Defrag in Vista

[Kevin]

I bought a new computer with Vista. I tried Vista's defrag. It never
concludes the defrag, even though it runs for many hours. Any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[philo]

I bought a new computer with Vista. I tried Vista's defrag. It never
concludes the defrag, even though it runs for many hours. Any suggestions?

Thanks

At the end of the day...shut down all your apps...then let it defrag
overnight.

 

[mikeyhsd]

I prefer to use Auslogics Disk Defrag, FREE, works faster and really does something.



(e-mail address removed)



I bought a new computer with Vista. I tried Vista's defrag. It never
concludes the defrag, even though it runs for many hours. Any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[Andrew McLaren]

I bought a new computer with Vista. I tried Vista's defrag. It never
concludes the defrag, even though it runs for many hours. Any suggestions?

Defrag in Vista runs as a low-priority, scheduled application. That means it
runs regularly, whether you start it running or not. By default it runs once
a week; you can chnage it to daily if you want. Defrag runs at a low
priority so when anything else starts running on the machine, defrag backs
off and releases CPU, memory and disk to the active applications (in XP and
earlier, Defrag would hog the box until it was finished, even f you needed
to run another app in the meantime). Basically the idea is that in Vista,
you don't need to think about Defrag at all. It runs quietly in the
background and won't interfere with your other applications. It may take
several hours to complete - just leave it overnight.

If Defrag is running at high CPU for days on end, then you have a problem.

Hope this helps,

 

[Kevin]

Thanks for the advice Andrew and everyone else.

I tried running defrag again last night and it ran all night without
completing. The hard drive light didn't indicate very much disk activity
while it was running. I have the CPU meter gadget installed on the desktop.
The CPU is not reading high all the time with defrag running, either. The
priority for this software must be really, really low.

Another thing I tried was reboot into Safe Mode, search for the defrag icon
and click on it. This didn't work--nothing happened. I also tried to run
defrag.exe from the command line in Safe Mode. This didn't work either. A
black DOS screen flashed into existance for a split second and then
disappeared, not long enough for me to read it. Defrag doesn't appear to
work in Safe Mode.

Since I'm unfamiliar with Vista, I don't know if this is normal or typical,
or whether there is something wrong with the Windows installation, or if
some software is interfering with it.

 

[Mac]

You can run defrag in safe mode and from command prompt

C:\USERS\X>defrag /?
Description: Locates and consolidates fragmented files on local volumes to
improve system performance.

Syntax: DEFRAG <volume> -a [-v]
DEFRAG <volume> [{-r | -w}] [-f] [-v]
DEFRAG -c [{-r | -w}] [-f] [-v]

Parameters:

Value Description

<volume> Specifies the drive letter or mount point path of the volume
to
be defragmented or analyzed.

-c Defragments all volumes on this computer.

-a Performs fragmentation analysis only.

-r Performs partial defragmentation (default). Attempts to
consolidate only fragments smaller than 64 megabytes (MB).

-w Performs full defragmentation. Attempts to consolidate all
file
fragments, regardless of their size.

-f Forces defragmentation of the volume when free space is low.

-v Specifies verbose mode. The defragmentation and analysis
output
is more detailed.

-? Displays this help information.

Examples:

DEFRAG d:
DEFRAG d:\vol\mountpoint -w -f
DEFRAG d: -a -v
DEFRAG -c -v

C:\USERS\X>

Thanks for the advice Andrew and everyone else.

I tried running defrag again last night and it ran all night without
completing. The hard drive light didn't indicate very much disk activity
while it was running. I have the CPU meter gadget installed on the
desktop. The CPU is not reading high all the time with defrag running,
either. The priority for this software must be really, really low.

Another thing I tried was reboot into Safe Mode, search for the defrag
icon and click on it. This didn't work--nothing happened. I also tried to
run defrag.exe from the command line in Safe Mode. This didn't work
either. A black DOS screen flashed into existance for a split second and
then disappeared, not long enough for me to read it. Defrag doesn't appear
to work in Safe Mode.

Since I'm unfamiliar with Vista, I don't know if this is normal or
typical, or whether there is something wrong with the Windows
installation, or if some software is interfering with it.

 

[Andrew McLaren]

Since I'm unfamiliar with Vista, I don't know if this is normal or
typical, or whether there is something wrong with the Windows
installation, or if some software is interfering with it.

Hmmm, that sounds a bit strange.

How big is you hard drisk? And how much free disk space does it have? Is it
an IDE disk, SATA, SCSI, or maybe even RAID, or SAN?

What I'd try in this situation is to run defrag manually (as you did) but
using this procedure:
- boot the machine normally (safe mode was good to try, but obviously didn't
help).
- run a Command Prompt as Administrator (ie right click the Command Prompt
icon, choose Run as Administrator)
- run CHKDSK <volume> /F /X
- reboot, if necessary (if CHKDSK says reboot)
- let CHKDSK complete normally
- log in again
- run a Command Prompt as Administrator (ie right click the Command Prompt
icon, choose Run as Administrator)
- stop all unnecesary processes (anti-virus, backup agents, web servers, etc
etc)
- run this command "defrag <volume> -a -v"

This will turn on Verbose reporting, and will only do the Defrag analysis.
It will be interesting to see if Defrag cannot run at all; or if it can run,
and perform an analysis, but just cannot re-arrange anything on the disk.

If analysis completes successfully, next run defrag with the "-r" parameter,
to do a "partial" defrag - only fragments less than 64MB.

If it continues to fail at that point - geez, I dunno!! Look in the Event
Log, to see if any errors are being logged by the Logical Voliume Manager,
Defrag, or other disk related components. Try defragging other disks if you
have any) to see if the problem is in Defrag itself, or the particular drive
that you are trying to defrag.

In a worst case, back up your user data from the disk, reformat it, and
restore your data. That's how we used to "defrag" mainframe drives, in the
old days before defrag programs existed.

Othe folks may have extra ideas ... hope this helps a bit.