Defragmenting..

[24747comper]

I tried defragmenting my computer with 17% defragmentation - i did it in safe mode over night and it only defragmented maybe 3% of it. Do I just have to keep on defragging it or is the rest of the % permantly fragmented?

[jflan]

What are your system specifications?

Hard Drive size and amount of free space?

Operating System and defragger being used?

[24747comper]

Specs:
A7N8X-X Mobo
ATi9800pro vga AGP8x
gig of corsair XMS 3200 DDR400
2500+ AMD Athlon

80 gig western digital Harddrive, over 12gigs free (cleared the 15% it said it needed).

Using windows XP sp1 with the built in windows defragger
Tried using norton a year ago and it just made things worse - all the suggestions said to use windows.

[BipolarBill]

You really need to consider upgrading to a larger hard drive. 250GB drives are pretty cheap these days - so are 160GB drives.

My rule of thumb for upgrading a drive is when it's 60% full. You're way past that. The pagefile on the drive is set to expand as needed and you need room for it. If you have less than 512MB RAM, the pagefile can get pretty big. It's probably expanding during the defrag and messing things up. This is why it's best to have multiple drives and to put the pagefile on anything but C.

Besides, what are you going to do once you get this defragmented? The drive is near full and is going to continue to fill up. You are going to face the same issue next time. Eventually, the pagefile is going to keep bumping up against the drive limits and Windows will stop working.

I really recommend a new, bigger drive.

[sreeram11]

Did you run chkdsk bfore defrgamenting it? If u need to clear up more space, burn whtever stuff u can onto CDs to free up some space. Getting a larger drive is definitely a gud idea. THis is a niec utility to defrag with, its faster and very efficient as well, u can try it if u want to.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=1207
Be regular with the diskcleanup and defrags as one runs out of troubleshooting options as the drive gets full.

[24747comper]

well i was hoping it would clear up some slow down during games by defragmenting but if its just for space issues then i wont worry about it

[jflan]

Defragging is "not for space issues". It for for system maintenance and performance.

You need space on the drive to run the defragger... your drive is too full.

Think of it this way:

Let's say I am going to steam-clean my living room carpet...I have to move the furniture out of my living room and into another room, temporarily, in order to get the job done. You don't have "another room" on your drive for your defragger to work.

Dump some files or add another drive.

Regards,
JF

[sreeram11]

well i was hoping it would clear up some slow down during games by defragmenting but if its just for space issues then i wont worry about it

Suggestions for clearing space were so that you can make enuf room to defragment the drive, as Jflan explained, which will help improve the speed and performance of the system. Its best to keep the drive clean and defragmented regularly as it will keep the system smooth and also not take long when u finally decide to do it.

[jflan]

Something that I forgot to add is that before running defrag you should always run the XP Disk Cleanup utility.

Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup

[24747comper]

I tried running my disk cleanup utility but it freezes at "compressing old files"

any way to fix this?

[BipolarBill]

Either wait (it will take a while), or de-select that option.

http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2002/2002-04-04.htm#6

Read #6 and #7.

[beast16t]

Compress old files on a nearly full 80 gig drive? :eek:
Good grief you're brave!

I'd clean up everything else first then run it again to compress the old files. BB is right, it's only crashed if the whole PC doesn't respond for quite a few minutes I'd say. Try disabling the virus scanner when running the compression and then again when doing the defrag, used to speed it up a bit, not sure if still does.

If you're strapped for cash then you could try getting a smaller drive for data only or maybe backup to CD/DVD? Either way; you gotta free some space.

[Strawbs]

Try the free Power Defragmenter GUI (http://www.excessive-software.tk/)! It has defragged 160GB of badly fragged files on my computer in around 15 minutes, with better results than the default defragger & Executive Software's "Pro" version too.

;)

[BipolarBill]

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Power_Defragmenter_GUI_d4647.html

[24747comper]

it doesnt freeze when its cleaning it, it freezes when you start up the cleanup and it scans the files. It makes it "not responding" as well.

[herosrest]

Search the drive for all files.

Re-order the results by file size and see what's what.
Any large user files u do not require - delete them.

Set a fixed size paging file.

[beast16t]

...It makes it "not responding" as well.

Doesn't mean it has stopped working. Give it a chance.

[herosrest]

Some of the crapware flying around at the moment has been eating hard drives and no one knew why, until recently.
If the drive is intermittently busy the defrag will 'stall'. Repeatedly.

[G]

Go with Bills suggestion. This beats the big boys too and is free.

Power Defragmenter GUI 2.0.110
http://www.excessive-software.eu.tt/

You can download latest standalone Sysinternals Contig application here:
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Contig.html

Put PD and contig in the same folder and then execute PD.

The results are superb :)

[beast16t]

...

The results are superb :)


I agree, I tried it the other day and I was very impressed by the speed, results and how easy it was to setup and use.

[24747comper]

Thanks for the advice guys, that power defragmenter did the job fast. Didn't think any of those programs that "defrag fast and easy" would actually work, because I have had some bad experiance with others in the past. :t