Ongoing Problem With Defragmenting

[Janine]

I recently upgraded from Windows ME to XP. My computer
speed is 2.1 ghz. The problem I
have been having is that when I used the defragmenting
tool in XP, it would take an hour to defragment
everytime. I defragment once a week and also run disk
cleanup before I do it. I downloaded DiskKeeper software
which is a defragmenting tool, and it took 2 hours the
first time I ran it and everytime now, it still takes
about an hour. I don't think I have anything running in
the background. I disabled Norton Antivirus and
screensaver and anything else that I noticed was
running. Can anyone help me?

Janine

 

[Byte]

Use MS's Defragger in Safe mode. Boot and press F8 to
put your PC in Safe mode. It will Defrag a 40meg
harddrive in about 10 minutes.

 

[Ian Smythe]

I recently upgraded from Windows ME to XP. My computer
speed is 2.1 ghz. The problem I
have been having is that when I used the defragmenting
tool in XP, it would take an hour to defragment
everytime. I defragment once a week and also run disk
cleanup before I do it. I downloaded DiskKeeper software
which is a defragmenting tool, and it took 2 hours the
first time I ran it and everytime now, it still takes
about an hour. I don't think I have anything running in
the background. I disabled Norton Antivirus and
screensaver and anything else that I noticed was
running. Can anyone help me?

Janine

It is difficult to answer your question since you left out the most
important information. How big is your hard drive? Any drive over 100
gigs that is not partitioned into smaller ones will take a long time to do.
I have a 100 gig hard drive partitioned into three. One for the OS which
is the smallest and the other two equal for programs and data. I only
need to defragment about every two weeks and only the partitioned that
has had many changes. I seldom have to do the OS partition. I use
Diskeeper and it rarely takes over 20 minutes to do. Hope you learned
something.

 

[Maris V. Lidaka Sr.]

I'm new to XP but I'll take a guess - System Restore may have something to
do with it (I know GoBack eventually crashed my computer when I was
de-fragging under Win98SE). That may be why Byte's suggestion to run in
Safe Mode will work faster. Alternately, disable "System Restore"
temporarily while de-fragging.

Maris

 

[Cracker Jacks]

40 MEG in 10 minutes?? That's not fast. Unless you mean GIG. Why does XP
have to come up in safe mode in order for the defrag not to be so slow?

 

[Anon y mous]

Unless you defrag in safe mode- other background tasks often reset and
restart defrag- thus making it a very long process.