Defrag - need help

[B_part]

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 ]

[Granamere]

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

[B_part]

I'll try that. thanks

[Hayashi]

Originally posted by B_part: 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.

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).

[Harkoliar]

posted by johnny: What ??? That's every PC owner's worst nightmare.

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

[InsaneBane]

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

[Beaumanoir]

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!

[ratchild]

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.

[Animal]

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.

[andrewas]

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.