, I launched Windows Media Player to check
> the status of the previously-mentioned audio problem, and although the
> problem remained, it was not as severe after the defrag.  I still feel
> this is a software issue as the problem is non-existent under Linux on
> the same hardware.
> 
> So, I have decided to use Windows only to update the anti-virus
> software and for any required interaction with the ISP in the event of
> loss of connection. 

I could have told you that NTFS requires defrag. I used NTFS back when
NT was beta when I was writing the Digital Alpha assembler for NT. I
confirmed that they had not improved this when I was using Windows 2000.
The issue may not be the filesystem per se. In contrast, Unix and Linux
filesystems do not require defragmenting except in some extreme
conditions. That is because Linux/Unix heavily buffer the files and the
drivers make an attempt to prevent fragmentation. 
-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
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