DigiDesign Mbox 2 Mini Setup Manual page 91

Window Systems
Periodically defragment audio drives to maintain system performance.
For maximum recording and playback efficiency, data should be written to your hard drive in
a contiguous fashion—minimizing the seek requirements to play back the data. Unfortu-
nately, your computer can't always store the sound files in this way and must write to disk
wherever it can find space.
In multitrack recording, audio tracks are written in discrete files, spaced evenly across the disk.
While fragmentation of individual files may be zero, the tracks may be far enough apart that
playback will still be very seek-intensive. Also, the remaining free space on the disk will be dis-
contiguous, increasing the likelihood of file fragmentation on subsequent record passes.
Increased fragmentation increases the chance of disk errors, which can interfere with playback
of audio, and result in performance errors.
On Windows, to avoid fragmentation, format drives with higher cluster sizes (such as 32K).
Optimizing (Defragmenting) Drives
To prevent fragmentation, you can optimize your drive, which rearranges your files into a con-
tiguous format. Most optimizing software lets you run a check on a drive to find out the per-
centage of fragmentation. If your drive shows moderate to heavy fragmentation, you should
consider optimizing it.
If you use your system for intensive editing, or if you frequently delete audio or fade files from
your hard drive, you may need to optimize your drives on a weekly basis, or even every few
days, since it doesn't take long for even a large hard drive to become fragmented.
Backing Up Data Before Optimizing
Since your files will be rewritten by the optimization process, always make a backup copy of
the data on your hard drive before you optimize it. You should also use a hard drive utility to
find and repair any problems before optimizing data or re-initializing your drives. If there is
any damage to your hard drive's directories prior to optimizing, serious data loss may result.
Appendix C: Hard Drive Configuration and Maintenance 81