Too many fragments remain after defrag and defrag takes too long

G

Guest

Question 1: I cannot seem to get rid of all the fragments on my hard drive.
They appear to reside in something called System Volume Information and have
"restore information" in the string. Is there a way to clean these up?

Question 2: I have about 72% free space on my PC and defragmenting the C
drive takes two to three hours each time. Is there a way to speed this up
at all?
 
G

Gerry Cornell

Joyce

The normal way to remove System Restore points (in the System Volume
Information folder ) is Disk CleanUp. To increase your free space on your
drive select Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp,
More Options, System Restore and remove all but the latest System
Restore points? Restore points can be quite large.

To investigate how you are using hard disk space you need to make sure that
you can see all files. Go to Start, Control Panel, Folder Options, View,
Advanced Settings and verify that the box before "Show hidden files and
folders" is checked and "Hide protected operating system files " is
unchecked. You may need to scroll down to see the second item. You should
also make certain that the box before "Hide extensions for known file types"
is not checked. Next in Windows Explorer make sure View, Details is selected
and then select View, Choose Details and check before Name, Type, Total
Size, and Free Space.

You still will not see the System Volume Information folder.
How to Gain Access to the System Volume Information Folder
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;309531

How much RAM memory?Try Ctrl+Alt+Delete to select Task
Manager and click the Performance Tab. What is the Total,
the Commit Charge and the Peak?

What is your CPU processor speed? Right click on your My
Computer icon on your Desktop and select Properties to get
this information and the amount of RAM memory.

How large is your hard disk and how much free disk space? In
Windows Explorer right click on your C drive and select
Properties. Is the hard disk formatted as fat32 or NTFS?

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
B

Bert Kinney

Hi Joyce,

First of all and in most cases there will little or no benefit in defragging the
System Volume Information (SVI) folder.

The System Volume Information (SVI) folder is a super hidden system folder, and
for good reason. There will be a SVI folder on each partition or volume that
Windows sees. This includes external drives and some flash or thumb drives
connected to the system. The SVI folder can not be permanently deleted, if so it
will be recreated automatically.

System Restore uses the SVI folder to store it's information and hold restore
points.

Here are some tips on adjusting disk space usage and keeping System Restore
healthy:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/healthy.html


If the Indexing Service is turned on it will use the SVI folder to store files.
This will be evident by the existence of a folder named catalog.wci or by typing
cmd /k net start in the Start - Run box and looking for Indexing Service. Keep
in mind that having the Indexing Service turned on can cause the SVI folder to
grow very large. It's useful if you have a lot of Office documents or text files
and want to do searches of them based on Content. Otherwise it's best turned
off.

How do I disable the Indexing Service?
Go to Start - Run - and type the following command then click OK.

services.msc

Scroll down to and double click: Indexing Service
Click the Stop button
In the Startup Type field select Manual of Disabled, then click Apply then OK
After you restart your machine it will stay disabled.


If Encrypting File System (EFS) is in use, it will use the SVI folder to store
the log file that is generated during the encryption and decryption process.
 
G

Guest

Bert and Gerry,

I'm mostly interested in removing the fragments that show up in my C drive
defrag reports. According to the defrag report, the vast majority of these
are in the SVI files. I'm not a big fan of randomly deleting files marked
"system" which is why I turned to this forum for help. When my defrag
finishes, there's still a whole lot of red showing.

The reason I want to remove them is that I think they're slowing the defrag
down. If they aren't the culprit, then I'd be happy to know what is and
I'll turn my attention to that! :)

Primarily, I'd like to know what's inhibiting the speed of the defrag.

I've gotten through most of the items Gerry listed:

Commit Charge (k)
Total 426304
Limit 1276484
Peak 504380

RAM = 512 MB
CPU Speed is 2.79 GHz

The C drive is 85.9 GB and has 62.3 GB still free. Format is Fat32.

I've had much slower machines run defrag in a 10th of the time it's taking
on this machine. (With most of the same programs installed.)

I'm going now to go look at the hidden file settings as Gerry recommended
and investigate the indexing things that Bert mentioned.

Please keep the helpful hints coming! I really do appreciate your help.
 
Y

Yves Leclerc

Defrag is very limited. You should look at "other" defragging utilities, such
as Diskeeper.
 
T

Tom Willett

www.diskeeper.com

| Where do you get Diskeeper?
|
| "Yves Leclerc" wrote:
|
| > Defrag is very limited. You should look at "other" defragging
utilities, such
| > as Diskeeper.
| >
| > >Question 1: I cannot seem to get rid of all the fragments on my hard
drive.
| > > They appear to reside in something called System Volume Information
and have
| > >"restore information" in the string. Is there a way to clean these
up?
| > >
| > >Question 2: I have about 72% free space on my PC and defragmenting
the C
| > >drive takes two to three hours each time. Is there a way to speed
this up
| > >at all?
| >
| > --
| > ---
| >
| > Y.
| >
| >
 
G

Gerry Cornell

Joyce

Running Disk Defragmenter should not take the same length of time each time
if done regularly. You should always run Disk CleanUp before running Disk
Defragmenter to remove Temporary Internet Files and all but the latest
System
Restore point. If you run Disk Defragmenter and you still have fragments you
can run it again to reduce file fragmentation further. However, you cannot
eliminate
it entirely because you will always have a master file table in 2 or 3
fragments and
the page file. You need to purchase a better Disk Defragmenter which is
capable
of defragmenting the page file. Diskkeeper has been mentioned but there are
others.

Another point. The default allocation to System Restore is 12% and for a 86
gb disk this
is over generous. I would reduce it to 700 mb. Right click your My Computer
icon
on the Desktop and select System Restore. Place the cursor on the drive /
partition
select Settings, find the slider and drag it to the left until it reads 700
mb and exit.
When you get to the Settings screen click on Apply and OK and exit.

It is worth remembering that defragmenting is only one of many means to
improve system performance. Money spent buying a proprietary Disk
Defragmenter might be better spent on more RAM memory.

The figures provided from Task Manager suggest that your system may be
using virtual memory (the page file) rather than RAM memory from time to
time. I
would check page file usage.

Another small utility to monitor pagefile usage:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

However, graphics and camera related programmes will bump
up page file usage.

What readings do you get?

Converting your Disk from FAT32 to NTFS would also help.
http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
G

Guest

Thank, Gerry.

I run the disk cleanup every day (or CCleaner). From a performance
perspective, the machine seems to do what I need it do in timeframes I think
are reasonable.

EXCEPT the defrag program. That routinely takes 2-3 HOURS whether I run it
every day or every quarter. It's loaded with fragments I cannot seem to
eliminate. This is the only machine I've ever had that runs defrag this
slowly.

Will converting the format from FAT32 to NTFS produce a discernably faster
or cleaner defrag?

I suppose I can download and run the trial version of Diskeeper; but my
experience with trialware has left me a bit jaded.
 
G

Guest

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M

mikeyhsd

Defrag does produce a list of fragmented files, check to see where they are.

spme common ones are EVENTS
under Control Paner | Admin tools | Event Viewer.
review the entries to see if you have any BIG problems, and when satisfied, CLEAR the events.



(e-mail address removed)



Thank, Gerry.

I run the disk cleanup every day (or CCleaner). From a performance
perspective, the machine seems to do what I need it do in timeframes I think
are reasonable.

EXCEPT the defrag program. That routinely takes 2-3 HOURS whether I run it
every day or every quarter. It's loaded with fragments I cannot seem to
eliminate. This is the only machine I've ever had that runs defrag this
slowly.

Will converting the format from FAT32 to NTFS produce a discernably faster
or cleaner defrag?

I suppose I can download and run the trial version of Diskeeper; but my
experience with trialware has left me a bit jaded.
 
G

Guest

Well, that was fun. I got into the SVI folder. And there's bunches of file
folders with all sorts of things in them. I've no idea which contain the
pesky fragments.

Two main folders: restore (with a string of alphanumrics) and Catalog.wci

Within the Restore folder are many others. None are labelled in an
intuitive way.

Sigh.
 

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