\"Timed suspension\" is called Snooze, and is in the latest versions of BOINC.
Defragging whilst BOINC is running is just asking for trouble.

Just to expand on Les\'s post a little, I actually exit all the way out of Boinc before I defrag. I usually also make a backup of Boinc at the same time.

The reason is that because Boinc\'s files are open, they can\'t be defragged while boinc is still in memory (even if it\'s just suspended, it\'s still in memory)

---

I'm a volunteer and my views are my own.
News and Announcements and FAQ

Neil, your computer\'s last contact with the server was on 16 Nov and its last trickle on 14 Nov. If your model has completed more years to 1 Dec and needs to trickle, make sure you allow network activity now and again.

I noticed that your computer is 1.4GHz and is doing about 8.4 timesteps per minute. My computer is 1.33 GHz ie a bit slower but I\'m getting 6 timesteps/minute. If you run the screensaver all the time, this will slow down the model crunching. Most of us disable the screensaver and just look at the graphics window when we have time for it by using the button in the boinc manager.

---

Cpdn news

Hi Guys.

Wow, so many Moderators. And so little time :) Thanks for the informative replies.

-----
To Les Bayliss:

Sorry my bad form; I\'m running Boinc v5.4.11.

I use Boinc snooze.

I\'ve also got a Snooze on Computer Associates (CA) antivirus. For CA, when you choose Snooze from their system-tray icon, a little dialog box pops up where you can fill in how long you want the snooze to last. Fill it in, and then click either of two buttons at the bottom of the popup, \"Snooze\" or \"Cancel.\" During the snooze, if you raise the popup again, the Cancel button is replaced with \"Wake.\"

It’s effective. The advantage is that you can implement a best-guess for how long the snooze is going to last. If you forget to Wake, the snooze gets to take advantage of your best-guess. I recommend NOT snoozing the antivirus while email software is running.

I don\'t know how long the Snooze lasts in Boinc. I thought it was a dream when I found Boinc had un-snoozed itself once, because the last few dozen times I used it, I found Boinc still snoozing after a \"long time\" had gone by. (Hours?)

So I wish the Boinc-snooze-time were user-adjustable, too.

-----
To MikeMarsUK:

Hi across the water. Or would that be the asteroid belt?

I will be delighted to start exiting Boinc before any further defragmenting.

The last time my computer needed an attitude adjustment, I put Boinc in an unused partition by itself. It was an unplanned move when I set up the partitions, so Boinc has 20 GB (!) in which to swim. I don\'t expect to feel the need for the unused 19.5GB until the year 2015.

Perhaps while defragmenting my C drive, it won\'t be an issue if Boinc is located on a different partition.

-----
To Mo.V:

Hey Mo.

I can\'t stand it when guys check out my trickle.

Yes, I gave my computer its last major attitude adjustment after my operating system got damaged. What a mess.

My computer was running just the way I liked it, but with all my new partitions, it seemed cumbersome to defragment one partition at a time. So I took Diskeeper out of mothballs, which can schedule multiple de-fragmentations for all the partitions.

I set it to defrag a different partition every couple of hours, and then I went to bed. When I woke up, my monitor was displaying a BIOS-like message, “Can’t find NTLDR.” Apparently, the system-file NTLDR was moved during the defragmentation, instead of being left alone.

Back into the mothballs for Diskeeper.

I found a utility on the web that someone wrote; FixNTLDR. But instead of playing, I added another hard drive, loaded XP, and was able to access the data on the old hard drive. The hardest part was moving Mozilla Profile folders to the new installation. In retrospect, it wasn’t really hard, it’s just that I never did it before.

So, I got back on line a few days ago, and got my Boinc running yesterday. Feel free to monitor my new trickles.

Yes, my screen saver is off - I learned about that during my SETI-Classic days. In fact, I played a little with SETI-Boinc to see how it feels to process Work Units that complete in a day instead of half-a-year, such as with my ClimatePrediction.net. Finally, I figured it would be more helpful to spend my few clock cycles on terrestrial climate instead of extraterrestrials.

Well, there’s a tangent.

Thanks for tolerating,
-Neil-

We all tend to look at different aspects of a problem just so that nothing gets missed :-)

Some people do run Boinc in a different partition, and they find that defragging is really quick that way (a few seconds rather than 20 minutes). My work PC is set to defrag daily via \'scheduled tasks\', but I find that sometimes defrag goes wrong and it\'s still running in the background when I start work, taking up a lot of CPU time.

I don\'t use the snooze function, mostly because I like to do everything myself (\'micromanagement\', the curse of companies everywhere).

---

I'm a volunteer and my views are my own.
News and Announcements and FAQ