How to move files to[wards] end of hard drive

[leuce]

Hello everyone

Do you know of an easy-to-use utility (or a web site with good explanations) for moving specific files to or towards the end of the hard drive. In particular I'd like to move files from near the start of the drive towards the end of the drive, to fee up space near the start of the drive so that I can copy files onto the drive faster.

Some defrag utilities have this feature, but only for defragmented files, or only for "large" files or files of a certain file type, and not for specific files or files in a specific location (e.g. "near the start of the drive").

The drive in question is an external drive used for films. Sometimes I'm not in a hurry when copying films to the drive (or moving files around), but sometimes I want the films to copy as fast as possible, and for that I would like to create large gaps near the start of the drive.

Of course, a simple, manual way of doing this is to simply make copies of files on the drive itself, and then deleting the old versions, which will create gaps nearer to the start of the drive, but then I would need a utility that can tell me which files are closer to the start of the hard drive (so that I can make copies of those files). I know I can use Defraggler for that, but I can only view the files from one block at the time in Defraggler (you can't select multiple blocks to see what files are in those blocks).

Any ideas?
Thanks
Samuel

 

[Megahertz07]

Lets assume you have free space on the beginning of the drive so the write is faster than it wold be if the space were on the end.
Then you will spend much longer time to move the file, cluster by cluster, to the end to make free space for the next write
It doesn't make sense. You're going to spent more than twice the time (one to write and more than one to move).

Don't use external disks to store data you can't loose. External disks are the piece of hardware that fails most.

 

[leuce]

Then you will spend much longer time to move the file ... to the end to make free space for the next write. It doesn't make sense. You're going to spent more than twice the time (one to write and more than one to move).

Yes, but not all time spent copying files are of equal value. There are times when it doesn't matter if a file takes 1 hour to copy, and there are times when it is preferable that the file takes no longer than 10 minutes to copy.

I'm not talking about backups. I use this drive to give my television access to my downloaded movies (because it's too much trouble to set up a NAS). If I have a new movie on my computer and I want to watch it on the television immediately (or shortly after), then I would want that file to copy to the external drive as quickly as possible. If I don't want to watch the movie immediately, then it doesn't matter how long it takes to copy the file.

 

[iko22]

1. The only way I can think of to achieve this, is to Partition the drive into two. You could keep the smaller partition near the front (lower order of GB), and larger Partition near the rear (next to the other partition).

Example, assume you have disk with 465GB free space. You could create a Partition of size 30 GB at front of disk, and then you would still have 435 GB remaining for a second partition for your bigger files.

2. Only the above does not work so well on modern disk drives. Modern disk drives often have more than one disk platter that can be accessed simultaneously. You would need divide the disk capacity by the number of platters to find where the "front" of each platter lies.

3. Consider purchasing a hybrid (SSHD) drive. These have HDD platters, and they also have a large Solid State Write Cache. The performance is much improved over normal HDD, yet they are not as expensive as SSD's. With one of these SSHDs, you would not notice the difference between writing to the beginning, middle or end of a platter.

These are my ideas, anyhow.

 

[Megahertz07]

Good solution Iko.
External disks are normally very slow, much slower than the 60MB/sec of a USB2.0.
I would buy a 32G ultra fast USB flash disk to replace the external HDD.

 

[samuria]

Once the disk head has got into position if the file isn't fragmented the speed isn't noticeable if it's front or back

 

[Megahertz07]

Once the disk head has got into position if the file isn't fragmented the speed isn't noticeable if it's front or back

I'm not a disk expert, but don't think so.
A track on the beginning of the disk has more clusters as it's longer (π.D) than at the end. On one rotation more clusters will be read than closer to the center where the diameter is smaller and has less clusters.

 

[Ranger4]

It probably depends on where the head is in relation to the disc tracks when it receives the command to move, so I doubt if much would be gained by moving the files.

As an example, let's say the reading head was right at the inner track when it received the command & it then has to move to the outer track, which is probably equal to the reverse happening.

 

[samuria]

Interleave will effect it but gains you could get are not worth problem as you keep having to do it

 

[Megahertz07]

Interleave will effect it but gains you could get are not worth problem as you keep having to do it

I agree. I think that the time difference of writing to the beginning or to the end don't justify the effort. But this is up to the OP to decide.

 

[townsbg]

For one thing location is determined by the OS. Secondly IMO the time it takes to move the files wouldn't save you any time even if there is a time savings in copy time. It's not like the files would be instantly moved. You would have to wait for the time it takes for the OS to read the file and then write it back to the disk. Thirdly the bulk of the time lost isn't in drive write time but the time it takes to transfer it over the external connection since that is so much slower than the drive can handle. If you are using USB 2.0 they maybe you should consider going with eSata or USB 3.

 

[Snick]

In this order, my connection choices would be USB 3.1, USB 3.0.

All three standards are much, much faster than USB 2.0, which tops out at 480Mbps. eSATA can deliver 6Gbps (older versions deliver 1.5Gbps or 3Gbps), USB 3.0 runs at up to 5Gbps and USB 3.1 should do 10Gbps. Thunderbolt can do 20Gbps.

OP is mistaken if belief is a file is written sequentially to drive, IT IS NOT!

The data is stored in a very orderly pattern on each platter. Bits of data are arranged in concentric, circular paths called tracks. Each track is broken up into smaller areas called sectors. Part of the hard drive stores a map of sectors that have already been used up and others that are still free. (The File Allocation Table or FAT) When the computer wants to store new information, it takes a look at the map to find some free sectors. Then it instructs the read-write head to move across the platter to exactly the right location and store the data there. To read information, the same process runs in reverse.

OP could purchase an External SSD if worried about speed!

About HDD write speed

The farther away from the inside of the disk platters you go, the higher the velocity of the head relative to the platter is. Therefore you can see peak sequential transfer speeds of up to 2X when comparing the outermost area of a hard drive platter to the innermost. This can be verified with a utility such as HDTune.



To take advantage of this, those seeking the highest performance from platter drives will often partition only the start of the drive, therefore formatting the drive to a lower capacity, utilizing the faster part of the hard drive. This process is called 'short-stroking'.