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A number of years ago I finished up a Ts4 file defragmentation program
(Unfrag) that was initially started by Jim Osborn, Rod Grisham and possibly
others. This program was DOS based and considering the limitations of DOS
worked well. Since that time, a number of people have asked me about an
equivalent defragmentation program for Ts2ki. Ts2ki has a much more
difficult file structure than Ts4 and so I never really spent much time on
it until recently when I was again asked the question about "Unfrag for
Ts2ki". Over the past month I have spent many hours in the quest of a Ts2ki
Unfrag and I finally have a Windows based alpha version which I am very
successfully running on a small 270 MB test database.
It had always been my belief that you could Export the GS database to an XPO
file, delete all data in the GS and then re-import the XPO file to remove
fragmentation. My testing verfied this to be the case except that it took
almost half an hour to Export my 270 MB GS files and a like amount of time
to re-import the files. That was for my small test database so that method
would be useless for large databases. Also, I had to start with a "stub"
file header to eliminate unused space. A real surprise was the fact that
the resulting index files were 50% greater in size than the fragmented index
files. I believe the reason for this is that the GS XPO routine
simultaneously generates DAT and index (IDX) files which is probably not
very efficient.
The equivalent Ts2ki Unfrag program took slightly over 4 minutes to generate
unfragmented DAT files and another minute for the GS to generate the IDX
files which definitely seems the way to go.
Before I proceed further, I would like to offer a GS monitor program which
can monitor while the GS is running and which will give what I consider to
be a fragmentation number based upon the IDX/DAT filesize ratio. For all
interested, I would hope for you to download and install the zipped GS
Monitor files and then give me feedback as to what values of fragmentation
index you see on your system(s). I call this value Health Index (HI). Then
I would like to get commitment from as many as possible to see if is
worthwhile to spend any more effort. I would plan to market the program if
there is enough interest with a maximum price of $40 or less depending on
the number of commitments I receive.
The link to the Ts2ki GS Monitor is: http://www.box.net/shared/pp88qj6880
I think this could be a very powerful tool for all Ts2ki users.
Thanks for your feedback.
~Bob
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