Show HN: Defrag the Game

> 8 hour defrag

In the NT 4 era I had a defrag take almost 18 hours. I started it before leaving for the day and came in the next morning to find it an unknown percentage done. I didn’t trust it would be okay to restart the machine so I had to leave it.

That was a problem because we were running version control on this box. But by then everyone was bought in so we got a dedicated machine out of the ordeal, but that was super annoying.

We even called Microsoft and got through, but it turns out on NT defragment happened in real mode so there isn’t a lot of memory to buffer copied blocks. So it spends a lot of time seeking on the hard drive. So stupid.

AshamedCaptain · a year ago

> out on NT defragment happened in real mode so there isn’t a lot of memory to buffer copied blocks

NT cannot run anything in real mode after ntldr. (And even boot time defragmenters run way after ntldr).

hinkley · a year ago

Yeah the entire defrag process happens in a blue screen during the boot process.

There was a cheap defrag you could do while NT was running but it can’t move any system files, so after a few system updates you needed a full defrag.

samstave · a year ago

5200 RPM HDD? likely contributed to time seeking?

hinkley · a year ago

I don’t recall but that sounds plausible.

On iPhone drag-n-drop doesn't work. Long tap basically selects part of the gaming field and this selection is not draggable. Once tap is released it shows the Copy/... menu.

KTibow · a year ago

For other mobile users:

The black boxes are data; they are automatically picked up. You're swiping to move the cursor that places the data. The "write file" button writes the data.

Aeolun · a year ago

It sort of works for me, but it feels far from pleasant/responsive. Feels like it only ever goes in one direction at a time. Dragging diagonally has your file stuck.

mastermedo · a year ago

You need to swipe. Works on iphone 13 + chrome.

hinkley · a year ago

I tried swiping, got nothing.

I’m not sure what else someone would interpret as drag and drop on a touch screen. That’s gonna be swiping.

Deleted Comment

insane_dreamer · a year ago

it's more just dragging than drag-and-drop; slide finger to move the blinking in one direction; no tapping

works for me with iPhone13 + Safari

hinkley · a year ago

It’s because the game ergonomics are questionable. You can only slide files sideways, not past other files. Your phone isn’t broken, not is the game engine. The game rules are.

I got other things I’m supposed to be doing right now so I’m gonna go do those.

Fun. Feedback: the only thing I found confusing is that it's not clear that the first block that is blinking is a data block. Maybe if it started with no block selected, and the user has to press Enter/Space to begin the game at which point the first data block starts blinking. That would make it clearer.

Reminds me of Sokoban.

holistio · a year ago

Fun game, but scoring seems to be a bit off. If I just smash space I get a score higher than when I actually solve the puzzle.

mapimopi · a year ago

Your goal is to score lower

shawabawa3 · a year ago

if i just smash space i get a lower score than when i try playing

edit: managed to get a score of 131 for getting to 0 fragmentation in 30 seconds, i had 139 from just spamming space

That makes total sense. I guess "best score" would be a better wording in that case.

Dead Comment

MattGaiser · a year ago

Playing a few rounds, it shows your “high score” as the lowest number you earned. So it seems to be more that the score is inverted.

abcd_f · a year ago

weego · a year ago

It's a fun game, my only complaint is a UX / expectation issue: when I've placed a block, my natural reaction is to press space again to "enable" the next block for moving but, as it's enable by default, it locks it. I've had to restart a lot because of that.

p0w3n3d · a year ago

Funny game but that's not how defragmentation works. I was troubled to understand how can I choose the file by it contents or even why can't I write to a place where there is a block below it...

LittleOtter · a year ago

I love this cute game.And,I think it would be better to have the HDD Sound like the video you post. :)

chiph · a year ago

Looks like the video is no longer available.

I used to love watching the defragger back in the Windows 95 days, and later I bought copies of PerfectDisk for both home & work. Unfortunately Raxco closed up shop earlier this year, and their license server is offline[0]. So I can't run it other than in trial mode. And that's a shame, as it was the only product that could fix the fragmentation problem we had with over fifty thousand files in a directory tree[1].

I don't know if NTFS has a version ID or if PerfectDisk will respect an ID higher than it was written for, but I'm nervous that the now-unsupported defragger might trash the internals of my filesystem. :(

[0] 1990's style software licensing - super annoying.

[1] Startup. No time to rearchitect it correctly. Usual story.

v_b · a year ago

I fixed the link in the post, there was a M missing at the end, here the correct:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR3TbL3Tl6M