Disk defrag'

I know this might sound like how longs apiece of string, however, started to defrag my computer last night and its still going!!

Is this normal as its should defrag’ on a schedule task or is it that the computers turned off when not in use, so this hasn’t happened.

Decided to carry out defrag’ due to start/stop operation of computer

Depends on a number of factors, but it can take what we in the industry refer to as “a bloody long time”.

What version of Windows?

Haven’t defragged a disk in years; used to do it on my PC back in the early 90s but then that was 40mb!

In the absense of a reply, I’ll elaborate a bit.

Modern OSes (Vista, 7) schedule a defrag by default, 1am every Wednesday. XP and earlier, far as I can remember, doesn’t (though I’d have to check to be sure). So if you’re running XP there’s a good chance that it’s been a considerable amount of time since it’s last been run.

On older systems (Windows 9x vintage), defrag would restart if it detected a disk write. Result, defrag takes forever.

The partition type has an impact on fragmentation. FAT32 fragments like a sod, it just doesn’t care. NTFS makes a stab at avoiding fragmentation on the fly (in the days of NT4, Microsoft’s stance was that ‘NTFS doesn’t need defragmenting,’ but they seem to have relented these days).

The more files you’ve got, and the bigger the disk, the longer a defrag will take. Conversely, the faster your PC (and in particular, the disk subsystem), the quicker it’ll be.

This is what I’d recommend for an efficient defrag.

1) Run a chkdsk on the disk; Right-click the drive in My Computer, go to Properties, then Tools, and click Check Now. Tick the first option, leave the second empty. It’ll complain that it can’t run; agree to the schedule question, and then reboot.

2) Run TFC[/url] to wipe out all the accumulated cruft on the system. This might need another rebooot.

3) Now run the defrag, straight after a clean reboot. Be aware that any other applications you’re running will adversely affect performance, so don’t use your PC if you can help it.

4) Consider running defrag before installing any major applications; this will go a long way towards keeping fragmentation to a minimum.

I did one last night aswell. Went out for two hours it was still going, while the antivirus was on scan. It didn’t help that it the computer would power down after 20 mins.

That’s a good point actually, on-read scanning by an AV isn’t going to do wonders for defrag performance, if every bit of data read off the disk is being processed by the AV before comitting back to disk. You might want to turn that off temporarily (for performance reasons, I set on-demand scanners to only scan on write, not read; little point in rescanning files that haven’t changed since last time you scanned them).

It’s also worth running something like CCleaner [/url]quite regularly (everyday for some people (like me), every week/month for others) so you remove all the cr4p and temp files that build up.

And check out free defraggers like Defraggler or Auslogics [/url]– IME these are a lot quicker than the default Windows app.

TFC is better than CCleaner. See link above.

Cougar, I’ll check out TLC one day … but will stick with CCleaner for now because I’ve been using it for years and it’s stable and works. Judging by the feedback, it seems to me that a few people have had issues with TLC.

TFC, not TLC.

I too used CCleaner for years before jumping ship. Two reasons for this.

1) It’s safer. CCleaner lets you fiddle with the registry, which is fine if you know what you’re doing but isn’t really something I need when I’m trying to reclaim disk space. It will also leave things like browser history and cookies intact; CCleaner’s approach is more ‘cover your tracks’ – depends why you’re using it as to which is more appropriate I suppose (-:

2) It’s more comprehensive. TFC will drill down into all the other user profiles and delete their cruft as well, CCleaner only works in the current user context.

Sorry about the delay in replying,the computers running Vista and I’ve got the Norton AV running might try to thuiis off for awhile.

Cheers

Years ago I was defragging a pc and it seemed to take ages.

Eventually I realised that everytime the screensaver was coming on, the defrag was beginning again……. 😐

Presumably this doesn’t occur with modern computers, does it?!

Vista should auto-schedule a defrag, unless you’ve disabled it or I’m misremembering.

Norton is particularly aggressive in its default scanning settings. Dialing it down a bit will help performance (and might even fix the original “start/stop operation” problem).

Stumpy > See my first post. The screen saver kicking in would cause disk activity (especially if it was one of those retarded OpenGL 3D affairs), and on 9x that’d cause the defrag to restart.

Fair comment. Like you say, you can get yourself in a right mess if you fiddle with the wrong settings etc.

BTW, I’ve also been using ATF-Cleaner because it seems to clean up a few Mb lefts behind by CCleaner.

Yeah, I’ve looked at ATF cleaner, used that for a while. It fiddles with Prefetch though, which I don’t approve of.

you can get yourself in a right mess if you fiddle with the wrong settings

Moreover, if I’m recommending a utility to people who aren’t too sure of themselves and are asking for help, safer is better. (-: A recommendation to another techie might not always be the same answer.

what if the computer isnt on at 1am on a wednesday morning? some people sleep 🙄

i miss the days of windows NT or 3.1 and spending a whole sunday defragging with all the might of a pentium 32.

If it misses the scheduled time, it’ll do it at the next available opportunity. Ie, when you boot up on thursday morning.

(what’s a Pentium 32 when it’s at home?)

Is anyone actually happy with the Windows defragger? I find it just keeps running forever and doesnt do a decent defrag. If I am right it doesnt defrag fragments larger than 64MB. I am seriously considering an alternative defragger that I can also set to defrag in the background while using the computer.

download auslogistics defrag, not used the windows one since vista because it was absolute rubbish, it took 3 hours to defrag a freshly installed pc with windows vista and only AVG installed.

I find it just keeps running forever and doesnt do a decent defrag

By what measurement is it indecent?

not used the windows one since vista because it was absolute rubbish, it took 3 hours to defrag a freshly installed pc

It will do; it moves stuff around based on usage stats so that most used programs are optimised. On a fresh install you don’t have that data.

Most (all?) third party defrag tools will use the API presented by Windows to do the defrag, so you’re not doing anything magical over and above the standard routines. If it’s faster, it’s because it runs at a higher priority than the standard defrag; so it’ll finish sooner but your PC will be slower whilst it’s running. Some will do additional things above and beyond the default application, but whether those things are actually necessary or make a fig of difference to anything in the grand scheme of things is debatable.

Seriously. Especially under Vista / W7 systems, the built-in defrag is pretty good; it’s certainly ‘sufficient’ anyway. Even the XP one is good enough for all practical purposes. If you’ve got performance issues to an extent where a third party defrag tool makes any discernable difference over the Microsoft tool (and by this I mean it’s actually faster rather than just looking “better” based on some obviously wholly unbiased figures and stats from the tool itself) then you’ve got bigger problems than mere fragmentation.

it doesnt make the computer any faster than it would with the windows one, it just does it faster and also can optimize the system(basicly using usage statistics put the ones use the most at the start of the disk and so on) and i havent noticed a difference in system speed from the windows one and the 3rd party.

I have not run a defrag on my PC since I bought it 5 years ago (XP Pro). It came with a 150GB and I still have 40MB free, I have just run the defrag analysis and it said I didn’t need to defrag.

Okay, question is should I run it anyway and will it make the slightest difference?

Can’t hurt. Will you notice a difference, probably not. But hey.

it just does it faster and also can optimize the system

I’m sure that’s what I just said… (-:

Okay, here goes!

*boom* ha ha! <points>

I didn’t get a chance to read all of the string, but if someone hasn’t mentioned it, I use Diskeeper software and it does a continuous defrag and it has ran faultlessly for 4 years (upgraded to a new 2009 version last year). Really keeps things orderly in the system

does defragging make any noticeable performance difference?

Depends on lots of things, but on modern hardware, not usually.

I’ll elaborate on that.

On a heavily loaded system where you’re short on RAM generating a lot of disk activity, and every ounce you can squeeze out of a system helps, it’s critically important. On a regular well-specced PC doing day-to-day web browsing, it probably won’t make enough difference to be noticable to anythng other than benchmark tests.

Thought so. The defrag view always looked good in old Windows. All those different colored blocks consolidating into homogenous chunks made you feel like it was neater and should be faster.