Is MFT boot-time defragmentation long?

[steph]

Hello,

this morning i started a boot-time defragmentation to defrag the
master file table (MFT) and the paging file. Now we are 12 hours
later, and my pc has not yet finished the task. (i'm in europe)

I have XP professional sp2 on partition C with 20 gigas, 10 gigas
occupied, 10 gigas free. The defrag-program is Diskeeper.

Worrying about the long time "nothing" happening, i read somewhere
that the MFT-defragmentation would be very long. The guy told that he
needed about 4 hours for his partition with XP (4 giga partition). The
time would also depend on the free space resting on the partition.

I don't venture to push the reset button when le MFT defragmentation
is running. Can you affirm that this kind of defragmentation is very
long? Have i well done not to reset and interrupt the defrag-process?

(Lucky that i kept my old pc, always running, so i can talk to you !)

Thank you.

steph

 

[smlunatick]

Hello,

this morning i started a boot-time defragmentation to defrag the
master file table (MFT) and the paging file. Now we are 12 hours
later, and my pc has not yet finished the task. (i'm in europe)

I have XP professional sp2 on partition C with 20 gigas, 10 gigas
occupied, 10 gigas free. The defrag-program is Diskeeper.

Worrying about the long time "nothing" happening, i read  somewhere
that the MFT-defragmentation would be very long. The guy told that he
needed about 4 hours for his partition with XP (4 giga partition). The
time would also depend on the free space resting on the partition.

I don't venture to push the reset button when le MFT defragmentation
is running. Can you  affirm that this kind of defragmentation is very
long? Have i well done not to reset and interrupt the defrag-process?

(Lucky that i kept my old pc, always running, so i can talk to you !)

Thank you.

steph

I never heard of MFT defragging. Any manipluations of MFT should be
handled with extreme care for is MFT gets damaged, "kiss your drive
good-bye." I lost my hard drive May 2007 due to a MFT corruption and
needed to get a disk recovery system to extract my files from this
corruption. (Very painfully slow!)

 

[steph]

I never heard of MFT defragging. Any manipluations of MFT should be
handled with extreme care for is MFT gets damaged, "kiss your drive
good-bye." I lost my hard drive May 2007 due to a MFT corruption and
needed to get a disk recovery system to extract my files from this
corruption. (Very painfully slow!)

If the MFT-defragging works, the drive could be faster. You can also
defrag the registry. I am sorry for your hard drive lost. Thank you
for telling me your experience. So i better will give my hard drive 24
hours to come to end with his MFT-defrag, perhaps even longer.

 

[Gerry]

Steph

What defragmenter are you using?


~~~~


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

 

[The Doctor]

Hello,

this morning i started a boot-time defragmentation to defrag the
master file table (MFT) and the paging file. Now we are 12 hours
later, and my pc has not yet finished the task. (i'm in europe)

I have XP professional sp2 on partition C with 20 gigas, 10 gigas
occupied, 10 gigas free. The defrag-program is Diskeeper.

Worrying about the long time "nothing" happening, i read somewhere
that the MFT-defragmentation would be very long. The guy told that he
needed about 4 hours for his partition with XP (4 giga partition). The
time would also depend on the free space resting on the partition.

I don't venture to push the reset button when le MFT defragmentation
is running. Can you affirm that this kind of defragmentation is very
long? Have i well done not to reset and interrupt the defrag-process?

(Lucky that i kept my old pc, always running, so i can talk to you !)

Thank you.

steph

I'm not sure that the size of the HDD is relevant as it doesn't reflect the
size of your MFT.
In any case, I have a 140 Gb HDD, MFT is 615,136 entries.
MFT defrag, which included CHKDSK, took 9 mins, 52 secs including the
restarts. I suggest that you do have a problem, although I have no idea what
you should do about it.

 

[philo]

Hello,

this morning i started a boot-time defragmentation to defrag the
master file table (MFT) and the paging file. Now we are 12 hours
later, and my pc has not yet finished the task. (i'm in europe)

I have XP professional sp2 on partition C with 20 gigas, 10 gigas
occupied, 10 gigas free. The defrag-program is Diskeeper.

Worrying about the long time "nothing" happening, i read somewhere
that the MFT-defragmentation would be very long. The guy told that he
needed about 4 hours for his partition with XP (4 giga partition). The
time would also depend on the free space resting on the partition.

I don't venture to push the reset button when le MFT defragmentation
is running. Can you affirm that this kind of defragmentation is very
long? Have i well done not to reset and interrupt the defrag-process?

(Lucky that i kept my old pc, always running, so i can talk to you !)

Thank you.

steph

I would absolutely not fool around with defragging your MFT and pagefile!

 

[steph]

Steph

What defragmenter are you using?

Gerry, i use Diskeeper 2007. Here is the user's manual:

http://downloads.diskeeper.com/pdf/Diskeeper2007-Home-Manual.pdf

They tell it would be better to run the CHKDSK utility before the
mft-defrag..

I didn't do that because chkdsk prolongs considerably the run time.
Now the defrag is running for 16 hours even without chkdsk. I hope i
will find my hard drive back tommorow morning - i worry.

steph

 

[steph]

I'm not sure that the size of the HDD is relevant as it doesn't reflect the
size of your MFT.
In any case, I have a 140 Gb HDD, MFT is 615,136 entries.
MFT defrag, which included CHKDSK, took 9 mins, 52 secs including the
restarts. I suggest that you do have a problem, although I have no idea what
you should do about it.

Oh, this is very fast, comparing to my 20 Gb and 16 hours not ended.
What defrag program do you use?
Il will wait this night. Tomorrow morning, it will be the reset
button, i don't see other way.

 

[The Doctor]

Oh, this is very fast, comparing to my 20 Gb and 16 hours not ended.
What defrag program do you use?
Il will wait this night. Tomorrow morning, it will be the reset
button, i don't see other way.

I used Diskeeper as well. Diskeeper advises that you have a current backup
before any major operation such as this ...
I hope that you do have a backup, because you'll almost certainly need it if
you restart your computer while the MFT is being manipulated.

 

[Gerry]

Steph

The link to the Manual gave me some interesting reading. Thank you.

I did not have the time to read the whole Manual but I did not see one
point worth mentioning. Before running chkdsk or defragmenting it helps
to run Disk CleanUp including the System Restore option on the More
Options tab. Alternatively use cCleaner to remove unneeded files, but
you still need to use the System Restore option in Disk CleanUp if you
do. Compacting Outlook Express files may also be helpful. No point in
defragmenting unwanted files!

The Manual does say you should not use the boot time option for general
defragmenting, using it specifically to defragment the pagefile and the
MFT table. Many users see defragmenting the pagefile as a waste of time
because it is constantly changing i.e. always in a state of flux. The
Manual picks up on a point I often make, but not one others usually
make, that a non-contiguous pagefile fragments free space. This point
becomes an irrelevance if you have a contiguous file as a result of
setting a fixed size pagefile and achieve a contiguous unmovable file
before the disk usage makes this too difficult. It is also irrelevant if
you have a dedicated pagefile partition at the beginning of a second
drive. Otherwise the fragmentation of free space if the user allows
Windows to manage the pagefile is relevant.

The Manual does state that boot time defragmenting can take a long time.
It recommends restricting the operation to a single volume as well as
not using it for general defragmenting. Are you following these
recommendations?

--



Hope this helps.

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

 

[smlunatick]

If the MFT-defragging works, the drive could be faster. You can also
defrag the registry. I am sorry for your hard drive lost. Thank you
for telling me your experience. So i better will give my hard drive 24
hours to come to end with his MFT-defrag, perhaps even longer.

Registry defragging could be in the same class as Registry cleaners:
bogus!

Registry cleaners will make more problems that they repair.

 

[steph]

Gerry,

thank you for your interesting answer. First let me tell you, that my
hard drive is fine, i am lucky. This morning, after more than 24 hours
of waiting, nothing had happend and i pushed finally the reset button.
The system comes back, and all seems working normally.
I run a chkdsk and had no problems.

I had discovered the manual after my problem, so i went about mft and
pagefile defragment easily, believing that this operation is some
banal. Discussion here learned me that is not so.

The
Manual picks up on a point I often make, but not one others usually
make, that a non-contiguous pagefile fragments free space. This point
becomes an irrelevance if you have a contiguous file as a result of
setting a fixed size pagefile and achieve a contiguous unmovable file
before the disk usage makes this too difficult.

In deed a have a fixe pagefile, so it prevents from spreading out over
free space if i understand you well. (came back from work and have not
yet read the manual). Do you think a fixed pagefile can get
defragmented?

An other idea: if i delete the pagingfile on shutdown, the question
about defragmentation of the pagingfile becomes perhaps irrelevant??
I tried it and it dosen't slow down much the shutdown, only some
seconds.

I'll read the manual, but i think this was the first & last time i try
to defrag the MFT.

I will take a look on Disk CleanUp, i down't know this program.

The Manual does state that boot time defragmenting can take a long time.
It recommends restricting the operation to a single volume as well as
not using it for general defragmenting. Are you following these
recommendations?

Yes, i usually defragment my partitions very oftenly in the simple
way, this would have been the first time MFT and pagingfile
defragmentation in the lifetime of my harddrive. I also restricted the
boot-time defragmentation on the partition where is the system.

But i desactivated, against recommendation, the chkdsk in boot-time
defragmentation. In the past, i had no problems with mft + pagefile
defragmentation on my old pc with win2kpro. I remember it was during
30 or 45 minutes.

Thanks - Steph

 

[steph]

On Wed, 9 Apr 2008 18:13:04 +0800, "The Doctor"

Hello,

I used Diskeeper as well. Diskeeper advises that you have a current backup
before any major operation such as this ...
I hope that you do have a backup, because you'll almost certainly need it if
you restart your computer while the MFT is being manipulated.

I have an image of the partition, did it with Snapshot disk imaging
which is very fast (compared with Norton Ghost, nothing to do!), very
little and freeware, but cannot restore a system partition.

I'm learning how to make a boot-CD with PE Builder (this makes a
mini-system on CD, so normally the restore with snapshot should work,
because the active system would be the boot-CD, but i dit not try yet
a system restore with theses tools.

I should be more serious...