How often do you defragment your disk.

I have ommited to do this for about 6 months and it has taken 4 hours so far! (10GBy data).

I am using the inbuilt W2K defrager, what do other use? Is it quicker!

Thanks

LOL, if you are still usingthe PC and connected to the Internet while you are defragging it's gonna take alot longer than 4 hours, because it keeps finding things that have changed like the pageswap files etc.

 

You are best off defragging it overnight with nothing else running and no connection ot he internet.

 

May want to do a detailed scan disc before hand as well.

Also turn any screen savers off ;) Just switch the monitor off

 

HTH

 

CheerZ,

 

Andy

Another defrag question,on my old windows 98 I had to leave defrag running over night,It took bloody hours LOL

 

Now running XP Pro,It only takes about 5 mins WTF?:confused:

Originally posted by MAC 1

Another defrag question,on my old windows 98 I had to leave defrag running over night,It took bloody hours LOL

 

Now running XP Pro,It only takes about 5 mins WTF?:confused:

 

This is because XP is crap! 98 was crap aswell but at least you knew where to find things!

Originally posted by BigRoy

This is because XP is crap! 98 was crap aswell but at least you knew where to find things!

 

Come on Roy,that don't answer my question why it now only takes 5 min on XP pro?????

Originally posted by MAC 1

Come on Roy,that don't answer my question why it now only takes 5 min on XP pro?????

 

I don't know I work in IT:D

Originally posted by BigRoy

I don't know I work in IT:D

 

ROFL:D sounds about right then;)

Mine still takes ages on XP.

 

The only thing I can think of is that when you had 98, you had a small disk that was almost full, so defrag had to do a load of shuffling.

 

Your XP machine probably has a big disk and loads of free space, so it doesn't need to shuffle so much and doesn't get as fragmented in the first place.

And it doesn't work properly. I just defragged one of my drives under XP. It started at 17% and was still at 17% when it "finished"!

 

98 used to defrag every file and also used to change the order of files on the disk to make loading things quicker. I don't think the XP version does anything other than defrag, and it doesn't do that all that well. :rolleyes:

Originally posted by MAC 1

Another defrag question,on my old windows 98 I had to leave defrag running over night,It took bloody hours LOL

 

Now running XP Pro,It only takes about 5 mins WTF?:confused:

 

98 was very slow and XP lied.:D

Could be that you're using NTFS instead of FAT32. Much better way of organising the disk - FAT is old technology... actually, so is NTFS :D

 

CheerZ,

 

Andy

Ok if it does it again, try pressing your power switch on and of as many times as you can in 1 minute.

That should sort it out :D

Originally posted by smw1

LOL, if you are still usingthe PC and connected to the Internet while you are defragging it's gonna take alot longer than 4 hours.

 

Good advice, I am aware of this issue and the machine in question is not being used at all during the defrag. Now I have the defrag report my oracle tablespace files were the issue.

best way to defrag is press f8 on start up before the win logo appears and choose safe mode, this way nothing can interfere with the drive etc. windows tends to keep writing to the drive in normal mode, especially if u have a single partition.

Originally posted by MAC 1

Another defrag question,on my old windows 98 I had to leave defrag running over night,It took bloody hours LOL

 

Now running XP Pro,It only takes about 5 mins WTF?:confused:

 

 

There was a huge bug with Win 98 which caused it to keep restarting the defrag when it gets so far and never really get round to finishing it off.

 

Stuart

It wasn't a huge bug, it was a tiny problem with the screen saver routine still accessing the pagefile...even with no screensaver.

 

 

Windows XP SHOULD be running on NTFS. NTFS is an inherantly less fragmentable filesystem in that it uses seamless cluster allocation, rather than breaking up files. It also has a degree of background defragmentation built in. Running a full defrag on NTFS takes a lot less time as there is a lot less work to do.

 

In addition, Windows XP also keeps fragmentation tables within the filesystem. So rather than having to do a full disk analysis every time the disk is accessed, it can just get on and leave any changes that take place during a defrag until next time.

 

 

Under Windows 2k, if you're running on FAT16 defragging will take AGES. Same with XP. FAT32 is better (especially the XP implementation with it's access tables etc).

 

In all cases, doing a chkdisk with repair before defrag will improve the time taken. This will require a reboot, but give the OS full and exclusive access to the disk as soon as the driver has started.

It will repair any problems that Defrag is trying to work around, again speeding up the process.

 

While running a defrag, it is worth leaving the PC unattended. Turning the monitor off will not stop the PC running a screensaver: you need to do this manually.

 

Also, reccomend you run defrag frequently. It speeds the process. It is also worthy of note that (despite what you are told) on NTFS performance really doesn't improve that much with defragging unless your disk is extremely full. You will get a larger performance benefit from fixing the size of your pagefile.sys to something nice and large, so windows does not continually resize it on the fly.

 

Another good tip for a performance increase is to go look at your system variables an ascertain where your TMPDIR is. Then go there and remove all unused .TMP files. The system clean-up wizard under XP will do this for you.

 

XP really isn't crap. It's the most grown up operating system Microsoft have released to date, and apart from looking like it was designed by a telly-tubby, as long as it has plenty of RAM available it is at least as good as Win2k.

 

Linux is still better written though :D

Originally posted by Dave Marley

 

Your XP machine probably has a big disk and loads of free space, so it doesn't need to shuffle so much and doesn't get as fragmented in the first place.

 

Yes Dave,I have a 80g hard drive with 74g free space;)

I need more room.

 

2 65 Gig hard drives with 5gig on one free and 8 gig on the other free. Defrag wont work on mine as it says it needs 15% or something like that free to work :eek:

Originally posted by SRRAE

I need more room.

 

2 65 Gig hard drives with 5gig on one free and 8 gig on the other free.

Wow:eek: Your porn collection must be awesome! ;)