NewTek 3Play 4800 - Manual (Page 87)

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DEFRAGMENT ALL DRIVES
Over the course of time, storage volumes
devoted to audio and video storage can become
fragmented. Eventually, this can degrade
playback performance. Defragmenting corrects
this condition.
You could think of your hard drive as being like a
shelf in your library. As time goes along, the shelf
fills with books (data). Some are large while
others are small, just as 3Play session content
may be larger or smaller.
To make room for new additions, you decide to remove books you have finished with from the
shelf. You remove a book here, another there, opening up gaps between the remaining books.
This makes some shelf space available, but does so in the form of gaps separated by the
remaining books. Sadly, when you obtain another large book, it may be too big to fit in any one
of the gaps.
A foolish librarian might tear the new book into sections just big enough to fit into the open
spaces on the shelf. This is would obviously be unwise. When you wish to refer to the book later
you will lose a lot of time locating and assembling its sections before you can read it. How much
better it would be to slide the remaining books closer together, combining all the free space first.
Unfortunately, computers are ‘foolish librarians’. They tend to want to fill in all the gaps in their
storage areas, even if it means literally shredding your ‘book’ (in reality large video files from
your sessions) into tiny fragments.
Defragmenting the storage volume has the same effect as sliding the books together, resulting in
less and larger gaps. The end result is that 3Play doesn’t have to frantically search in many
different places to assemble the video data you have recorded. This process (defragmentation)
can take considerable time, so it’s not something you want to begin just before an important
event.
Figure 51