There is something oddly satisfying and dare I say therapeutic defragmenting a mechanical hard drive on Windows 98.
How many of you have carefully watched the progress as the churn and crunch of the drive is heard?
There is something oddly satisfying and dare I say therapeutic defragmenting a mechanical hard drive on Windows 98. How many of you have carefully watched the progress as the churn and crunch of the drive is heard? 30 comments
@jameswoodcock .. and even before W95 Defrag, Norton Utilities had a defrag utility for Windows and Dos. I'd watch that for hours (while studying) If anyone wants this in W10/11, Defraggler from Piriform (CCleaner) have a free edition. It too has the block by block data move representation. Problem is disk drives are so big these days that each block in the display is hundreds or thousands of logical device blocks, so often times you'll see just two or three blocks light up. Not as exciting. @jameswoodcock I remember seeing the defrag ui in dos for the first time and :blobmindblown: I watched the whole 60mb hard disk being defragged. @jameswoodcock "Yeah, payin' the bills with my rad programming skills, defraggin' my hard drive for thrills..." - Weird Al, All About the Pentiums @drahardja @jameswoodcock IIRC, I had the whole VM on a ramdrive when I took this video. Probably no more of us than have carefully watched a certain blinking light atop a tall building against the nighttime sky. @jameswoodcock Oh, anyone remembering the Norton Utilities from the DOS times? I ran Norton Defrag – err, Speed Disk – then and yes, it had something "therapeutic". No idea about Win98 though, sorry: I ditched Windows 1995 (throwing it threw themselves so to say) and installed an operating system instead 🙊 💨 @IzzyOnDroid @jameswoodcock I even took the pain to understand which blocks were unmovable and why, so I could manually move them to the beginning of the disk. After three failed attempts, my system could boot again… 🙈 @jameswoodcock @ptesarik dedication was using the Norton Utilities to localize a learning app by editing its HEX code, making sure the translated strings exactly fit into the space defined by the original locale 🙈 Those were the days, back in the 90s… I even remember the name of that learning game: "Googol Math Games" – eek, they are still around? Wow: https://dosgames.com/game/googol-math-games/ (I doubt my translation can be found anywhere, though – that was 1993/94 and done for a kid, no copy kept) @jameswoodcock I did a bit on Windows 95/98, but a lot with Norton on my DOS system. @jameswoodcock So much time was wasted watching those little squares move around. The good old days when I didn't have much else to do, apparently. @jameswoodcock I kind of missed the Windows 98 defragmenting visualisation when I left Windows 98. Btw, did you bring this up randomly or has it something to do with today's #AdventOfCode ? @erinaceus setting up a new... No that's the wrong term, an old PC for some Voodoo 2 gaming... @erinaceus thanks! So far so good... Usual stuff at the moment. Dead bios battery, noisy 80mm fan, USB 1.1 ports are recognised but nothing plugged in shows up. However Matrox Mystique graphics card working, SB Audigy 2 working so next intriguing bit is looking for a modern hard drive alternative. Although will use my old 40GB Maxtor for now. @jameswoodcock Back in the days probably countless. I recall there's fragview for Linux that gives very similar view on modern systems. @jameswoodcock I’d kick off a defrag before I’d go to bed. I remember falling asleep to that sound. |
@jameswoodcock If I could get that time back, and the hours jumping on the bank roof in Ogrimmar, I wouldn’t…