Defrag

[brit-gob 9]

I decided to defrag my computers drive this morning. That was at 11am. It's still going. I really want to turn the thing off, but worried that if I do that it might cause more problems and maybe best to sit it out. My drive is 400GB in size with half of that full of tons of stuff, so I thought it might take a while but it has been 4 hours now! Is that too long?

[snowdude 44]

Shouldn't take that long I got the same size drive and usually only takes a few minutes, I think the last time I did it it took about 10-15 mins, having said that my drive was not fragmented. If your drive is badly fragmented then that could be the reason, but 4 hours does seem rather over the top.

 

You can kill the process anytime, it shouldn't effect the drive as it is only moving files back into there correct position on the drive to make it easy for the computer to find them again, but if you don't need to use the computer for a while then just leave it be. It should tell you how it has progressed, as long as it is increasing all the time it is working, if it is still stuck at the same amount of progress for ages then better to terminate it and start again.

[brit-gob 9]

Thanks snowdude. I'll give it another 30 minutes or so.

 

[BagOfCrisps 24]

Vista doesn't show progress - just says "may take from a few minutes to a few hours" or something like that.

[1 4]

It took for ages once on my computer. I think it was the first time I had done it, so maybe that takes longer. Didn't notice much of a change after though, don't know if it did much good.

[Tubby Beaver 209]

Originally Posted By: BagOfCrisps

Vista doesn't show progress - just says "may take from a few minutes to a few hours" or something like that.

I thought Vista defrags itself automatically??

How do you manually defrag on Vista?

[yamayamayama 2]

You can turn the Vista one on/off.

 

To do it manually go into Control Panel > Maintenance and it's somewhere in there....

[klingon 10]

It can take a LONG time. Once last year it took 14 hours on a drive that had not been done before. See online for horror stories of a whole day being taken etc.

 

3rd party is better and much quicker than the one in Windows.

[1 4]

I use Auslogics Disk Defrag.

You can see progress and it seems to do the trick fairly quickly.

[ProbablyaCrazyPerson 2]

I use that too. First time I ran it took about 15 minutes on a 200GB drive.

[brit-gob 9]

Get this. I took the pc home and let it run last night. Still going. And STILL going this morning!!!

 

 

Thats over 20 hours!!

 

Anyway I had enough of that, and downloaded the Auslogics one mentioned above - once I got that installed it got the job done within 1 hour. WTF?!

[nzlegend 1]

Defrag? the defrag tool that comes standard with windows is rubbish, don't waste your time, if you are genuinely interesting in defragging and maintaining an optimum HDD then get a decent defrag tool made by someone else.

IMO the best tool out there is "Diskeeper"

 

Though if you are the type think IE is good browser then please ignore this advice and keep using the Microsoft standard one.

[brit-gob 9]

Like I said, used Auslogics one and it was quick. So I will use that.

 

I will also more than likely keep on using IE because there is little reason to change after trying other alternatives.

 

Thanks!

[snowdude 44]

If you have the norton 360, it also comes with a built in disk defrag, that is what I use, works very quickly.

[NoFakie 45]

It might help to free up some space too.

[journey_man 0]

Most home peeps wont notice any difference. To fragment your drive enough to make a noticeable difference you need to be creating and deleting 1,000's of files regularly.

[JA2340 16]

maybe, JM, but the system does a fair bit of that sort of stuff in the background. And some of the temp files are not removed. SO, it's often a good idea to do a disk cleanup too, trash all the orphan temp files, get rid of heaps of internet cache files and then defrag.

 

OK, the cache wiill slow down the net refreshes a bit, but the rest of teh functions will be faster.

 

I also have the "page file" on my data drive, it's a 500G, so there's plenty of space on it! That relieves the system drive of that overhead too.

[klingon 10]

What's the "page file" JA?

[JA2340 16]

From wiki ...

 

Quote:

In computer operating systems that have their main memory divided into pages, paging (sometimes called swapping) is a transfer of pages between main memory and an auxiliary store, such as hard disk drive. Paging is an important part of virtual memory implementation in most contemporary general-purpose operating systems, allowing them to use disk storage for data that does not fit into physical RAM. Paging is usually implemented as architecture-specific code built into the kernel of the operating system.

 

In effect, it is a way of allowing the computer to operate with software that takes more memory than is physically available. It does this by loading the 'common' parts of the software into main memory (RAM) and then, if something else is needed, swapping the least usded modules to page file and getting the required module, using it and then getting the other one back in case it is needed.

 

Other advantages of the page file include the possibility to do what most of us do with out thinking about it, ie having outlook, firefox (with multiple tabs) as well as Excel and Word open "at the same time". When you swap between applications, the current status of the 'old' app is paged and the status of the 'new' ap loaded from page.

 

All this activity results in a badly fragmented area on the disk. Sometimes good to delete the page file completely and rebuild it after a defrag - but I wouldn't even consider this unless you are SURE you know what you're doing.

 

:techo stuff finished:

[DumbStick 13]

Same that Auslogics one along with their disc cleanup software, never had any problems with it and it seems to work (who knows?!)

[Tubby Beaver 209]

Is that free to download or do you have to buy it?

[journey_man 0]

JA if you have done any benchmarking on normal use desktop computers before and after a defrag I'd be interested is seeing the stats. I've never seen a noticeable speed increase from defragmentation except on heavily used servers.

 

Also serious pagefile fragmentation is quite unusual as the pagefile doesn't normally change size a lot. While paging and swapping make extensive use of the pagefile, the disk doesn't get fragmented because the pagefile locations are nearly static. This is one of the major reasons for having a single large pagefile.

 

The point I'd like to make is there are various ways of speeding a computer up and defraging is low on the list. Defragging PC's is often slow and doesn't achieve much. This is because modern operating systems are generally very good at avoiding the problem.

 

If anyone is looking to speed their Windows computer back up to its original speed, try cleaning out the registry. This is quick and can make a big difference. JA, do you know what the current good free ones are? Someone also mentioned the disk clean up tool - this is also very worthwhile.

[JA2340 16]

JM,

 

I have on (at home) so cannot get to it ATM. Will edit this when I can.

 

As for benchmarking, No, done none, but have 'anecdotal evidence' only. I'd be interested too.

 

I mentioned the windows cleanup - it is a bit chotto, but!

 

l8r

[muikabochi 208]

TB, it is free.

[JA2340 16]

Originally Posted By: Journey Man

If anyone is looking to speed their Windows computer back up to its original speed, try cleaning out the registry. This is quick and can make a big difference. JA, do you know what the current good free ones are?

I currently use RegCure.