In most cases, modern computers and laptops are equipped with only silent solid-state drives. HDDs are rarely found in mainstream devices anymore. Along with hard drives, the HDD defragmentation process, which was accompanied by characteristic sounds, has also become a thing of the past. But if anyone misses that «crackling» sound and wants to remember the good old days, there’s a rather extraordinary solution.
You don’t need to look for an old hard disk, connect it to the system, and run defragmentation. Engineer Dennis Morello recreated the experience of defragmenting the C drive in Windows 98. You can run it in in your browser right now.
«One of the biggest challenges was implementing a defragmentation algorithm that seemed authentic», Morello wrote.
A special algorithm he came up with randomly selects how many clusters to process at once and adjusts the speed depending on which imaginary disk you choose, from C to F. They have different capacities. The longest process takes about 17 minutes.
To create the appropriate soundtrack, Morello recorded the actual «crackle» of the hard disk and edited it. The sound effects are synchronized with the visualizer and change according to the selected drive speed. The result is quite accurate and can remind users how things were in 1998.
Source: pcgamer
Spelling error report
The following text will be sent to our editors: