Defragmenting question

[Jeff]

Is there any significant difference in usefulness between the way
Windows XP built in defragmenting tool defragments a hard partition and
the way PerfectDisk does it?

The reason I ask is because I have PerfectDisk installed on both my
laptop and also my wife's. On my laptop, PerfectDisk takes a reasonable
period of time to defragment my partitions. My wife on the other hand
never defragments her PC (she is not "into computers") and because it
was running slow I decided to defrag it. PD never got past the analysis
stage (20 minutes) and I had to stop it. I then decided to try XP's own
defrag tool and that went fine and defragged her partition. I tried
again with PD, just using analysis for safety. The image it created
showed the partition to be very fragmented. It went reasonably fast
through 1-100% of the analysis but then again seemed to remain stuck
there not showing the results screen.

I uninstalled and reinstalled PD: no difference. I checked and the
partition is only half full, so space is not a issue. The laptop has 1
G of memory. What could be wrong?

(Same thing happened when I used True Image to back up her laptop. It
did it but took forever to do it).

Jeff

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

The Windows version does not offer options on defragmentation methodology
(such as positioning files on the disk for various kinds of optimizations).

 

[Thee Chicago Wolf]

Is there any significant difference in usefulness between the way

Windows XP built in defragmenting tool defragments a hard partition and
the way PerfectDisk does it?

The reason I ask is because I have PerfectDisk installed on both my
laptop and also my wife's. On my laptop, PerfectDisk takes a reasonable
period of time to defragment my partitions. My wife on the other hand
never defragments her PC (she is not "into computers") and because it
was running slow I decided to defrag it. PD never got past the analysis
stage (20 minutes) and I had to stop it. I then decided to try XP's own
defrag tool and that went fine and defragged her partition. I tried
again with PD, just using analysis for safety. The image it created
showed the partition to be very fragmented. It went reasonably fast
through 1-100% of the analysis but then again seemed to remain stuck
there not showing the results screen.

I uninstalled and reinstalled PD: no difference. I checked and the
partition is only half full, so space is not a issue. The laptop has 1
G of memory. What could be wrong?

(Same thing happened when I used True Image to back up her laptop. It
did it but took forever to do it).

Most apps plug into the Defrag API built into XP so in that sense,
they're not too different. Just the way they go about things is often
different. Perfect Disk may just have issues with something on the
system. For kicks, go grab JKDefrag 3.33 and give it a run. It's free
and written by a programmer who really knows the in's and out's of the
API and the filesystem.

- Thee Chicago Wolf

 

[JS]

Even though you still have plenty of disk space on your wife's computer, did
you run Windows Disk Cleanup?
I say this because the more files that are on the drive the longer
'Analysis' will take and using disk cleanup, emptying the recycle bin and
reducing the number of 'Restore Points' should help speed things up.

JS

 

[Bob I]

Is the drive perhaps running in PIO mode instead of DMA?
(Device Manager, IDE controllers, Primary IDE channel, Advanced Settings)
If set to DMA but running PIO, just uninstall and then Find new hardware
to reset it to DMA.

 

[Tony Meloche]

Most apps plug into the Defrag API built into XP so in that sense,
they're not too different. Just the way they go about things is often
different. Perfect Disk may just have issues with something on the
system. For kicks, go grab JKDefrag 3.33 and give it a run. It's free
and written by a programmer who really knows the in's and out's of the
API and the filesystem.

- Thee Chicago Wolf

I've been using JKDefrag lately, too, and I like it a lot. It's simple,
straightforward, very thorough and you can't beat the price (free).

Tony

 

[Thee Chicago Wolf]

I've been using JKDefrag lately, too, and I like it a lot. It's simple,

straightforward, very thorough and you can't beat the price (free).

Tony

You don't find too many programmers out there who geek out and try to
squeeze ever last ounce or performance from certain APIs. It's
definitely aces.

- Thee Chicago Wolf