Defrag Large Files

[Tom Denbo]

I am looking for a defrag program that will defrag two 32 to 35 GB files on
a 75 GB drive.

I use these to files for backup. They become badly fragged over time. I
usually have a minimum of 5% free space on this drive.

I have tried the built-in W2K defragger and the O&O Defrag programs without
success.

This is probably about the toughest defrag case.

The only solution I have now is to delete both backup files and start over -
not an ideal solution.

I even tried deleting one of the large files and with 55% free space neither
program would defrag the remaining file.

Other than this case I like the O&O Defrag v6.5.

Any suggestions appreciated.

 

[DL]

Doesnt Defrag require at least 15% free space to function?

 

[Al Dykes]

Doesnt Defrag require at least 15% free space to function?

Assuming you've got NTFS an file system, the compression feature can buy
you some (or lots) of space. Depending on what backup software you use
the backup savesets are not compressed.

In the days of 4GB desktop drives I would set compression for the
whole C drive, while it was running. It skipped pagefile
but squeezed everything else. never caused a problem.

A standalone boot is called for after a C drive compress.

I've even run an Oracle server with the data files on a compressed
folder. It didn't barf, but there are lots of reasons not to do this
in a real-world situation.

 

[Drew Cooper [MSFT]]

I'm not supposed to recommend 3rd party software, but if you google for
something like "windows single file defrag" you'll find something that ought
to do the trick.

 

[Tom Denbo]

Thanks for the tip. I used 'contig.exe' and even it had trouble defragging
my two large files. One of the problems is that most of the 'free space' on
my drive is in the MFT. Something I found out using Perfect Disk. No
wonder I had problems defragging these files!

I am happy to find the 'stats' command in PD that tells me how much space is
really usable.

Any other utilities that show free MFT vs. free files space?
--
Tom Denbo

I'm not supposed to recommend 3rd party software, but if you google for
something like "windows single file defrag" you'll find something that ought
to do the trick.