Everything in its right place
January 21, 2015 5:53 AM   Subscribe

 
YES
posted by Elementary Penguin at 5:54 AM on January 21, 2015 [4 favorites]


YES!

IT'S EVEN BETTER WHEN YOU RUN IT ON A MAC!!!!

YES!!!
posted by eriko at 5:59 AM on January 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


Thanks, I needed this.
posted by signal at 6:00 AM on January 21, 2015


Belongs in Oddly Satisfying.

In case anyone else was curious: Why you don't need to defrag your hard drive anymore.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:05 AM on January 21, 2015 [6 favorites]


Ah, memories. When the Subway ad used to pop up I knew my Windows XP system would be running smooth in a hour or so.
posted by charred husk at 6:07 AM on January 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


Oooh... it has sound! I had a very visceral response to that. :)
posted by adamt at 6:09 AM on January 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


It's not running slow enough.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 6:12 AM on January 21, 2015 [8 favorites]


This fills a hole in my heart that I didn't know was there.
posted by metaBugs at 6:18 AM on January 21, 2015


Why you don't need to defrag your hard drive anymore.

...if your operating system is configured to do it automatically. The hard drive still needs to be defragged.

When did they remove the visualization from the Windows defrag tool? Win7 doesn't have it (I just checked).
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:21 AM on January 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


So soothing.
posted by Snuffman at 6:25 AM on January 21, 2015


Defragging was my standard first thing to try/buying time technique when I was trying to work out what the hell my elders had done to their PC this time. About half the time, it worked on its own.

Such memories.
posted by Happy Dave at 6:28 AM on January 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


The hard drive still needs to be defragged.

Not very often for SSDs on Windows apparently.
posted by yerfatma at 6:33 AM on January 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


I thought the link was going to be a discussion about how journaled filesystems work, but it article was still fascinating in its own way. Windows file systems still do need defragging apparently, but it's done automatically now.

Ah, the memories...
posted by surazal at 6:33 AM on January 21, 2015


This is just another 3301 clue.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:47 AM on January 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


When will the ReiserFS DLC be released?
posted by I-Write-Essays at 6:48 AM on January 21, 2015


When will the ReiserFS DLC be released?

Too soon, man. Too soon.
posted by surazal at 7:01 AM on January 21, 2015


Putting this fullscreen on my SSD-equipped Mac is the most perverse improper-computing thrill I've had since that time I got Internet Explorer 6 running in Wine with an OS X titlebar and everything.
posted by neckro23 at 7:11 AM on January 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


I just changed the homepage on my kiddo's computer. He gets upset about updates that take two minutes. I'll report back later if he doesn't figure it out and get all Oedipal on me.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 7:26 AM on January 21, 2015 [7 favorites]


I remember running this on my old Dell 386.
posted by jeremy b at 7:42 AM on January 21, 2015


Oh hell yes
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 7:55 AM on January 21, 2015


Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 8:04 AM on January 21, 2015


Wow. I had no idea what a strong nostalgic reaction (sounds silly, but there's no more clear way to explain it), to the sound. I actually feel more familiar with the old DOS defrag (light and dark blue ASCII art!) but the sound!
posted by Alterscape at 8:05 AM on January 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


I DID NOT KNOW I NEEDED THIS UNTIL JUST NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!! !! !!!!!!!!!!! ! !!!!!!!!!!!! !! ! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!! !!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

424 SECTORS REMAINING
posted by Mister_A at 8:06 AM on January 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Needs more initial fragmentation.
posted by itstheclamsname at 8:14 AM on January 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


Back in the MS-DOS days I used to run a handmade shutdown.bat right before I turned off my computer every night and one of the things it stepped through was a defragger. I wish I could remember the name of the program I used. Anyway, every night I watched the drive on my old 286 sort itself into shape in record time since it had just been defragged the night before.

Sometimes I'd run it again manually just to watch it complete. That sense of satisfaction from an instant defrag is second only to that gained after degaussing a massive monitor.
posted by komara at 8:18 AM on January 21, 2015 [7 favorites]


That's just cheating, komara.
posted by slater at 8:20 AM on January 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's like looking around your house after cleaning the whole thing, hands on your hips in Superman pose, radiating a sense of satisfaction with everything in its place. It's not cheating, it's basking.
posted by komara at 8:21 AM on January 21, 2015 [12 favorites]


This kind of thing is why I originally switched to OS/2 full time in early 1993, shortly after I got a good job and my first modern (supporting a full 32 bit protected mode) computer.

Amusingly, 25 years after Gordon Letwin posted this to an internal forum, Microsoft still relies on scheduled defragmenting to avoid performance regressions.
posted by Poldo at 8:39 AM on January 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Komara, you're *exactly* the reason I stopped having roommates -- to protect people like you from people like me >:)

(I do NOT miss having to defrag the ancient family compy. Apple FTW! Er, wait, do you still have to defrag Apple? Probably, but my ancient Macbook is still running strong, regardless!)
posted by Mooseli at 8:58 AM on January 21, 2015


I am heading out on an errand now, and may leave this onscreen with my display facing the office window.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:23 AM on January 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Also works well as a white noise machine.
posted by Gygesringtone at 11:34 AM on January 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Er, wait, do you still have to defrag Apple?

No, you don't need to defrag Mac drives, in most cases.
posted by action man bow-tie at 11:39 AM on January 21, 2015


I finally realized why I always like watching the defrag process – you get to experience sorting vicariously! I get a similar feeling watching the progress of downloading torrents with multiple files.

This is like a spectator sport for me.
posted by mephisjo at 11:54 AM on January 21, 2015 [7 favorites]


When did they remove the visualization from the Windows defrag tool? Win7 doesn't have it (I just checked).

My guesses:
1) It looked really complicated but was not really actionable in any way.
2) A 2 TB drive has half a billion clusters. How do you show that on a monitor that only has a couple million pixels?
posted by aubilenon at 12:23 PM on January 21, 2015


Kids these days will never understand the butt clenching terror of hearing drive heads bouncing across a platter.
posted by DigDoug at 1:00 PM on January 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


I got to make this fast cause the first victim is right next to me and he is not stupid and he is a yellow belt. My boy is reading a book, looking up every so often at his screen, sighing. Good times.

Gonna prank the dispatcher tomorrow when I start my shift. She too is not old enough to know that this is not a thing anymore.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 1:08 PM on January 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm back to report that this thing we have starts all over again when it gets to the bottom. I think that was almost an hour? (insert maniacal laughter here) Kiddo just turned off his speakers and screen because it was annoying him. He's 44 pages into Damascus Gate and hooked. Questions and conversation have been awesome, and since my computer still "works," I've pulled up a bunch of history for him.

I see great potential for this trick, but he is going to either solemnly pluck my eyeware off by the bridge, set it on the desk and turn back around with his gargoyle face, or tell me to take my glasses off and just smack me when he figures out that this is just a full screen browser trick. Then we will laugh.

I know I am a terrible dad, but this I will do once a week until I get kicked in the head. Way better and much more useful than telling him Santa is real.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 2:48 PM on January 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


If I remember the key correctly, this is a very bad hard drive that might be better off replaced.
posted by JoeXIII007 at 3:06 PM on January 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's not running slow enough.

You can control its speed by using the numeric keys: they correspond to their upper-keyboard order with 1 as the slowest and 0 as the fastest. #javascript
posted by Ogre Lawless at 3:21 PM on January 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


The sound is pretty calming, sort of like hearing rain in the middle of the night
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:19 PM on January 21, 2015


drive heads bouncing across a platter

Back in one of my first tech jobs, I kept a head-crashed hard drive on my desk. Every so often I'd pick it up and turn it back and forth in my hand. The SCREEEEEE-SCREE sound it made was both a cautionary tale and oddly soothing.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:57 AM on January 22, 2015


Back in the MS-DOS days I used to run a handmade shutdown.bat right before I turned off my computer every night and one of the things it stepped through was a defragger. I wish I could remember the name of the program I used. Anyway, every night I watched the drive on my old 286 sort itself into shape in record time since it had just been defragged the night before.

I had a 286/12 with MS-DOS 4 originally and every bit of defragmenting seemed to help; I sometimes even would set aside a whopping 300K or so of my "extended memory" aside as a RAM Disk to do silly stuff slightly faster (1MB total RAM, 640KB standard that you always fought to the death to keep free, and DOS couldn't use the extended memory without QEMM / QRAM or whatever until version 5).

So, I bet it was Norton Speed Disk, which I used at the time and believe Microsoft purchased and integrated into MS-DOS around version 5, which I installed ASAP when it came out.
posted by aydeejones at 2:08 AM on January 24, 2015


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