Hey There,

I have a win2k machine with a 4.3gig Hard drive that has
33% free space. I cannot get win2k to give me a good
defrag thereby keeping the drive response slow. Any
suggestions?

Lee

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 07:43:38 -0800, Lee Anderson wrote:

>Hey There,
>
>I have a win2k machine with a 4.3gig Hard drive that has
>33% free space. I cannot get win2k to give me a good
>defrag thereby keeping the drive response slow. Any
>suggestions?
>
>Lee

Actually, NTFS is much more resistant to fragmentation than FAT16/32. The
built in defragger does what it's supposed to do. If you have 33% free
(=available) space, than that's what you've got. Defragging can't increase
that, because the amount of space used by files is a function of the file
cluster size (each file uses at least one cluster) and file size. (If a file
size is just a little larger than whole multiple of the file cluster size, it
will use another file cluster, but it will be mostly empty. This unused space
is called slack space.)

Mind you, the total file size in bytes does _not_ equal the total space used
on the disk, since every file with have some slack space at the end of the
last cluster. Hence the "bytes used" and "bytes available" statistics tend to
be more or less misleading.

Drive response speed depends on
a) spindle speed;
b) drive cache size (the one in the drive itself) and associated firmware
c) seek time of the read/write head
d) front side bus speed
e) OS design

None of these are under your control. If you bought a bargain computer, you
have a slow drive and a slow front side bus. There's nowt yer can dew 'baat
that, son.

HTH

--
Wolf Kirchmeir, Blind River ON Canada
"Nature does not deal in rewards or punishments, but only in consequences."
(Robert Ingersoll)

If the defrag process is failing, you might try booting to Safe Mode and
defragging the drive. That may keep whatever is interfering from doing so.

Kevin McNiel, MCSE/MCSA
Platform Server Setup Group

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Please reply to the Group only, This address cannot receive incoming
messages.


"Wolf Kirchmeir" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 07:43:38 -0800, Lee Anderson wrote:
>
> >Hey There,
> >
> >I have a win2k machine with a 4.3gig Hard drive that has
> >33% free space. I cannot get win2k to give me a good
> >defrag thereby keeping the drive response slow. Any
> >suggestions?
> >
> >Lee
>
> Actually, NTFS is much more resistant to fragmentation than FAT16/32. The
> built in defragger does what it's supposed to do. If you have 33% free
> (=available) space, than that's what you've got. Defragging can't increase
> that, because the amount of space used by files is a function of the file
> cluster size (each file uses at least one cluster) and file size. (If a
file
> size is just a little larger than whole multiple of the file cluster size,
it
> will use another file cluster, but it will be mostly empty. This unused
space
> is called slack space.)
>
> Mind you, the total file size in bytes does _not_ equal the total space
used
> on the disk, since every file with have some slack space at the end of the
> last cluster. Hence the "bytes used" and "bytes available" statistics tend
to
> be more or less misleading.
>
> Drive response speed depends on
> a) spindle speed;
> b) drive cache size (the one in the drive itself) and associated firmware
> c) seek time of the read/write head
> d) front side bus speed
> e) OS design
>
> None of these are under your control. If you bought a bargain computer,
you
> have a slow drive and a slow front side bus. There's nowt yer can dew
'baat
> that, son.
>
> HTH
>
> --
> Wolf Kirchmeir, Blind River ON Canada
> "Nature does not deal in rewards or punishments, but only in
consequences."
> (Robert Ingersoll)
>
>
>