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Disk fragmentation

Why does Sophos AU cause so much fragmentation?

Each minor update downloads but a few KB however every time there's something to do, the entire SAV package is copied (that's > 70Mb's), the new IDE is then integrated and then this entire package is copied back again. This huge > 140MB copy which occurs several times a day is destroying small disk partitions causing machines to grind to a halt during the update cycle.

I'm pretty sure we've all experienced this slowdown and it's time to start making Sophos aware of this so we get a change. It makes no sense at all to copy the entire installation folder each time there's an update. It makes no sense to copy it again once the IDE's added. The process should happen in-place i.e.. checksum the install folder and integrate the update directly. Don't copy the folder. This way, we dramatically reduce fragmentation and speed up the whole update process.

I've got users with typically < 60% disk usage so 'ideal' and plenty of RAM. Give them 3 weeks and the machine always says 'you should defragment this volume' and it's always because the Sophos updates. Anyone else out there have users groaning every five minutes that they can't look at the screen at the moment 'cause Sophos is updating. Now you know why!

Matt

:1720


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Parents
  • It's good that Sophos is looking into this, however: It is a known fact that NTFS and Windows NT+ do not work well on drives which are nearly full. It is good practice to have a good amount of free drive space on a system drive, and administrators should take appropriate measures if this is no longer the case.

    If an increase in hdd-space is not possible, some place might be gained by deleting some uninstall-folders for patches or uninstall-folder of the last service pack.

    Best regards,

    Detlev

    :1772
Reply
  • It's good that Sophos is looking into this, however: It is a known fact that NTFS and Windows NT+ do not work well on drives which are nearly full. It is good practice to have a good amount of free drive space on a system drive, and administrators should take appropriate measures if this is no longer the case.

    If an increase in hdd-space is not possible, some place might be gained by deleting some uninstall-folders for patches or uninstall-folder of the last service pack.

    Best regards,

    Detlev

    :1772
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