I have a problem: data on my HD is fragmented, badly. And Win cannot defrag it properly, although I have 6 Gb of free disk space. Norton speed disk is not an option: 12 hrs running, 3% data moved and the situations has gotten even worse. I don't have enough time to let it run for a week to solve the problem. Neither can I free more disk space for the time being.

Do any of you know a good defragging program to solve my problem? Or has any tips?

Tnx

Norton's Speed Disk is good as far as I know, are you shutting down all of your programs before you run it? Those may tend to slow down the defragmentation a bit, but the reason for being so lengthy is probably due to the amount of misplaced information you have, though I've had mine at 50% before and it still finishes in 2 hours max.

Sorry B

I ran into that problem once, turn all of Norton's utils off, and use the Windows defragment program, and be sure to run a scan disc, before you defrag, if not, it will encounter errors, and just keep restarting. Tell scan to automatically fix errors too. Hope that helps

I defragmentated my coputer once, it took me 16 hours. So now I'd rather format it if it's possible, that takes around 2 hours to get everything back (~1 hour format and windows install. rest drivers, games and backups). If you do make sure you have backups from everything important!

edit: and your install disk for your operating system!!!

[ 08-11-2003, 05:17 AM: Message edited by: philip ]

just try and leaving your computer for like 1 day or two. defrag really takes a long time.. but if its more than that.. better reformat..

Once?? [img]graemlins/saywhat.gif[/img] your supposed to do it weekly!! frankly im supprised it only took 16 hours if you only ever defragmented once. and how is formatting your computer better than waiting a few hours?? it would take me days to get my computer back to the same state.

defragment, scandisk, viruscan, and spyware scan regularly!

Once?? [img]graemlins/saywhat.gif[/img] your supposed to do it weekly!! frankly im supprised it only took 16 hours if you only ever defragmented once. and how is formatting your computer better than waiting a few hours?? it would take me days to get my computer back to the same state.

defragment, scandisk, viruscan, and spyware scan regularly! </font>[/QUOTE]I didn't change many things. I had done a format before and only installed NWN and BGII. My computer isn't connected to internet so i don't get much mess on my computer. formatting your computer takes a lot less time = ,ore time to play with it. i didnt find it very hard to get my computer back to what it was, as i said above 2 hours. so i think it's better and when I need to do it again I'll do a format.

i need to do scandisk BEFORE I defrag. that takes even longer to do cause of searching for bad clusters (that weren't even there) and format checks immediately and in 10 seconds for bad clusters and stuff and then defrags and clears out everything I don't need and didn't use for a long time (i'm lazy to do that stuff myself)

Make sure that you don't have any screen savers active on your machine when you defrag, and turn off any power management options (like powering down the hard disk). I now have a standard power management setting called "defrag" for just this reason...

The screensaver kicking in can reset the defrag (since something has changed), and the defrag gets all confused when the hard drives shut down.

What ??? That's every PC owner's worst nightmare.

The first thing I would do if I were you is run Live Update to make sure you are running the latest version of Norton Speed disk. Next right click on IE go to properties and then click delete files. All of those small 1k Internet files will slow down defrag. Also remove anything in your temp folders that looks like it should not be there. c:\temp c:\windows\temp C:\Documents and Settings\(user name)\Local Settings\Temp. Anything ending in .tmp any directories that do not have understandable names. Make sure you leave Cookies, Excel, History, Tempory Internet Files, Word, and VBE directories. Also if you run in to .tmp files that will not delete try and delete them right after you reboot.

Now that all of this is done reboot. Shudown all programs you can. This does include those Icons next to your clock. [img]smile.gif[/img] Also big yes on the screensaver idea. Set it to (None) until this is finished. Also check your power setting about turning off hard drives and the like. No big deal about powering down the monitor.


That is my two cents. If this does not help you please post what your OS is that would help. Also look at the speed disk window the last icon on it on the left hand side should let you schedule when it runs a defrag which you can have run once a week. If you leave you pc on 24/7 have it do it when you are not there or asleep. [img]smile.gif[/img]


Granamere

One last thing. If you have a 120 GB harddrive and only 6 GB free it will have a very hard time running defrag. If you run widons defrag it will tell you that it has to have 10% of the hard drive free before it can run. Now if you have a 8 Gig drive and 6 Gig free you need to go buy more games before we can allow you to post on this board anymore. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 08-11-2003, 12:35 PM: Message edited by: Granamere ]

Thanks for the answers [img]smile.gif[/img]

Formatting is not an option. It would take a day of work to restore the system, not to mention that backing up 30 Gb of data isn't the funniest thing to do.I have something more than NWNII and BGII installed [img]smile.gif[/img]

I always shut down screensavers and everything, leaving only firewall (lots of lamers scanning my ports lately...) & anti virus running. And speed disk is up to date.
And I usually defrag once a week, only this week I had to transfer Gb of data to and fro within the LAN, and things got messed up. I guess I will need to erase some more things and then re defrag. hopefully there will be enough space for those dumb defrag algorithms to succeed in the task.

But what I was asking for is whether there is a better software than Win or Speed Disk to perform defrag. I don't like win because it's dumb, doesn't really defrag - use that then check with speed disk and see. And I don't like speed disk either, because of the way it works: supposedly it leaves a bit of free space after each file to allow for its growth. It wouldn't be a bad idea, except for two simple facts: First, most of the files are fixed in size, and second, whenever you download something, windows will act very smart - one 40 megs file will be put into 40,000 free spaces of 1kb each instead of into the 5 Gb of contiguous free space.
So, any hints about good defragging software?

[ 08-11-2003, 01:15 PM: Message edited by: B_part ]

Speed disk is one of the better ones. It only gives slack space to files it thinks will grow. Another one I use from time to time mainly on Windows 2000 servers is OO defrag. Here is a link to a free version. http://www.free-software-downloads.o...management.htm

Granamere

I'll try that. thanks

IIRC, Norton gives you an option to do away with this free space. I use Nprton fairly regularly (once every few months ;) ) to defrag my HDD, haven't encountered any real probelms. Takes about an hour or so (12GB HDD).

i know johnny boy i know.. so getta beer and get drunk while waiting for da computa to finish :D

Hmmm - If your virus scanner is set to scan all incoming files it might also scan the files that the defragmenter moves from one part of the disc to another part. It depends of the way the defragmenter/virus scanner works.

Try to close down your virus scanner, while you are defragmenting. Maybe it will give a boost of speed - or maybe not.

[img]graemlins/greenbounce.gif[/img]
Insane

Dear god I never defrag my PC. And when I do it only takes bout an hour. Weekly? Pfffh, no chance [img]tongue.gif[/img] When it gets too bad i just re-format. Got a partition in my drive so I dont lose anything really. Not too shabby. My advice, partition your drive and re-format!

One other thing to try and make sure you're not using any unneccessary files, is by booting into safe mode. Then run windows scandisk. Then defrag. this helps sometimes, especially when your defrag keeps restarting.

Windows Defrag. It defrags my 160GB RAID array in 4hrs every week. IIRC, only Norton 2003 works with XP, so if you're running 2002, there's your problem.

I don't know why people have to keep using fancy third party utilities when perfectly good ones are available built into Windows.

The defragger built into XP does a less than perfect job, it ususaly leaves me with files fragmented and several 10-1000 MB gaps. Its not unusual for me to run analysis immediately after finishing defrag and be recommended to run another defrag.

Never had a problem with XP's defrag. I'd say 8 out of 10 times I'm left with 0% fragmentation, and the other 2 times less than 2%.

I would try disconnecting from the network, shutting down all non essetial programs. are you finding that it is restarting. I had that problem, It would start running then restart, then restart, thrn restart, etc.. Also kill all your temp files, internet and windows. It really shouldn't take 16 hours.....

Then one in Windows 2000 is pretty OK. It's a simplified version of disk keeper. So you could try that one, Disk Keeper that is. Here's another one called PowerDefrag. Just do a google on defrag and you'll find several 3^rd party defrag utilities. [img]smile.gif[/img]