defragging the disk

  • Thread starter Thread starter KRK
  • Start date Start date
K

KRK

Hello,

The Vista defrag program gives no indication of how long the defrag will
take, except for a warning 'this may take a few minutes or a few hours' .
How can I finfd out the degree of defrag and time necessary ?

Thanks for all advice

KK
 
The Vista defrag program gives no indication of how long the defrag will
take, except for a warning 'this may take a few minutes or a few hours' .
How can I finfd out the degree of defrag and time necessary ?

The defragger in Windows Vista is meant as more of a low-priority background
service that just runs automatically every so often. As such it is very
minimalist.

I'm sure some other people here will be able to recommend some 3rd party
tools if you want that level of feedback

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User.
http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/
http://www.windowsresource.net/

*Remove nospam. to reply by e-mail*
 
KRK said:
Hello,

The Vista defrag program gives no indication of how long the defrag will
take, except for a warning 'this may take a few minutes or a few hours' .
How can I finfd out the degree of defrag and time necessary ?

Thanks for all advice

KK
I am a novice user with Vista home premuim 32...I use Vopt..
www.goldenbow.com
it's affordable and simple with plenty of realtime feedback and no bugs..
good luck
rick
 
Try doing it through the Command Prompt:

To use the command line defrag tool in Windows Vista, you have to run the
Command Prompt as an administrator. In Vista, this is not automatic even if
you are logged in as the administrator. Click the Windows button (previously
the Start button in earlier versions of Windows), the All Programs menu item
and the Accessories menu item. Right click the "Command Prompt" button and
select "Run as administrator". A command prompt window will appear.
Everything you run in this Window will be run with administrator rights.

1.. To view a file fragmentation analysis of (say) your C: drive, type:

defrag c: -a -v
The "-a" parameter tells the defragger to perform a fragmentation analysis.
The "-v" option tells it to be verbose in its report. If you want a report
on drive D: or some other drive, substitute that drive letter in place of
c:.

Be aware that defrag may tell you that you have no fragmented files even
if you have some. On NTFS partitions, the reporting function of defrag does
not consider fragmented files with fragments greater than 64 MB as
fragmented. If you need truly detailed information, you may have to consider
getting a third party defragmenter such as those listed on the Free
Defragmentation Utilities page on thefreecountry.com.

2.. To defragment a particular drive, say C:, type:

defrag c: -v -r
The "-r" option tells the defragmentation utility to treat files that are
fragmented with 64 MB fragments or larger as though they are not fragmented.
This partial defragmentation is the default for "defrag", and it's the only
way the GUI defragmenter in Vista works.

You can also force the defragmenter to defragment everything. That is,
even if the file fragments are larger than 64MB, the Vista defragmenter will
still attempt to put the file into contiguous sectors. To do this, run the
defragger with the following options:

defrag c: -v -w
As you have probably have guessed, "-w" tells the Vista defrag tool to do a
full defragmentation. All file fragments will be consolidated where
possible.

You will still not get any feedback as to the progress of the
defragmentation with the command line tool, just as you did not with the GUI
version. However, at the beginning and the end of the defragmentation,
"defrag" with the "-v" option will give a report, much like the old Windows
XP GUI defragmentation utility. Again, though, it will not report fragmented
files with 64 MB fragments (or larger) as being fragmented.

http://www.howtohaven.com/system/vistadefragmentation.shtml
 
KRK

LIke Paul said, the defrag program has been made into a background process
that runs on a schedule. It will run when the system is idle so that it does
not interfer with any work you are doing.

If you want to see the details or status of the fragmentation on the hard
drive, you can use a command line.

Go to Start and type cmd.exe in the Search Box. In the results, right
click cmd.exe and select the Run As Administrator option.

In the command dialog, type: defrag /? to see all of the available
switches for the command.

To get a complete, detailed analysis, type the following command.

defrag C: -a -v

Press Enter.

(THis command assumes that that the system drive is C:)

This will take a couple of minutes to run.

You can manually run the defrag, if you wish. Just type: defrag C: -v
 
Diskkeeper is a good defrag program, so is O & O Defrag (which actually lets
you click on sectors of your disk after analysis and it will show you
exactly what files are in that block). They're not free, but you can get
the trial versions for 30 days or something like that.
 
Thanks for you help.

The defrag program seems to be scheduled to run at 01:00 hrs every
Wednesday. My PC is in 'sleep' mode at this time of the night (and so am I).
Does the defrag program run next time I switch on ?

Thanks again for your help


KK
 
Thanks for you help.

The defrag program seems to be scheduled (default) to run at 01:00 hrs every
Wednesday. My PC is in 'sleep' mode at this time of the night (and so am I).
Does the defrag program run next time I switch on ?

Thanks again for your help


KK
 
KRK

Yes, defrag will run the next toime the PC is turned on. Like Indexing and
other components, it will run when the PC is idle so that it doesn't
interfere while you are working.
 
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