How to show advanced display view for Windows Vista Disk Defragmen

[Guest]

With Vista's new disk defragmenter, we apparently cannot see the 'detailed
view' of the disks status as far as disk fragmentation goes.

Is there a way for us to show this view that once existed in Windows XP?

 

[Robert Moir]

With Vista's new disk defragmenter, we apparently cannot see the 'detailed
view' of the disks status as far as disk fragmentation goes.

Is there a way for us to show this view that once existed in Windows XP?

No. Not without purchasing a 3rd party product.

The issue has come up in these groups *countless* times, and Microsoft have
their own very good reasons for doing this, which you may or may not end up
agreeing with. In either case, rather than repeating the same old stuff
again and dragging the thread out for ages while everyone chips in with
their favourate bit of defrag folklore or suggestions for 3rd party
software, or complaints that Bill Gates himself should have consulted them
personally before Microsoft did this, I'm going to go ahead and suggest you
use google to search the archives of the Microsoft.Public.Windows.Vista
newsgroups for defrag.

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Matt

You might want to take a look at the following FAQ from the Microsoft
product team that designed the defragmenter in Vista. It explains in depth
why certain decisions on how the defragmenter works in Vista were made.

The Filing Cabinet : Disk Defragmenter FAQ:
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/pages/disk-defragmenter-faq.aspx

 

[Guest]

Thanks for posting that article. Now the trick is to get everyone to read it.

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Your welcome.

I agree, getting everyone to read the article if the difficult part.

 

[Guest]

I too think Vista Defrag sucks too, it's just stupid to have a process
without at least a status bar showing percent of process complete. Every
install package, tool, utility, etc. all show a status bar of process
complete.
You MVP's may be geeks but your own arrogance about what you think users
need is regrettable. Obviously the overwhelming opinion of knolwageable
users indicate they want a more descritive "defrag" process.
I managed system engineers most of my career at Boeing (BCS) and understood
the customers (users) requirements. You just ignor them. Wonder if Balmer
knows about this issue and your inability to satisfy your customers ?????

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

A defrag status bar would be meaningless since it's an ongoing process. Ever
interrupt the defrag process in Win98 by moving the mouse or touching the
space bar? The status bar would jump back and start over at an earlier point
and begin to progress again, never ending if the user attempted to actually
do some work with their machine. This is essentially what you would get, an
endless pattern of stopping and restarting at different points.

By design in Vista, it works in the background during lulls in system
activity. It's not meant to be watched any more than the old TV test pattern
was in the 1950's when a station went off the air. I fail to see why any
user would want to sit there and watch blocks being moved around a screen
rather than actually using their system. Historically, Windows has only
supplied users with basic versions of system utilities. They are basic tools
to do a basic job. For added functionality and silly graphics, there are
plenty of third party software designers who will be happy to provide you
with such for a price.

By the by, MVP's are not representatives of Microsoft, just other users like
yourself. To my knowledge, none of us has ever participated in any of
Microsoft's usability studies. They actually prefer non-geeks for that, and
what you get in an OS for a UI is based on the results of those studies. So,
if you don't like what you're seeing, blame the consumer studies.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Bill Daggett]

I'd just like something so I can see how fragmented my disk is. I don't
need to watch a progress bar or anything like that, just a tool to see
what the drive's like. I'm using a laptop so it's rarely on when disk
defrag is scheduled to run. I'd like to be able to check and see how
bad the disk is before I decide why the laptop's running slow.

Welp... one thing for sure: it's not running slow because of disk
fragmentation.

 

[Gordon]

I'd just like something so I can see how fragmented my disk is. I don't
need to watch a progress bar or anything like that, just a tool to see
what the drive's like. I'm using a laptop so it's rarely on when disk
defrag is scheduled to run. I'd like to be able to check and see how
bad the disk is before I decide why the laptop's running slow.

A defragmented disk is almost NEVER the main reason for a slow-running
machine..