Disk Defragmenter Stalls

[Peter Hallett]

The removal of some redundant software seems to have caused a problem with
Disk Defragmenter. It now terminates prematurely with the message that some
files cannot be defragmented. Unfortunately, the associated report is empty,
listing no culprits. I have encountered this problem once before but then
Disk Defragmenter identified the cause, allowing me to fix it. Can anyone
suggest how to deal with this current difficulty? Scan Disk, in contrast,
appears to work fine.

 

[Big_Al]

Peter Hallett said this on 2/13/2009 6:14 AM:

The removal of some redundant software seems to have caused a problem with
Disk Defragmenter. It now terminates prematurely with the message that some
files cannot be defragmented. Unfortunately, the associated report is empty,
listing no culprits. I have encountered this problem once before but then
Disk Defragmenter identified the cause, allowing me to fix it. Can anyone
suggest how to deal with this current difficulty? Scan Disk, in contrast,
appears to work fine.

You say "scan disk", do you mean chkdsk?
Have you tried chkdsk C: /n ???

 

[SC Tom]

Peter Hallett said this on 2/13/2009 6:14 AM:

You say "scan disk", do you mean chkdsk?
Have you tried chkdsk C: /n ???

What is /n? I've never heard of that one.
Thanks,
SC Tom

 

[Big_Al]

SC Tom said this on 2/13/2009 7:23 AM:

What is /n? I've never heard of that one.
Thanks,
SC Tom

If I remember right?!

/f fixes data if its corrupt
/n fixes data and checks free space to make sure its good too. Kinda
nice if you want to move data to a new spot and you want to be sure even
the empty is good.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

SC Tom said this on 2/13/2009 7:23 AM:

If I remember right?!

/f fixes data if its corrupt
/n fixes data and checks free space to make sure its good too. Kinda
nice if you want to move data to a new spot and you want to be sure even
the empty is good.

If you go to a command prompt and type chkdsk /? you will get a list
of, and an description of, all the switches that chkdsk can take. /n
is not among those listed.

 

[SC Tom]

If you go to a command prompt and type chkdsk /? you will get a list
of, and an description of, all the switches that chkdsk can take. /n
is not among those listed.

Yeah, I tried that, too, and didn't see it. Thought maybe it might be a
Recovery Console command I hadn't seen before.

Thanks,
SC Tom

 

[Big_Al]

SC Tom said this on 2/13/2009 12:53 PM:

Yeah, I tried that, too, and didn't see it. Thought maybe it might be a
Recovery Console command I hadn't seen before.

Thanks,
SC Tom

Sorry guys, Its /R
My bad!

 

[Peter Hallett]

My apologies, too. Slip of the pen, or keyboard, in my case. I didn’t mean
ScanDisk, of course, (showing my age!?) I meant ScanDefrag. For anyone not
familiar with this utility, a suitable link to it is provided by Joan Archer
in her reply to my earlier post entitled, “Scandisk fails to complete.†Just
search under my name to find the reference.

Anyone not familiar with this utility might find it quite handy, as do I.
It is simply a script, running Disk Cleanup, ChkDsk and Disk Defragmenter. I
use it to tidy-up my disk before each back-up. It saves a few command line
entries and a fair bit of time. It has proved very reliable.

Despite the misquotation, and despite running Chkdsk independently, the
results, I fear, remain unchanged. Disk Defragmenter – ie System32\dfrg.msc,
the version accessed via Accessories and not, apparently, the MS Disk
Defragmenter run by ScanDefrag – continues to stall after completing only a
small percentage of the disk. Chkdsk gives no indication that anything is
wrong.

I have tried the Chkdsk switches but remain rather puzzled. As already
noted, /p and /r appear to be the only documented switches but, as also
noted, these need the Recovery Console. However, the apparently undocumented
/f switch seems to do something. At least, it wasn't rejected, as was the /n
switch. It didn't, though, fix the problem.

 

[Big_Al]

Peter Hallett said this on 2/13/2009 2:16 PM:

My apologies, too. Slip of the pen, or keyboard, in my case. I didn’t mean
ScanDisk, of course, (showing my age!?) I meant ScanDefrag. For anyone not
familiar with this utility, a suitable link to it is provided by Joan Archer
in her reply to my earlier post entitled, “Scandisk fails to complete.†Just
search under my name to find the reference.

Anyone not familiar with this utility might find it quite handy, as do I.
It is simply a script, running Disk Cleanup, ChkDsk and Disk Defragmenter. I
use it to tidy-up my disk before each back-up. It saves a few command line
entries and a fair bit of time. It has proved very reliable.

Despite the misquotation, and despite running Chkdsk independently, the
results, I fear, remain unchanged. Disk Defragmenter – ie System32\dfrg.msc,
the version accessed via Accessories and not, apparently, the MS Disk
Defragmenter run by ScanDefrag – continues to stall after completing only a
small percentage of the disk. Chkdsk gives no indication that anything is
wrong.

I have tried the Chkdsk switches but remain rather puzzled. As already
noted, /p and /r appear to be the only documented switches but, as also
noted, these need the Recovery Console. However, the apparently undocumented
/f switch seems to do something. At least, it wasn't rejected, as was the /n
switch. It didn't, though, fix the problem.

I have had defrag hang but not stop, only 2 times. I dropped my
laptop, about 2 inches, but I'm almost sure the heads bounced. After
that I had it happen 2 times about 3 days apart. chkdsk from the CMD
prompt with the /R found bad spots in 2 data files (thankfully they were
jpg files) and fixed them. Also thus allowing me to do defrag again.

I can't say its your issue, but it fixed me up fine. And chkdsk /R did
work from the cmd line, except it told me it would schedule it on next
boot as C: was in use.

Have fun, hope you get a resolution. Sorry about the /N confusion.

 

[Gerry]

Peter

Two files are never listed in the Most Fragmented Files
list -pagefile.sys and the MFT table. Check the fragments for each and
compare to the total number of fragmented files.


--



Hope this helps.

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