I miss having to defrag drives. There was something therapeutic about watching it.
@grumpygamer Listening to it, as well.
@rainwarrior @grumpygamer Less peaceful was a cling-cling-cling of a huge external 2GB-SCSI drive which did not want to start after a power outage.
A knock and it might overcome its starting problems. But then it was time to think about a replacement.
Ca. 1999.
@grumpygamer I remember feeling like Geordi LaForge, pulling the engines offline to do a level-3 somethingorother.
@grumpygamer I miss the weird static thing I had to do now and then on my very first monitor. No idea what it was for, but it was incredibly satisfying.
@kagodev @grumpygamer did it go booooiiinggg wobble wobble wobble?
Probably degausing. It's a mechanism to reset the magnetism of the monitor, which could shift over time and interfere with electron beam steering.
WTF Is Degaussing?

The modern office has become a sea of LCD monitors. It’s hard to believe that only a few years ago we were sitting behind Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs). People have already forgotten the heat, the dust,…

Hackaday
@kevingranade Oh wow, I'd actually forgotten that was a thing!
@kagodev @grumpygamer Degauss - it was the thing to do
@grumpygamer how much of our lives have been spent watching progress bars
@grumpygamer unless there were a LOT of bad sectors
@grumpygamer peace comes in mysterious ways
@grumpygamer ...that is until someone used the MS-DOS defrag tool on a Windows 9x FAT volume with long filenames ☠️
@grumpygamer I remember using a defragger that showed me exactly what files were being moved around and finding that utterly fascinating.

@grumpygamer

You either need to be reminded of this or you are in for the treat of seeing Justine Tunney's work for the first time, in particular this page:
https://justine.lol/blinkenlights/

Blinkenlights

Emulates and visualizes x86 program execution

@virtuous_sloth @grumpygamer This debugger gets my instant wholehearted approval for using the AT&T assembly syntax by default.
@grumpygamer as a kid this was pretty much a game for me. i loved watching it go :)
@grumpygamer agree. Recently learnt that you can defrag files or volumes in Linux, but aesthetics are just not the same
@grumpygamer If you want to, you could make a simple simulation of it as a screen saver. A screen saver isn’t much more than a .exe ending with .scr and supporting a special set of options like /s, iirc. Not much saving the screen tho. :D
@grumpygamer nowadays you can watch your RAID array sync instead. Feels about the same to me.

@grumpygamer Do I have the Twitch channel for you.

https://www.twitch.tv/twitchdefrags

TwitchDefrags - Twitch

What's the meta now? Do I need to censor my bits?

Twitch
@grumpygamer then convincing yourself it was indeed faster afterwards
@grumpygamer Yes, and degaussing monitors!
@grumpygamer No. There wasn't. It was a chore & knowing your HDD could crash at any time wasn't exactly calming
@grumpygamer @lisamelton Fun fact, i clicked the GIF to watch and reminisce, then my screen of my MacBook Pro started purple outlining things in my Slack app and i had to force quit it. So, huh.
@grumpygamer New game for 2024: defrag simulator
@grumpygamer it all went down hill when it became a progress bar

@grumpygamer Aww what a nostalgia wave 🥹 You might enjoy this sorting algorithm compilation too:

https://youtu.be/kPRA0W1kECg

15 Sorting Algorithms in 6 Minutes

YouTube
@grumpygamer I feel the same way about degaussing monitors
@grumpygamer The best part of watching the Defrag screen was getting paid to do it… ideally, while sipping a cold Dr. Pepper.
@grumpygamer remember COMPSURF for Novell???

@grumpygamer @stevenray takes me back, takes me wayyyy back. Right, @jqheywood ?

I don’t think I’ve seen this in thirty years. It’s glorious, if only cuz it’s no longer real.

@stevenray @grumpygamer oh my. that's a bad memory right there ...
@grumpygamer Defraging drives and parking heads, the good ol' days...

@grumpygamer @stevenray

Part of you wishes you could hire them to clean the house or organize the garage.

@grumpygamer I had totally forgotten about this. Weird nostalgia that I'm feeling.
@grumpygamer defragging is your computer's way of playing a game of freecell
@grumpygamer Loved to see those B for bad sectors
@grumpygamer I miss degaussing my monitor 
@grumpygamer If it's any consolation, you can defrag some filesystems. I don't think they'll look like that, though.
@grumpygamer I think it's what evil Sysmain is doing all the time in Win 10 so it's better turned before some CPU demanding game, like the one they have about Spider-Man
@grumpygamer I heard you like defrag. How about 8 hours of it? https://youtu.be/KR3TbL3Tl6M
Defrag HDD Sound | Hard Drive Sounds ASMR | Old Computer Sounds | Hard Disk Defragmentation Ambience

YouTube

@grumpygamer a few years ago I made a "zen" game where you can manually (or not) defrag a virtual HDD sector by sector

https://losttraindude.itch.io/zfrag

zFRAG by LostTrainDude

Zen Hard Disk Management Tool

itch.io
@grumpygamer Same here. I often listen to defragmentation sounds when I need to focus on code: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR3TbL3Tl6M
Defrag HDD Sound | Hard Drive Sounds ASMR | Old Computer Sounds | Hard Disk Defragmentation Ambience

YouTube
@grumpygamer I know, right? You're not alone here.
@grumpygamer I replaced it with torrent parts download. They both have that hypnotic effect
@grumpygamer until it told you you had a bad sector that couldn’t be read.
@grumpygamer And the sound of the harddrive that goes with that picture ... that was indeed something, almost as comforting as staring into a fireplace.
@grumpygamer note to self: Phone app that simulates various defragging tools. It’d be like tension sheets in red dwarf
@grumpygamer
@danabnormal see, there’s demand for your defrag game!!!