The size of the drive is 2 TB showing 53% used.
After searching and finding a few “How to defrag” questions that never get answered, I am posting my own.
Access to MyBook Live are from Windows 7 and Windows 8 systems.
When listing the files under Windows Explorer some directories in the Public folder clearly show a huge difference between “size on disk” and size of the accumulative files. For example the directory I store my software sources, called “Software”, it shows:
Size: 9.78 GB
Size on disk: 23.5 GB
Contains: 15,720 files 768 folders
Byte record size and record structure handling aside, this is one heck of a difference. This chasm cannot help but make one think a defragmentation of the drive is needed.
The most common theme from a search of this question is “no defragmentation is needed on these drives”.
I beg to differ.
Is there any WD sanctioned utility to address this?
The one reply was the standard answer, a link to the verbage that boils down to
“linux drives don’t need to defragment and here’s why …”
I admit I was disappointment to get this standard answer, instead of something a little less kneejerky. I feel like I went to the bank to deposit the $10,000.00 in cash that I had in my briefcase, and the teller ran off to check with a Manager then came back and told me that they couldn’t help me because they were told no one comes in to do that.
I STILL DISAGREE. So since the REAL answer appears to be: There is no ‘utility’ to assist in deframenting because these drives don’t need defragmenting.
The only way to prove my point (and I admit the possibilty that I’m wrong and that these drives just don’t need to be defragged) is to use the very old method of pretend defragmenting; ie:
COPY everything that is accessible on the drive to another 3TB dirve that I happen to have lying around (I admit one mistake already since I first said it was a 2TB drive) AND then copy them all back to the now (mostly) empty “fresh” drive and compare the Size to the Size on Disk. If the result is a SIGNIFICANT difference well beyond what can be accepted for file allocation of bits in sectors then the need for a Defrag Utility can be proved or disproved.
Gary, size on disk is not affected by fragmentation.
Size on disk is larger than file size because the large blocks used. Defragmentation doesn’t affect the quantity of blocks used… It just makes the blocks adjacent to each other.
the only exception to this I am familiar with is when file operations consisting of a large number of file prunes is done which leaves files with lots of underutilized blocks. But that’s rare, and in theory would be corrected by simply copying the file to another and deleting the original. No need to copy the whole disk to prove that out… Also, that assumes the copy merged pruned clusters.
Also beware that using the Windows Properties dialog to view size on disk where the target is a NAS is not reliable because differing Samba configurations will report very different results for the same exact cases, often as a result of differing “allocation roundup size” config parameters or differing defaults between versions of samba.
garymatt wrote:
The one reply was the standard answer, a link to the verbage that boils down to
“linux drives don’t need to defragment and here’s why …”
I admit I was disappointment to get this standard answer, instead of something a little less kneejerky. I feel like I went to the bank to deposit the $10,000.00 in cash that I had in my briefcase, and the teller ran off to check with a Manager then came back and told me that they couldn’t help me because they were told no one comes in to do that.
Do you understand that this is a user forum? That is that any answers you get on this forum will be ONLY from other users. You should be very happy that someone even bothered to try to assist you. But no, you are unhappy with someone taking time out of their day to try to assist you motiviate only by their own altruism. You sir are the definition of selfish.
Thank You TonyPh12345 for giving a thoughtful answer, AND for not berating me.
This should also help the next batch of people searching who are not satisfied with the answers on this subject that were previously posted.
Though I have been involved with computers for many years, your information was news to me. I may have to assume this now as time goes on.
