Defrag Time?

Hogzy

Started defraging my HDD today at around 2pm and its still going:eek:
thats 7 and a half hours...

The HDD is 500gb and there is 70gb free...

Is this time normal? Mind you i havent defraged in about a year and im using the standard vista one!

Donald-Duck

Yes, the longer you leave it the longer it will take.

And the vista defragger is awful.

Hogzy

is it wise to stop it half way throug... Or however far through it is?


Any recommendations on FREE programs to defrag

andrewison

Could try downloading a proper business defragger , we use diskkeeper at work for our servers .. you can download it and get a 30 day trial free.. install it and then run it , when its finished uninstall it . Unsure if it works on client PC tho (W2k, XP, Vista..) but worth a look ..

Hogzy

cool just in the process of downloading the trial now! How long does it take considering my Drive details in the OP

EvilMonkey

Try JkDefrag

Donald-Duck

EvilMonkey wrote: »

Try JkDefrag

This is the one I use

bandit197

+1 for JKDefrag. I just discovered it recently. Very tidy application

Cuddlesworth

Donald-Duck wrote: »

Yes, the longer you leave it the longer it will take.

And the vista defragger is awful.

really? I have found the Vista defragger to be one of the best out there atm. Mostly because they ripped off a very well known paid for defrag program.

It takes time on Vista because it analyzes the amount of usage of various apps/files etc, then prioritizes them to put the more used app's closer to the inside.

andrewison

as to how long depends on so many factors that it is impossible to say , if you had mainly large files then chances are it would take less , but with the likes of cookies and the like ...it is like how long is my piece of string without ever seeing what the string loks like ...

Try any of the ones mentioned (disk keeper ...wink wink ) .. they all do the same job and it is a free trial ...

Good luck

kleefarr

Auslogics defrag isn't bad. Free, fairly quick and thorough.

http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/download

Overheal

perfectdisk is a pretty damned professional solution. you can install a 30 day trial. does some nifty stuff like DOS-defragging - great for cleaning up the windows kernel.

unnameduser

iobitdefrag will defrag you drive on a consistent basis once CPU activity is below a definable %.

You could give that a go if you tend to be dealing with a lot of large files. I don't use it however, I'm unsure as to how much it would stress the HD over time.

Donny5

If you go for Diskkeeper, or any program that offers it, avoid boot time defrag unless you have full backups of everything.

Overheal

Donny5 wrote: »

If you go for Diskkeeper, or any program that offers it, avoid boot time defrag unless you have full backups of everything.

what happened to you? sudden power loss?

northdubgal

What does defragmenting do for the hard drive??

Hogzy

northdubgal wrote: »

What does defragmenting do for the hard drive??

http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=Defragmentation

:D:D

Donny5

Overheal wrote: »

what happened to you? sudden power loss?

Nope, it ran to completion on the disk, the OS on that partition (Win Vista) wouldn't boot, I did some checks and had no joy. I couldn't access the partition through *nix, run chkdsk, ended up taking out the disk, throwing it into an enclosure, looking at the first blocks of the partition and bam, disk full of noise!

In hindsight, I was a fool to do a boottime anything with the HDD, giving it access to all the sectors was a stupid, stupid idea, and I paid for it.

On the plus side, I didn't bother reinstalling Vista, and I'm happier with the laptop since.

northdubgal

Hogzy wrote: »

http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=Defragmentation

:D:D

Thanks for the link... :P

Still dont understand what it means

Hogzy

northdubgal wrote: »

Thanks for the link... :P

Still dont understand what it means

TBH i dont really get the whole thing either:pac:.... From my understanding it rearranges files spread out through the HDD so that they are more accessible to the HDD and that it doesnt need to spend as much time searching for them as the are more organised, look on wikipedia for defragmentation and look at the animations they have, that will give you a good idea!

Donny5

The file system type and the defragmenter determine what it does, but the gist is that when the file system makes a new file or expands one, but there isn't enough continuous free space to hold the file, some file systems like FAT and NTFS split the file into pieces that fit in the available spaces. These are the file fragments that are defragmented by moving the pieces and other files around until all files are continuous on the disk.

It means the read heads in the HDD don't have to move as often during file reads, which increases performance.

The above is greatly simplified, but it's the gist.

Hogzy

Donny5 wrote: »

The file system type and the defragmenter determine what it does, but the gist is that when the file system makes a new or expands one, but there isn't enough continuous free space to hold the file, some file systems like FAT and NTFS split the file into pieces that fit in the available spaces. These are the file fragments that are defragmented by moving the pieces and other files around until all files are continuous on the disk.

It means the read heads in the HDD don't have to move as often during file reads, which increases performance.

The above is greatly simplified, but it's the gist.

Yeah what he said:p

Jonathan

As files grow they get split up and the new chunk is placed in the next available free spot on the hard disk.

Defragmentation makes these files contiguous again.

Overheal

Donny5 wrote: »

Nope, it ran to completion on the disk, the OS on that partition (Win Vista) wouldn't boot, I did some checks and had no joy. I couldn't access the partition through *nix, run chkdsk, ended up taking out the disk, throwing it into an enclosure, looking at the first blocks of the partition and bam, disk full of noise!

In hindsight, I was a fool to do a boottime anything with the HDD, giving it access to all the sectors was a stupid, stupid idea, and I paid for it.

On the plus side, I didn't bother reinstalling Vista, and I'm happier with the laptop since.

noise like physical noise? I've done a couple boot time defrags (one or two) through PD and never had that problem

Donny5

Overheal wrote: »

noise like physical noise? I've done a couple boot time defrags (one or two) through PD and never had that problem

Nope, noise as in a partitional whose (at least) first few sectors was a random bitstring.

redox

Another vote for Diskeeper. Get the 2009 trial version from their website; it's free for 30 days. I use the full version on the XP dekstop, and it's great, and more importantly, uses very few resources to run.

JPA

From the makers of CCleaner, try http://www.defraggler.com/

Capt'n Midnight

northdubgal wrote: »

What does defragmenting do for the hard drive??

it gives users the impression they are doing something useful :pac:

Other OS's don't generally need to be defragmented unless space runs low , keeping 20-25% of the drive free is recommended. Microsoft even pad extra space in SQL databases , and maybe WinFS would have had this but I don't know.

In a nutshell, “Windows tries to put all files as close to the start of the hard drive as it can, thus it constantly fragments files when they grow larger and there's no free space available,” he writes, providing plenty of helpful graphics to illustrate the matter. In contrast Linux, “scatters files all over the disk so there's plenty of free space if the file's size changes.”

Personally I prefer my files to be contiguous to make data recovery easier

http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/index.php/2006/08/17/why_doesn_t_linux_need_defragmenting

Keith186

Hogzy wrote: »

http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=Defragmentation

:D:D

I like!:)