Defrag Utilities


Ferentix

It's not a me!
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Plymouth (UK)
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OK, this is a rather bad situation here. This here computer is the family computer, which we've now had for maybe 2 years. It's a pretty good middle range general-purpose home PC (better since I installed a graphics card to replace the onboard S3 prosavage video). However, please bear with me here- it hasn't had it's hard drive defragmented EVER in the time we've had it. Yes, I knew it should be done regularly, and that was a dumb thing to do. OK, so we have the standard Windows gradual performance decay that most people mention. Every time my dad boots it up he tends to rant about how slow it is to boot and so forth, which gets rather annoying ;) And of course, it hacks me off too- it really does take a lot longer, and also once you're in it's all slower too. So I went looking for defrag utilities, finding one called "Perfectdisk", which was recommended by several members of another forum as being generally faster and more reliable than the one that ships with XP. So I checked it out.

The HD is ~80Gb, so I'd expect it to take several hours maybe. Add a few more due to the huge period of neglect. Maybe it would even take half a day, 12 hours, maybe a day even. I was prepared for that. However, I left it on for 6 hours, and it hadn't even got up to 1% completion (!). By some hazy calculation, I figure it would take, at this rate (assuming it's constant of course) several WEEKS to finish.

So basically, what I'm looking for is something that defragments faster. I'm thinking the best way would be some sort of bootdisk containing a very lightweight OS and a defragmentation program, which fits on a floppy, probably Linux or FreeDOS or similar. However, I'm not sure If I can just use any defrag software- might it have to be aware of anything specific to WinXP, so I don't boot back to XP to find it's been FUBAR'd? Like which areas of the drive to leave untouched. I figure a bootdisk is the way to go though, because it'll mean that the software will be able to use pretty much all the processing power and memory available, which would otherwise be partially taken by background programs.

So can anyone point me to a suitable bootdisk or other software to try to cut this down to a sensible period of time?

Please, any help is VERY appreciated :D (Uh... and sorry for the essay length post :blink: )
 
Very unlikely it will take that long. How much free space is on the disk. Delete stuff you don't need that will give the defragger more room to work in.

There is a simple rule with defragmenting. The more you do it the less time it takes.

I recommend defragging at least weekly.
 
Do an "Off-Line" defrag with Perfect Disk first, Then do a Smart-Defrag.

Yes, How much free space is on the drive, And how much ram do you have ?.

Trooper
 
Thanks for the replies :)

OK:

-256MB RAM
-1.99 GHz Athlon XP 2400+ processor
-Free space 10.5 Gigs (80 Gig HD)

I tried to do an offline defrag already... it said it would occur on the next reboot, so I restarted the computer (not just Windows). It didn't happen when the computer restarted though- just went straight to Windows as per usual. :(

Restart in safe mode and do a Perfect Disk defrag.

Sorry, I've never had to do that before, and I don't know how to. Please explain?

EDIT: And now, to cap it off, PerfectDisk is refusing to start up at all. It probably will if I simply reboot though, so that hopefully isn't a problem. Oh, and I realise that just defragging the HD will not by itself solve every problem, I'm also pruning the programs that start at boot etc. etc. (For example, the services for my onboard graphics hardware still get started at start-up :p)
 
for me 0&0 defrag gives the greates improvement, use the access method, it takes longer but the results are not beaten by any other app
 
Sounds to me like you may be in a catch22 situation. In order for a defragger to work it needs enough continuious free space to be able to work on files. But possibly the majority of the files are currently bigger than the fragments of continuous free space.

Is there an app or game installed near the beginning of the PCs life that you could remove. An earlier install is more likely to free up some bigger areas of freespace.

Also burn our any MP3s etc to CD or DVD. You can always put them back on later.

Finally don't rule out the XP defragger. It was written by The Diskeeper Corporation (execsoft as they were known) so it does work even though it's slow. It may be worth trying again.

Good luck.
 
Vimacs posted on Feb 19 2006 at 09:16 AM said:
for me 0&0 defrag gives the greates improvement, use the access method, it takes longer but the results are not beaten by any other app

I agree with this O&O Derfrag is excelent.
 
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WarmFluffyUK posted on Feb 19 2006 at 01:04 PM said:
Vimacs posted on Feb 19 2006 at 09:16 AM said:
for me 0&0 defrag gives the greates improvement, use the access method, it takes longer but the results are not beaten by any other app

I agree with this O&O Derfrag is excelent.
PerfectDisk is better! Damn you people!111
 
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unlucky posted on Feb 19 2006 at 03:07 PM said:
yeah to be fair i've never seen a speed up after a defrag :| though i've only ever used the default windows one
I notice hard drive noise goes away after a defrag.
 
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Have you tried checking the drive for errors ?.

Error checking button in the drives properties dialogue, Under the tools tab.

Then run perfect disk again.

Hanz™
Posted Today, 02:38 PM


(WarmFluffyUK @ Feb 19 2006, 01:04 PM)
(Vimacs @ Feb 19 2006, 09:16 AM)
for me 0&0 defrag gives the greates improvement, use the access method, it takes longer but the results are not beaten by any other app




I agree with this O&O Derfrag is excelent.


PerfectDisk is better! Damn you people!111

Yep Hanz, I agree with you totally.

Trooper
 
oh yeah hehe :rolleyes:

I think it did a good job. I'm not very good with computers so I couldnt relay the detail of the defrag if I wanted to, but I basically overhauled my harddrive by deleting some old porn, images, school work from the first semester, etc. Then I ran ad-aware and NOD32 and now all seems well on the homefront :D
 
daclassicgamingmaster posted on Feb 20 2006 at 03:54 AM said:
oh yeah hehe :rolleyes:

I think it did a good job. I'm not very good with computers so I couldnt relay the detail of the defrag if I wanted to, but I basically overhauled my harddrive by deleting some old porn, images, school work from the first semester, etc. Then I ran ad-aware and NOD32 and now all seems well on the homefront :D

Did you do an off-line defrag ?, If not, You should.

Trooper
 
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