How Often to Defrag

[jcohen]

I currently have two Mac G3s both running FileMaker Server 5.0, each hosting 50 files. Each has anywhere between 20-50 users accessing the files. My question is regarding server maintenance. How often should I defrag the hard drive for each server?

[Kurt Knippel]

Hmm, it really depends upon how often the files are added to an with what amount of data. It also depends upon how often additional files are added and deleted. Best to do is to peridocially watch with Norton and see what the fragmentation is like. Or you can run your databases out of a RAM disk with RAMbunctious. We do this and it works great. Never have to even worry about fragmentation.

[jcohen]

Kurt,

Thanks for the reply. We seem to feel here that FileMaker doesn't fragment too much, but wanted to hear from others out there what their feeling is on the subject.

We are looking into moving our tables onto a Ram Disk. Any advice in this area?

[LiveOak]

It depends entirely upon the usage. CALTRANS (Calif. Dept. of Transportation) had FM Servers that were so heavily used that they fragmented to inoperability every two days and the SCSI hard drives would wear out in several months! In more average use, the period to severe fragmentation might be months or even years.

-bd

[Kurt Knippel]

LOTS OF RAM. Put all of your databases and the Filemaker Server application into the RAM Disk. Using RAMbunctious will make the disk persistant, thus restoring it upon restart. Flush the Cache frequently, write to disk every 5-10 minutes and backup to a seperate physical drive periodically during the day.

We have found that beyond the initial setup and investment, it has been almost effortless to maintain. Crashes are extremly rare and the performance is phenominal!

[Anatoli]

RE: Crashes are extremly rare and the performance is phenominal!

We experienced single crash in our whole FM3 and FM5 servers history. Is that less or more?