trader_4
Tue, 11
Apr 2017 15:42:04 GMT in alt.home.repair, wrote:

Now we have the guy who thinks recommending Firefox as a supported
browser to use on Win XP for the future, telling me that IDK how
files are stored on a hard disk. ROFL!

I didn't say anything about using firefox on Windows XP for the
future. Atleast, not a long term future. I simply commented on your
prior ignorant comment that you knew of no browser still being
updated for XP. You were wrong. ROFL.

And based on what you wrote he

Message-ID:
If that's the case, then doing a disk defragmentation should also
give a similar boost. I've never seen that happen. I think there
is a lot more there that gets added, corrupted over time that
degrades the OS performance.

You don't. If you did, you wouldn't have tried to compare what a
defrag program does vs an imaging program. An imaging program doesn't
leave your files in a fragmented state when it stores them inside the
image. It doesn't restore them in a fragmented state, either. It
rounds up all the little pieces and saves it inside the image as a
contiguous block of data.

The *only* time this doesn't apply is when you are doing a forensic
image. It's known as a forensic image for a very specific reason. A
forensic image is created so that you have a complete! and I do mean,
complete copy of the client/suspects hard disk. And, you work from a
copy! of said image, NOT THE ORIGINAL or the clients/suspects drive.

Can you recover data from a damaged file system by hand? Can you
rebuild a wrecked Master boot record/partition table by hand? Can you
recover data the client thought they deleted via normal means, by
hand? Can you recover from a malware issue without resorting to
reloading windows, either via image or from scratch? I can. So, you
can stop writing from your arsehole anytime. You aren't going to
school me on IT. It's just not going to happen.

Just as clarance? shouldn't play electrician, you shouldn't play IT
expert. You aren't one. Stick with the field you know, likely by
college education (IE: someone else had to teach you), leave the IT
stuff to those of us who know what we're doing and didn't require
someone else to teach us all about it, at our own expense.

Needless to say, when you tell Windows to 'delete' a file, it
didn't really delete it.

No **** Sherlock. You just figure that out?

ROFL. Umm, No. On my coco3 (back in the 1980s) I wrote a disk copier,
to defeat the copy protection present on a game intended for the
coco2. At the age of 9. I went to the same Radio Shack where I bought
the game, three days prior and asked the store clerk why he didn't
tell me the game wouldn't copy using the copy command built into the
computers rom chip.

As, it was the first time I'd ever encountered an error backing up a
floppy disc. I'd already copied a lot of others, using the built in
copy command without any trouble. But, this particular game was the
exception. I started writing my program friday night, by monday
morning, before I had to leave for school, I had it working! And, it
worked well. Really well.

I hadn't even heard of copy protection until I experienced it with
that game. I refused to use my originals except to make a copy of
them. And to this day, I do the same. Audio cd/dvd/bluray; they are
opened and a computer reads it one time, start to finish. The
original is placed back into the container and put up for safe
keeping. My discs are in absolutely mint condition as a result. No
scratches, no finger prints, nothing like that. Originals were hard
to replace, money wise, for a kiddo. I took great care of my stuff,
just as I do today.

He laughed and said, that's to make sure that when your disk
eventually gives out, you get to buy another one from us. That ****ed
me off to the point where I went home, made twenty five (yes, 25)
copies of said game and returned to that store. I asked him if I
could show him something on the demo coco3 they had running in the
store. I showed him the game I bought, three damn days ago, running
on the copied floppy. He was more than shocked, I'll put it that way.

I was grinning like a cheshire cat. And then I told him, I've got 24
more of these floppies with me, you smug asshole. I'm going to walk
outside of your store and GIVE THEM AWAY to anyone who wants it. They
don't have to buy it from you. What's more, I also brought a copy of
my program that I wrote, 25 copies of it to be exact, and, I'm going
to give it away to anybody who wants it too. I'm pretty damn sure
based on the way in which it works, it'll defeat ALL forms of copy
protection you assholes used on these floppies. Marking sectors as
bad, conveniently not formatting some (special format trick) was
dirty in my eyes, so I fixed you, and I fixed you good. Oh, and, btw,
I told him, the copies are stripped of your copy protection routines,
too. So, the copies themselves can be copied with the ordinary copy
command in the computer. You only need my program to make the first
one. H0h0h0.

My dad was with me, laughing his ****ing ass off. He told the guy,
"my son isn't like most kids. He takes care of his things, and, he
didn't appreciate being tricked like that. He spent his whole weekend
writing his program to copy that floppy. You don't have anything in
the store that can remain 'copy protected' anymore. And my son, due
to the way in which he feels you tricked him, is going to give you a
taste of your own medicine, and, I'm okay with him doing it, too."

I told the clerk he could keep the diskette I put in his demo machine
as I had plenty of them now, as well as my program. I had plenty of
copies of it too. He was NOT pleased, but, by then, I didn't give two
****s about him. Trying to trick a nine year old kid who worked his
ass off for months to save up enough money to buy the game, and you
do me like that? Heh, **** you. I even demo'd my disk copier for him
with a game I did not have and never saw previously, that was also
'copy protected' and My program did NOT fail. it copied the game
succesfully, on the first try.

I didn't stop there. I also brought along 25 copies of my disc copier
with me. I left one with the store clerk and gave the other 24 away
to anyone who wanted one. no charge, enjoy!

So, I knew about the deletion thing long before I got my first PC,
thanks. In fact, I also wrote what I called a data hiding program. It
would swap out the file allocation table at your request. So you
could save data normally, run my program, the floppy would appear
blank. Load other files onto it, and switch back and forth at your
leisure. Hiding whatever you wanted on the floppy disk. The only
catch was if the floppy neared capacity, you ran the risk of
overwriting one set of your file(s). As my program swapped out the
table and allocated the 'hidden' stuff to the back. Since the table
thought those were free sectors, it would overwrite your hidden stuff
if you used too much of the floppy storage up.

I only brought up the normal deletion process in a wasted effort on
my part to explain one of the differences between a defrag and an
image. Why one boosts performance more than the other. That was all.
There was no need for you to try and be a condescending prick towards
me in your reply.

I did write a DOS based program, in the mid 90s that would secure
delete files and freespace on a hard disk and/or floppy diskette. I
submitted the program to zdnet for review and publication. I won four
out of five possible stars (one star deducted for less than stellar
documentation as was/still is to a point typical for me) coders tend
not to be the best doc writers. We know how our program works, we
wrote it.

You can find it here, if you'd like to check it out:
http://bughunter.it-mate.co.uk/core/NUKE32A.ZIP

And some of my other ancient 'portable' (love the buzzword) apps
he

http://bughunter.it-mate.co.uk/core/

I submitted almost all of them to zdnet, and scored four out of five
stars for it. Always a star deducted for the docs, and ONLY the docs.
I've still got some/all of the reviews for them, too. Way back before
DOS 'died' and was still popular. Maybe you've hard of the
shareware/freeware compilation cdroms (mostly for BBS SysOps; which I
was also one)?

If you'd like, I'll post a few of them for your reading pleasure.
Zdnet wasn't cool with crypto submissions; and I learned that the
hard way. I did submit a couple of them and was told they wouldn't be
reviewed or published on cdrom due to their nature. My others though,
they did get published on cdrom. This was way before a typical home
user/small business owner could 'burn' his own cdroms.

Matter of fact, several of the boards I was a Co-SysOp on are
featured on the DVD set known as the 'BBS Documentaries'.

So, not only do I have my honorary masters degrees (two of them to be
exact), along with my ancient as hell Comptia A+/network+ certs (that
are grandfathered, btw), I've also got 'scene' credit too. How about
you?

There is no point in going any further with you. I could point
out that over the years I've seen many authorities list many
reasons that a PC with a clean install slows down over time.

Of course it does. Primarily due to file creation/deletion, etc. As I
outlined in the previous post. Modern OSes tend to create lots of
temp files as a daily part of their operations. And, that doesn't
even include surfing the web. And, then you have normal HD wear and
tear (mechanical drives, primarily) We could get even more specific,
concerning the damage cosmic rays have on the hardware over time,
but, I'm already writing way above your paygrade, so what's the
point.

Most of them focus on the fact that all kinds of software has been
installed, removed, re-installed, corrupting things, adding
startup items, etc.

Ehh, corruption plays a role, but, uhh, that's mostly the flawed
design of later editions of Windows using a proprietary binary
'registry' format (which also consists of a series of files which
change in size and are not 'set in stone' on the hard disk) If the
registry 'hive' which consists of a series of files grows/shrinks in
size, you're fragmenting it in the process. That will also slow your
machine down over time. Using a 'registry' cleaner? Heh, you
shouldn't. Not only for fragmentation issues, but for deleting
keys/values it thinks are harmless, but, your OS and/or installed
apps don't always feel the same way.

Adding anything to a disk that has sectors already marked free god
only knows where, due to normal file i/o activity
(deletion/creation/modification) also contributes to the performance
hit you will eventually experience. It's why an image reload will
cause a larger performance 'boost' than a defrag will on modern
editions of Windows. The defrag has to work with what it has, an
imaging program doesn't have to worry about your sectors condition,
layout, etc.

What you're actually writing about (without realizing it) is losing
the contiguous aspect to the files. The more split up the file(s) you
access are, the longer it's going to take your machine to bring that
file up for you. And, this doesn't just affect your files, either.
This can also affect dll loading, system driver loading, etc. Neither
of those 'OS' files locations are set in stone. They are subject to
being moved around when a defrag is performed.

The more you create/delete, the more the file(s) involved are spread
out all over the place. And, this includes the Windows registry. The
so called registry hive is several files, each with it's own function
and purpose.

reason, but it's not the only reason or the prime reason. For one
thing, the OS files, most of them should not become fragmented,
because they stay where they are put.

Well, not quite. The boot sector, mbr, etc, does tend to remain in
one place. Most of your system dlls and drivers will remain in the
same place, until you run that defrag for the first time.

Then, they'll be shuffled around at the sector level too, as the
defragger works. As, the defrag routines are trying to make as many
files as contiguous as is possible. In order to do that, it temp
relocates sector data as it shuffles things around. Moving nearly
everthing you incorrectly think remains in the same place.

You also have the windows swap file, as well as the hibernation file
to contend with. While the hibernation file on Vista+ is default to
75% of total system ram, the swap file can grow/shrink in size
depending in Windows present needs, unless you manually configure it
to be a specific size. The swap file cannot be defragged while
Windows is up and running, but, the hibernation file, can. If you opt
for a boot time defrag, that's when the swap file can get moved
around if needbe.

In both cases, more sectors are used/freed up (according to the file
tables); which results in, you guessed it, fragmentation and
eventually a noticable performance hit. Running defrag? It's
trying hard to straighten out a big mess at the sector level, but, to
do that, it might have to move files around that you had no idea
would be touched. Like your system dlls and system drivers. Your
'OS' files, you wrote about, previously. Their locations on disk are
not set in stone and ARe most certainly subject to changing locations
if a defrag operation is performed. If windows has to wait on your
hard disk to find the entire file due to it being spread out across
multiple sectors in different areas of the hard disk, you will
experience delays.

This also contributes over time to performance hits. Windows has to
be able to load dlls, of course. the dll isn't treated any
differently at the sector level than the word file (just an example)
that contains your families secret cookie recipes. This can cause a
'delay' in the app/Windows itself requesting functions from that dll,
since it has to load it, and, in order to do that, it's gotta find
all the pieces that goto it. And this applies for your system drivers
as well.

Since your defragger might have prioritized files it assumes you use
more often, based on access date/time stamps, that OS file you
thought never moves, might have been moved towards the end of the
drive. Or, in some cases, only a piece of it is now sitting towards
the end with the rest in the middle and/or towards the front. Now,
windows gets to search for the pieces in order to load the function
that's being requested from that dll. Or, the system driver it needs
to run say, your video card properly.

So, you're going to notice a delay. Windows 'slows down' as a result.
It's a trade off with the defrag route. OTH, a disk image doesn't do
any of this silly ****. It finds your files, all the pieces, stores
it contiguously inside the image. And, when you initially reload from
this image, it's just like having a clean slate, because it's not
reloading the image at the sector level the way it found it. Unless,
you're doing a forensic restore and for that, you had to create a
forensic image, first. Otherwise, You get a snappy machine again. For
awhile...and the vicious cycle repeats.

Some programs, like utorrent for example try to reduce the chances of
the fragmentation by pre-allocating the space the complete torrent
contents will require. If you downloaded say, a linuxmint ISO that's
1.5gigs, the program is going to create a file of 1.5 gigs, and fill
the file in as the download progresses.

The idea behind this is to reduce the level of fragmentation. It's
hoping that the 1.5 gigs is either outright contiguous blocks
(sectors) or close to it. Vs expanding the file as it retrieves more
pieces to it which is more likely going to be split across sectors
that are not near one another, due to other file write operations
occuring as it runs. Such as your 'updated' web browser while you're
surfing say, google groups.

A long time ago, Prodigy was falsely accused of spying on it's users
because it opted to pre-allocate a specific file to a certain size.
As the file is pre-allocated, whatever might be in the 'unused'
sectors that already contained data you could not access via normal
means is going to show up in that file, until it's over written later
by the prodigy software. Or, something else, like, another file.

Based on that, some ignorant people (such as yourself) mistakenly
thought it was 'spying' on them, because they could see bits and
pieces of their own data; left behind when they thought they
'deleted' the file, or when their word processor deleted a temporary
file containing it as it 'saved the changes' to the document you were
working on. Or perhaps some of their accounting data that was
temporarily saved to disk while the 'master' file was being updated
with the changes.

But you can go on continue to believe what you want to believe in
your tin hat world.

What you confuse for a tinhat world is IT 101. And, by the looks of
things, you haven't made it that far. ROFL.

How's that burner phone doing? ROFL

It's running the latest and greatest Android OS, and it's been
rooted. So, quite nicely I'd say. It's a quad core, too. with a
rather pleasant looking large screen. A bit too big to fit in my
pocket, but, I like it. It's almost the size of a small tablet.

Hows your monthly bill (which is most likely more than what I pay
every 30 days for unlimited time and data which isn't throttled if I
exceed a certain amount, unlike most major carriers) that's tied to
your actual name and address?

And, did I mention, I own this phone; there's no contract of any
kind. Nobodies going to try and bill me for early termination fees if
I don't like the service I get. Which, btw, uses the same cell towers
as your phone that likely cost a lot more than what I paid for mine.
And, mine probably has more 'features' than yours, since I rooted it
already. ROFL.

You can remain trying to be a wiseass prick towards me if you'd like,
I'll just continue to respond in kind by taking you to IT school, in
front of your 'pals' that have gone very silent in this
discussion...

It greatly amuses me too. You mistakenly think I'm some peon or
wannabe that you're going to walk all over. You couldn't be more
wrong.


--
I would like to apologize for not having offended you yet.
Please be patient. I will get to you shortly.