problem with defragmenting

kinaldo

Fairly new laptop, Acer Ferrari 4003, haven't had any real problems with it before.

I went to defragment it for the first time in a couple of weeks only to get a report (after the defragmentation process) which said certain files were unable to be defragmented - see attached screenshots.

I analyzed the same drive again and it tells me it's in need of defragmentation

Surely that can't be right but I have no idea what could be the problem.

Anyone?

Ruu_Old

Certain files can't be moved, so basically they don't get fragmented. They would be files such as the pagefile or the registry.

kinaldo

Ruu wrote:

Certain files can't be moved, so basically they don't get fragmented. They would be files such as the pagefile or the registry.

So I shouldn't be concerned that it's still telling me my drive needs to be defragmented despite the fact that I've just done that?

Ruu_Old

It has happened to me before so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Nietzschean

Alas defrag is a one pass algorithm under windows as far as i know. Thus to actually achieve the effect you need to re-run the program a few times. I wouldn't pay any attention to the un-movable files, they shouldn't have a big impact on it.[this has led to there being a few 3rd party apps that just re-run window's defrag until system no longer needs it].

to clarify, defrag is working, but because it doesn't re-examine your disk when it finishes to see if it should do more it tends not to fully defrag a well fragmented drive after one use

kinaldo

Ok I'll sleep easy now, thanks guys.

Capt'n Midnight

files in use may not defrag either

sysinternals have a utility called contig that you could use to defrag the names files one by one

pagedfrg on the same site will allow you to defrag some system files during boot up too

and you can run defrag as many times as you like , but not much point

blorg

1.04 fragments per file average is not a serious problem. Many of the files with the most fragments are ones that were in use (were you running Firefox during defrag?) Ideally you want to be running nothing and close everything sitting in the system tray. As Capt'n Midnight suggested there are also utilities that will defrag outside Windows at boot time.

Running FAT32 with Windows XP is not a good idea; I would suggest converting to NTFS which is a much more stable and safe filesystem. I am very surprised Acer would ship with FAT32. Incidentally this should also help with your fragmentation issues.

Capt'n Midnight

blorg wrote:

Running FAT32 with Windows XP is not a good idea; I would suggest converting to NTFS which is a much more stable and safe filesystem.

Not so sure I agree.
If you are using multiple OS's then FAT is the handiest one to use.
If you need any security / need to save space with compressed files then NTFS wins.

NTFS is more stable, but if the OS don't boot you are in deeper doggy do do
FAT is so much easier to recover especially if you have access to another OS or boot floppy. but anyone can read any file. With NTFS they'd need a Dos 5 boot disk with NTFS dos or Knoppix boot disk or another OS or power user rights and a reboot or a floppy that resets the admin password, ( NTFS security can only apply if you don't have physical access to the machine )

it's a question of MTBF vs. MTTR

and you can't ever go from NTFS back to FAT

blorg

I am presuming the the OP, like most people, is running just XP. If you are running multiple OSes, sure, but even then I would still make your Windows partition NTFS, but with a FAT partition for data.

Capt'n Midnight

I really hate using recovery console to repair 2k/xp, ( don't get me started on NT , in those days you had to install a second copy of the OS :rolleyes: )

NTFS = more stable , but backups are more important

horses for courses