Defrag on Win2k Professional

[J]

On my Wind2k Professional desktop I have two drives. The C drive is 6gig.
When I defrag using the system Disk Defragmenter I get a message indicating
that I have 29% free and that only 12% is available for defrag. It reports
that there should be 15% available to do a defrag.

Why is there only 12% available for this when there is 29% free space.
Does it have something to do with a swap file? I do have a large secondary
drive available and have already uninstalled and reinstalled various apps
to the E drive.

John

 

[Jay Somerset]

On my Wind2k Professional desktop I have two drives. The C drive is 6gig.
When I defrag using the system Disk Defragmenter I get a message indicating
that I have 29% free and that only 12% is available for defrag. It reports
that there should be 15% available to do a defrag.

Why is there only 12% available for this when there is 29% free space.
Does it have something to do with a swap file? I do have a large secondary
drive available and have already uninstalled and reinstalled various apps
to the E drive.

John

Do you have files in your Recycle Bin? If so, get rid of them, and see if
the defragger can "see" additional space.

Do you have a 3rd-party file-deletion-protection software installed that
keeps copies of deleted files around but not visible to Explorer? If so,
delete them.

Also, as a matter of good practice, get rid of all your Temporary Internet
Files and Temp directory files, and other files with a .tmp extension -- do
this on regular basis to free up disk space, although the presence of these
files will not cause a disrepancy in the apparently available disk space.

But best of all, stop depending on the built-in defragger, and get
Diskkeeper or PerfectDisk, or some other low-cost defragger.

 

[DL]

You can also move the My Documents to another drive.
Hint: properties of My Documents

 

[Rob Stow]

On my Wind2k Professional desktop I have two drives. The C drive is 6gig.
When I defrag using the system Disk Defragmenter I get a message indicating
that I have 29% free and that only 12% is available for defrag. It reports
that there should be 15% available to do a defrag.

Why is there only 12% available for this when there is 29% free space.
Does it have something to do with a swap file? I do have a large secondary
drive available and have already uninstalled and reinstalled various apps
to the E drive.

John

If the partition is NTFS, then you have a reserved portion on
your hard drive called the "MFT Reserved Zone" - which is set
aside for future growth of the MFT. The OS will not let apps
use free space in the MFTRZ until all other free space has been
used up.

IIRC, on W2K the default size of the MFTRZ (including the space
actually used by the MFT) is 15% of your hard drive. That could
quite easily account for a large portion of the free space you
have that is not available for use by the defragger.

And you didn't say what your defragging app is. Many will throw
up warnings like the one you described - and then buckle down and
do the best they can with the free space that is available. If
there is not sufficient free space, you may have to have the
defragger go over the drive several times before it it fully
defragged. Insufficient free space slows down your defragger
and makes it less efficient, but it does not have to completely
stop it from working.