NTSF slower than FAT32?

[RichEtheridge]

Recently I converted one of my FAT32 drives to NTFS to overcome the 4GB barrier and now I cannot capture without dropping frames. I defragged the drive and rebooted because I figured there was just something dragging down the system, but I can still capture fine to another drive. Has anybody had simliar problems or know how to resolve them? I'm capturing at 640x480, MPEG2 at 15mbs (which I later clean up and compress to VCD). Works just dandy on my FAT32 volume, but even lowering to 480x360 MPEG2 at 11mbs drops frames on the NTSF volume.

System Specs:
1.5Ghz Pentium 4
Abit PB4 motherboard
512MB RAM
ATI Rage Fury Pro
Maxtor 40GB ATA66 FAT32 (C)
Maxtor 60GB ATA66 NTFS (D)
Windows XP
Using MMC 7.2 to capture

[Cheesemeister2000]

Windows XP is probably your problem.

I upgraded to XP Pro from Win98 and started dropping frames at about 15% with MMC 7.6. I then tried with Windows 2000 Pro and have had no problems since 8)
XP hangs all the time, stick with 2K

Cheesemeister2000

[Mirror_Image]

Recently I converted one of my FAT32 drives to NTFS to overcome the 4GB barrier and now I cannot capture without dropping frames.

Did you reformat the drive with the NTFS file system - or did you just do a quick and dirty conversion without reformatting.

[Gazorgan]

FAT16 is fastest, then FAT32, then NTFS.

One problem with large drives is the default block size(did you use M$ to convert from FAT32 to NTFS?) is too small to be effective. You can re-format it to be 16KB-64KB and get some major speed improvement. You also lose the ability to defrag with some software(don't need to on a capture drive!), and you don't wan't small files on that drive!!!! (it's fine for video /audio and a few apps, but not the OS).

[RichEtheridge]

I used CONVERT to change it to NTFS. I'll reformat with NTFS and try again. So is it better to go with the largest block size or is 16K okay?

Thanks for the tips.

[MpegEncoder]

It amazes me that everyone trys to blame all of the worlds problems on Windows XP. I'm no big fan of MS, but XP is the best they've ever done. I'm running XP on a 4 year old machine and works quite well. Perfect? Well of course not, it's still Windows!

For NTFS to be efficient, as Gazorgan said, the block size (bytes per cluster) must NOT be 512 bytes. This is what happen if you use that 'convert' program. Microsofts web site states that this was the case for Win2K but not for XP, but in my experience they are wrong. Therefore, I did a fresh install and got 4096.

I'm currently able to capture DV-AVi with a firewire interface at 25Mbps without any problem (and my machine ain't very fast).

[fmctm1sw]

One problem with large drives is the default block size(did you use M$ to convert from FAT32 to NTFS?) is too small to be effective.

This is a very good point. The only downside I see to increasing the block size is wasted space. But the tradeoff in increased drive speed may be well worth it.

[BJ_M]

if you change your block size (a good thing in many cases) the built in defrag doesnt always work anymore (a bad thing and i think a bug)

solution : get a better defrag app - i like O&O the best http://www.oosoft.de/index-e.html

[Gazorgan]

My 80 GB capture drive has block sizes of 64KB. This means a 1 KB ini file takes up 64KB, not terribly efficient. Since what 'typically' lives on the drive is MJPEG/Huffyuv AVI's, VOB's, and and assorted temp files from your typical DVD conversion, it's a non issue.

I can't defrag it. So what? I mean I dont' think anything on the drive is ever more than 2 weeks old. Deleteing everything is the same as defragging

Here's a comparison; 512 byte block verses 64KB block. You have 128 more FAT entries than I do, that means your drive heads spend a lot more time going to the partition table and writing entries.

I'm not sure of the exact performance difference, intuitively I'm thinking 10%-30% difference in certain types of read/writes. Adaptec used to have a great SCSI tool for testing this, I'm sure there's an IDE stress test equivalent.

[crahak]

A NTFS drive with too small clusters that is fragmented, and with a fragmented MFT is really slow, a LOT slower than FAT32. No doubts about that. Some days I wish they came up with "plain" FAT48 or 64 :/

[freebee22]

Hi, I going to start capturing my home movies to my computer I already got a firewire card Iam still looking for a easy to use software just to convert it to dvd..question is..Iam going to reformat my HD and start from scratch so what is the block allocation I need to use, to get the most out of xp???? 4096,2048,1024 or 512...and how can I findout what is the block size of a HD that is already formated and working...


thanks

[Gazorgan]

@freebe22

If it's the drive with your OS on it, then 4K is okay. It's a good size for speed versus wasted space. If all you are going to do is capture to the drive( it's a 2nd or 3rd drive) then look at 16KB.

How your going to format it if you only have 1 drive is a seperate issue (XP CD is bootable...hint hint)

[RichEtheridge]

Just in case anyone cares... I reformatted with 4K blocks and I am no longer dropping frames. Now I just need to work on getting around that stupid Macrovision stuff...

[Gazorgan]

[heretic422]

Not to start a bantering session but...

Gazogan wrote:

Deleteing everything is the same as defragging

Deleting is not the same as defragging as anyone knows, because the available blocks of the deleted file are not moved when the file is deleted. Defragging moves pieces of fragmented files to sequential locations on the disk, thereby reducing seek times for the drive heads.

Either reformat your entire drive with the block size you want OR defrag and then delete everything so the blocks are "lined up."

[Gazorgan]

Try defragmenting a drive that has no files on it. None, all deleted ( and not put in the recycle bin ).

[LSchafroth]

XP installs with several Services that need to be shut down and some tweaks to the NTFS system. These make all the difference in the worls for XP.

Go to http://www.tweakxp.com and use their tweaks. There are some options you can turn of for NTFS that helps a lot. there is one tweak to turn off all the desktop animation and still keep teh look and feel.

The next thing is the download the trial of Diskkeeper Workstation 7 and use it's Boot Time Consolidation. It will defrag your MFT, Pagefiles, Directories and etc. When you do a convert to NTFS the MFT is badly fragmented. You might have to do 3-5 reboots and consolidations inorder to clean up directories and files in order to clean up the area needed to put the consildated MFT.

I've seen some NTFS drives that had a MFT fragmented over 10,000 times! It took 6 hours tio defrag. once done the machine came to life. Just clciking on the Start menu made it thrash the drive to find teh shortcuts needed in the menu.

Just food for thought.

Lannie

PS I can capture at 720x480 and browse the net and read emails and never lose a frame. Even on my lowely 911 PIII.

[freebee22]

question..If I do a re-install of windows xp and I reformatted the HD using the xp disk what is the allocation block on it?? 4096? or is there an option to change that to 16k?? and what is the default allocation block on win xp??

thanks

[MpegEncoder]

A while back I installed XP on my 80G drive partitioned in two (35G for Programs, 45G for Data), and the allocation unit is 4096. This seems to work quite well.

[falconx]

ok
I do use Windows XP Pro. ==>NTFS last night I encoded 45 minutes using VirtualDub 1.4.9 ==>AVI==>Huffyuv v2.1.1 codec 352x288 and I got 3 dropped frams only

2 days ago I did encode Mpeg2 using MMC 7.6 352x576 8.5 MB/sec and no dropped fram at all


P4 2Ghz
512 MB RDram
Intel D850MV M. Board
MAXTOR (6L080J4) 80GB

Windows XP Pro. with SP1