Defrag is very slow.

[Bill Watt]

XP Pro, 1.6mh Notebook, formatted Fat32.

Defrag is painfully slow. Only about 10 GB on the 80 GB drive C:.

Is there a better Defrag utility for XP?

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/

 

[witan]

XP Pro, 1.6mh Notebook, formatted Fat32.

Defrag is painfully slow. Only about 10 GB on the 80 GB drive C:.

Is there a better Defrag utility for XP?

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/

XP defrag is slow with FAT32. It is very much faster with NTFS.

 

[Guest]

You must have a problem - my Segrave External Hard drive, which cost $155
from PC World UK, is FAT32 formatted, has a capacity of 298GB of which 161GB
(54%) is free space. Defragmenting it takes a few minutes longer than the
hard drive on my PC. If you defrag regularly it should only take a few
minutes, however, if not it could take half an hour or more. - Andrew

 

[Bill Watt]

Defrag analyzed it and said it did not need a defrag. I ran it
anyway and after a half hour it was only to 9 %.

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/
___________________________________________________

 

[Bill Watt]

XP defrag is slow with FAT32. It is very much faster with NTFS.

As long as it's formatted FAT32 can I use the Defrag from ME, It's
fast on a Win9x system.?

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/
____________________________________________________

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Bill

Did you run Disk CleanUp before trying running Disk Defragmenter?

Can you post a copy of the Disk Defragmenter Report?

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Computerflyer]

XP Pro, 1.6mh Notebook, formatted Fat32.

Defrag is painfully slow. Only about 10 GB on the 80 GB drive C:.

Is there a better Defrag utility for XP?

Consider PerfectDisk if you must defrag, at www.perfectdisk.com

or Diskeeper at www.diskeeper.com

Defragging is possibly overrated in its importance, but everyone to
his own needs.

 

[Computerflyer]

XP Pro, 1.6mh Notebook, formatted Fat32.

Defrag is painfully slow. Only about 10 GB on the 80 GB drive C:.

Is there a better Defrag utility for XP?

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/

Why still FAT32? Go to NTFS. It is faster, more reliable, and it
journals.

 

[Bob I]

Look in Device Manager at your Primary IDE channel Properties, and see
if it is set to run DMA mode, and if in fact it is running DMA mode. If
it is not set to DMA, set it, if it has reverted to PIO due to errors.
Uninstall the channel and reinstall it and set to use DMA.

 

[Phisherman]

XP Pro, 1.6mh Notebook, formatted Fat32.

Defrag is painfully slow. Only about 10 GB on the 80 GB drive C:.

Is there a better Defrag utility for XP?

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/

If the drive is >80% full, defrag will take longer.

 

[Bill Watt]

Bill

Did you run Disk CleanUp before trying running Disk Defragmenter?

Can you post a copy of the Disk Defragmenter Report?

There were only a few profile files listed so I did not clean those
but I searched for all *.tmp files and deleted those. This is a new
Notebook and I only have a few of my many programs installed.

I finally let it run to completion, here is the report.
It took less than 3 hours. I wasn't there when it stopped but after
45 minutes it was only up to 6 %.
Seems to me XP should not have any problem defragging a FAT 32
drive. I tried it in Safe Mode, same thing.
_____________________________________________________________
Volume (C
Volume size = 74.49 GB
Cluster size = 16 KB
Used space = 9.92 GB
Free space = 64.57 GB
Percent free space = 86 %

Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 0 %
File fragmentation = 0 %
Free space fragmentation = 0 %

File fragmentation
Total files = 42,350
Average file size = 172 KB
Total fragmented files = 7
Total excess fragments = 8
Average fragments per file = 1.00

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 1.50 GB
Total fragments = 1

Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 3,386
Fragmented folders = 24
Excess folder fragments = 61

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fragments File Size Files that cannot be defragmented
2 1,017 KB \WINDOWS\WindowsUpdate.log
2 36 KB
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\WBEM\Logs\WBEMESS.LOG
3 3 MB \WINDOWS\Internet Logs\tvDebug.log
4 426 bytes \Documents and Settings\Bill\Local
Settings\Temp\IMT53.XML
2 208 KB \Documents and Settings\Bill\Local
Settings\History\History.IE5\INDEX.DAT
2 4 MB \Agent\MSnews\000003BA.DAT
2 78 KB \Agent\MSnews\000003BA.IDX
______________________________________________________________

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/

 

[Bill Watt]

Good thought but it is using DMA.

Regards,

Bill Watt

______________________________________________________

 

[Bill Watt]

Must be a problem. I have the C: drive backed up on my external USB
80 GB drive and I just defragged it. It was probably not fragmented
much at all after the copy and it only took less than 10 minutes.
Here is the report:
_____________________________________________________
Volume FIRELITE (E
Volume size = 62.48 GB
Cluster size = 32 KB
Used space = 12.58 GB
Free space = 49.90 GB
Percent free space = 79 %

Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 0 %
File fragmentation = 0 %
Free space fragmentation = 0 %

File fragmentation
Total files = 42,448
Average file size = 285 KB
Total fragmented files = 1
Total excess fragments = 7
Average fragments per file = 1.00

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 0 bytes
Total fragments = 0

Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 3,403
Fragmented folders = 9
Excess folder fragments = 22

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fragments File Size Files that cannot be defragmented
8 4.00 GB \BACKUP1.BKF
_________________________________________________________

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/
_____________________________________________________________

 

[Charles C. Drew]

|
| >
| >XP Pro, 1.6mh Notebook, formatted Fat32.
| >
| >Defrag is painfully slow. Only about 10 GB on the 80 GB drive C:.
| >
| >Is there a better Defrag utility for XP?
| >
| >Regards,
| >
| >Bill Watt
| >Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/
| >
|
|
| If the drive is >80% full, defrag will take longer.

Here are your options...

1) Get PerfectDisk. Its the fastest FAT32 defrag tool I've used, if I
remember correctly (it's been a few years since I installed and tried the
demo for it). It's expensive at about $50.
2) Get Norton Utilities 2002 and install speedisk and download the updates
to it. It is the 2nd fastest FAT32 defrag utility I've used. You can
probably find it cheap at a used software store.
3) Get PartitionMagic and convert your FAT32 to NTFS (in place without
loosing your current windows install or data files...backups are golden
though). Then XP's defrag will be faster (PerfectDisk or Diskeeper will be
MUCH FASTER). Don't bother with Norton Utilities if you have NTFS because
it is much slower with NTFS.

I currently have all my PCs formatted with NTFS and use Diskeeper 10 to
defrag. It is scheduled to run at night, every night and takes about 1-5
minutes to fully defrag my PC. It is also an expensive option at about $50.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Bill

An 80 gb hard drive formatted as FAT32 would take a long time in
Windows 98. I have no experience to call upon with regard to Windows
XP having always used NTFS.

I have looked at the report for the C drive posted here and for your E
drive posted elsewhere in the thread. The cluster size for your C
drive is 16 kb, which compares with the default of 32 kb. The cluster
size on your E drive is 32 kb, which is the default size. A larger
cluster size could mean that it would take less time to run the
utility because there are fewer clusters to process and the overhead
is less. The downside for a larger cluster size is you get more wasted
space due to disk slack. As the content of your E drive is a backup
copy of C drive then, if the backup copy is current, one might expect
the used space to be roughly the same but the used space on your C
drive is 9.92 gb and 12.58 gb on the E drive. However, unless I am
mistaken the BackUp Utility only backs up data files and this can be
done in several ways so what may seem to be a simple comparison is in
reality not so.

The report for your C drive still shows some files fragmented. Two
seem to relate to Forte Agent? Did you stop this running before
starting Disk Defragmenter? Another large fragmented file is the
tvDebug.log. Same point; was it still running? Do you still need the
file? The WindowsUpdate.log is not a file I would expect to feature on
the list. Have you a reminder which has not been acted upon? Given the
large amount of free space I would expect few files to still be
fragmented. I am familiar with those you might expect if using NTFS
but not with FAT32.

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Bill Watt]

2) Get Norton Utilities 2002 and install speedisk and download the updates
to it. It is the 2nd fastest FAT32 defrag utility I've used. You can
probably find it cheap at a used software store.

I have Norton System Works 2002 that includes Speed Disk plus a
bunch of other utilities. Will that work on XP?

I seem to remember that if you use Speed Disk you should continue
with it.

What are the updates for?

Thanks

Bill Watt

 

[Bill Watt]

Why still FAT32? Go to NTFS. It is faster, more reliable, and it
journals.

I ordered the XP Notebook with Fat 32 for compatibility with my many
older programs.

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/

 

[Bill Watt]

Bill

An 80 gb hard drive formatted as FAT32 would take a long time in
Windows 98. I have no experience to call upon with regard to Windows
XP having always used NTFS.

I have looked at the report for the C drive posted here and for your E
drive posted elsewhere in the thread. The cluster size for your C
drive is 16 kb, which compares with the default of 32 kb. The cluster
size on your E drive is 32 kb, which is the default size. A larger
cluster size could mean that it would take less time to run the
utility because there are fewer clusters to process and the overhead
is less. The downside for a larger cluster size is you get more wasted
space due to disk slack. As the content of your E drive is a backup
copy of C drive then, if the backup copy is current, one might expect
the used space to be roughly the same but the used space on your C
drive is 9.92 gb and 12.58 gb on the E drive. However, unless I am
mistaken the BackUp Utility only backs up data files and this can be
done in several ways so what may seem to be a simple comparison is in
reality not so.

The report for your C drive still shows some files fragmented. Two
seem to relate to Forte Agent? Did you stop this running before
starting Disk Defragmenter? Another large fragmented file is the
tvDebug.log. Same point; was it still running? Do you still need the
file? The WindowsUpdate.log is not a file I would expect to feature on
the list. Have you a reminder which has not been acted upon? Given the
large amount of free space I would expect few files to still be
fragmented. I am familiar with those you might expect if using NTFS
but not with FAT32.

I noticed the cluster size difference also. Both drives were
formatted by the manufacturer. I don't know why they were not the
same. Maybe to make the USB drive faster.

I made sure all programs were closed so nothing would access the
disk during the process. I also turned off the Screen Saver which
doesn't work anyway.

The USB drive has other files on it, that is why the used amount is
more. I also added a small partition to the end of the USB drive.

I used the Maxtor Maxblast 3 drive copy utility to copy C: to E: and
it's an exact copy and made bootable.

If Norton Speed disk works with XP then I'll try that.

Thanks for the time you have spent on this.

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Bill

Running Disk Defragmenter a second and even a third time can eliminate
fragmented files. If running Speedisk involves installing Norton
System Works I would not bother. Installing Norton products puts a
load on the system that is far greater than any gain from
defragmenting. Many freeware products can do what Norton System Works
2002 can do and better. What are you expecting from Norton System
Works?

What programmes won't run on an NTFS drive? Are you sure you have got
it right?


--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Bill Watt]

Bill

Running Disk Defragmenter a second and even a third time can eliminate
fragmented files. If running Speedisk involves installing Norton
System Works I would not bother. Installing Norton products puts a
load on the system that is far greater than any gain from
defragmenting. Many freeware products can do what Norton System Works
2002 can do and better. What are you expecting from Norton System
Works?

What programmes won't run on an NTFS drive? Are you sure you have got
it right?

Gerry,

I don't use Norton or Symantec products. I have System Works on my
PC but never use them. I'm not expecting anything, other than to
maybe try Speed Disk 2002 if it will run on XP.

I plan to dual boot Win98SE and bring that system over to the
Notebook, plus I have many older programs, including some in DOS
that I use. I have tons of programs, I have never formatted and
re-installed since Win 3.1. Every so often I go through the system
and un-install what I may never use.

Considering how helpful this group is and how busy it is it should
be sub divided or something.

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/