defrag

[George]

Hi there all comments would be appreciated. using WXP Pro with MS Office
2003. Over the past few weeks I have found myself defragging each day.
sometimes more than once. I have 3 partitions set to 19gb but only using
one. Loading a programme is pretty good following defrag but at 4.30 pm
ish can take ages to load, with much trashing of my HD, when it has
finally succeeded it frequently refuses to unload unless I use task
manager to clear it from the screen. There have been a few times it has
hung and refused to clear the screen leaving me with just shutting down.
Whilst typing in this message and looking at my screen copies of the defrag
screen it went 'hung' and would not shutdown. I allowed it to send a
report to Microsoft. I have used the detect and repair option in the office
application and it comes through as 'set up complete' which I take as its
finished and repaired files as needed. When defrag has finished I appear
to have more white space than I started with but in a different place and
the green section has been moved to a different place in the white area.
there still appears to be lots of white lines about. any advice would be
appreciated.
George

 

[Gordon]

Hi there all comments would be appreciated. using WXP Pro with MS Office
2003. Over the past few weeks I have found myself defragging each day.
sometimes more than once. I have 3 partitions set to 19gb but only using
one. Loading a programme is pretty good following defrag but at 4.30 pm
ish can take ages to load, with much trashing of my HD, when it has
finally succeeded it frequently refuses to unload unless I use task
manager to clear it from the screen. There have been a few times it has
hung and refused to clear the screen leaving me with just shutting down.

And what else have you done besides wasting your time on all this
defragging? Windows XP should not need to be defragged more than about
once a month.
Have you scanned your HDD with a good, updated virus checker, and also
used Spybot and Adaware (also updated?)
You also need to empty your temp and
temp Internet Files on a regular basis. try r=that and see if you get any
results.

 

[R. McCarty]

There is no "Global" time interval for defragmenting a drive. It all
depends on usage. If you have a session and do extensive drive
changes (Add/Delete...) then the drive's fragmentation level may
increase pretty dramatically. A monthly session might be described
as a "Rule-of-Thumb", but doesn't apply to all systems.

 

[Guest]

What cluster sizes do the drives have?

Enter cluster + size + xp (as is) in Google for information on cluster sizes.

Eric,
PC Buyer Beware!
http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/

 

[Gerry Cornell]

George

How large is your hard drive? How much free space on
each drive / partition. How is the drive formatted -FAT32 or NTFS. To
get this information whilst in Windows Explorer place the cursor on each
drive in turn, right click and select Properties.

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

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

 

[Plato]

Hi there all comments would be appreciated. using WXP Pro with MS Office
2003. Over the past few weeks I have found myself defragging each day.
sometimes more than once. I have 3 partitions set to 19gb but only using

You are wasting your time. One only needs to to do defrag every month or
so. Delete all temp/tmp/cache files before you defrag.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

You are wasting your time. One only needs to to do defrag every month
or so.

I'm with you completely. Even once a month is probably more often than many
people need. Here's my standard advice on defrag frequency:

You should defragment your drive when doing so results in a speed up. Here's
what I recommend. Pick some arbitrary interval--for example once a month.
Defragment on that interval a few times, and assess whether the computer
generally feels faster after doing so. If the answer is yes, defrag more
frequently. If the answer is no, defrag less frequently.

Repeat a few times, and you'll soon settle into a frequency that works well
for you.

 

[Gordon]

There is no "Global" time interval for defragmenting a drive. It all
depends on usage. If you have a session and do extensive drive
changes (Add/Delete...) then the drive's fragmentation level may
increase pretty dramatically. A monthly session might be described
as a "Rule-of-Thumb", but doesn't apply to all systems.

See Ken Blake's response... ;-)