Installation guide

TARGA 3000 Configuration Cookbook
8.9 Defragmentation
File fragmentation cannot be avoided. When files are written, deleted, and re-written to a disk drive, the drive
is writing the data in the form of blocks as defined by the file system allocation size. If there is not enough
contiguous space on the disk to accommodate the file, the file system breaks up the file into pieces, writing
as many contiguous blocks as it can in one spot then jumping to another location on the disk to complete the
write. As a disk becomes severely fragmented, performance can degrade severely.
There are two ways to eliminate or minimize fragmentation: periodically use defragmentation utilities such as
Executive Software's Diskeeper or temporarily move media files to another drive or array, clean or re-format
the AV drives, and move the files back. This will force files to be written in a contiguous manner.
8.10 EIDE and Ultra/DMA-66 Drives
Not normally used for AV drives unless controlled by an EIDE array controller. Most motherboards
incorporate two Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) controllers as standard equipment. The EIDE or
Ultra/DMA-66 (also referred to as ATA) is a newer version of the IDE interface, and can return respectable
performance in systems where SCSI boot drives are not used. Be sure to apply the latest UltraDMA driver
from the motherboard manufacturer or Intel (...), as Windows NT 4.0 does not natively support UltraDMA.