64K Clusters - Do you bother to defrag

[personalt]

Do you guys that have 64K clusters bother to defrag?

If so what software do you use? All the programs I tried dont support 64K clusters.

[stanger89]

I've never defragged my recording drives.

[MattHelm]

I use JKdefrag every night on all the drives on the computer, but I use the defrag only (not move the files together) mode.

Runs very fast on all the drives except the WD GP drive with 6-10 hours/day of HD football (NFL/College) on it. That one sometimes takes a few hours!

[reggie14]

I never defrag my drives either. I've occasionally had problems though. I think it happens when I'm recording 2/3 things at once to a single drive that's almost full, while I play something back. But honestly, in over 5 years of using Sage I've only noticed a problem like that a couple times.

[trini0]

I do not defrag my recording drive either.

[paulbeers]

I defrag about once a year maybe? Otherwise with 64K clusters there really is no need.

[dvd_maniac]

I use 3*320GB HHDs in a 64K cluster Raid-0 array and have never defragged them ever. I have 7 tuners and this season, as well as last fall, I'd have most of them going simultaneously around prime-time with my recording at Max Mpeg-2. I have not noticed any significant hiccups or stutters.

Maybe I'm way off base here, but I would think defragging a recording HHD on a routine basis would probably shorten the lifespan of the drive.
Hardware guru's: Am I wrong?

[mistergq]

I use diskkeeper and I have the recording drives defrag. Its probably an old habit that dies hard.

[Zippster]

I did recently and all my tv recordings didnt show up under recordings anymore, instead they were under videos....

[mskitty666]

There has been much debate about this. I think whether you need to or not depends on your system. I have four tuners. With multiple shows recording to the same drive the files get severely fragmented quickly. I have actually confirmed that this fragmentation has and can affect playback. I use Raxco PerfectDisk. Several times I tried to watch a show that stuttered horribly (usually HD). I opened PerfectDisk, analyzed the drive, then saw it was one of the most fragmented files. After defragging that show it was watchable. I say it can't hurt.

[stevech]

My RAID1 partition, 64KB blocks, video-files-only, is never defragged. No need to do so - but I have no HD.

[stanger89]

I have an HD PVR, HD Homerun (2 tuners) and an SD tuner, and even using all 4 at the same time, I've not had any problems. Oh, and not recording to RAID or anything either. Just two normal drives.

[ke6guj]

I've had 7 incoming streams recorded to an external USB drive, HDHR (2 HD streams), FW'ed STB (HD stream) and 2 PVR-500s (4 SD streams) on many occasions. No problems with all that, and watching an separate HD recording at the same time.