Diskeeper 8.0 Windows XP Question/Problem

[Dave Griffin]

I just put Diskeeper 8.0 Pro on an XP laptop. It started out VERY
fragmented. I was trying to avoid a total reinstall of all my
software. The thing is that Windows defrag took me only so far before
it kind of stopped being effective. After installing 8.0 it got a bit
further, but the disk is still pretty fragmented and it's to the point
where doing a defrag run does very little good.

What's wrong? Are my expectations too high?

 

[wayne]

do you not have much free space?

what are you not happy about?

Wayne

 

[johnf]

Do you get this pop-up screen at the end of Defrag?

"Diskeeper has completed a defragmentation run on this volume and there
remain 0 fragmented files and/or directories and 0 excess fragments. (There
were 120 excess fragments before the defragmentation run, and now there are
100% fewer.)
The average number of fragments per file is 1.00.
Congratulations! There are no excess file or directory fragments on this
volume. The files on this volume are as defragmented as possible. Still,
you should use the Smart Scheduling option in Diskeeper to automatically
keep fragmentation at a low level. Click the Set It and Forget It tab in the
Diskeeper display to set up a Smart Schedule, or to confirm whether any
schedules are set."

 

[Bob Harris]

Assuming that you have at least 15% free space (preferrably more), Diskeeper
verison 8 should eventually be able to completely defrag the disk.

Be aware that this software can only do so much when run at the windows
level. To go further you need to request a "boot time" defragmentation. Do
this from the main Diskeeper screen, change settings tab (left side of
screen), set a boot-time defragmentation. A new screen will popup. Select
the partition, choose "on next manual reboot", put all folder together, run
CHKDSK, defrag MFT (if format is NTFS). If this is the boot partition, also
check defrag pagefile. Hit OK a few times when prompted, then exit all
prgrams and reboot.

The first itme you run the boot-time defrag it may be very slow.

When you get back to the windows desktop, re-run Diskeeper, this time only
doing the windows level defragging. This may go faster and/or do a better
job, now that the directories are not scattered all over the disk.

Tip: To prevent pagefile fragmentation, set the min and max sizes of the
pagefile to the same value.

 

[Dave Griffin]

I have 37% free space on a 30 GB disk, but it's maximum defrag is only
about 28%. I run it through a manual defrag and it improves by only a
tiny few defragged files, no difference in percent. I've communicated
with Executive and they made some suggestions that I'm going to try
using. Maybe it's some bug somewhere that's keeping it from working.

 

[Dave Griffin]

Looks like my problem is resolved, thanks to technical support from
Diskeeper's makers. They were fast and professional and right the
first time.

The problem turned out to be my hibernation file. Apparently this file
is not movable and gets fragmented into a LOT of parts and was big.
They had me disable hibernation, whereupon the file was deleted. Then
they had me do a checkdisk and a boot time defragmentation and then
boot to XP. Then they had me do a manual defrag. It mostly did the
whole job then. I manual defragged again and it was 100% done. I then
set up the screensaver mode so hopefully it will never happen again.

Cool!