T
Terry Pinnell
I'm having a frustrating problem defragmenting J:, one of my two 177GB
partitions. This is an Athlon 1800 512MB XP Home PC with 3 HDs:
2x200GB and 1x60GB. The other similar size partition, D:, defrags OK.
I normally leave Diskeeper to defrag 3 of my 5 partitions, C:, D: and
J:, using its 'Set it and forget it' feature, while I sleep. I had no
reason to think anything amiss until I tried copying a few 3GB movie
files from N: to J:, and found it very slow. In the first minute or
so, estimates of expected copy time were varying wildly between 10 and
30 minutes. To check, I started copying the same file from N: to D:,
and that ran at its normal speed (estimated at under 2 minutes I
think).
So, to eliminate fragmentation as a possible cause, I used
Diskeeper|Analyze. That reported "very low" fragmentation - I think
'0%'. (As a short digression, I'm puzzled though why its display
seemed to contradict this:
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Images/DK-Defrag1.jpg
If I'm interpreting that correctly, all that red seems to show a *lot*
of fragmentation. BTW, I'm also surprised that such a large slice,
maybe 20GB or so, seems to be 'system reserved'. From DK's Help, I
gather this is sort of usable but not accessible to DK.)
Anyway, upon then running Defragment, it ran excruciatingly slowly.
After 4 hours it was still at 12%. And it seemed to be preventing
access to other applications (not just slowing them down, which of
course I would expect). Whether it was directly due to DK or to my
attempts to run other programs, I eventually had to reboot forcibly.
Closing down took about 20 mins! I repeated the exercise at least
once, with similar consequences. BTW, I switched to the built-in XP
'Disk Defragmenter' for one such session, with similar results. Not
surprising, as it looks like a basic version of my registered DK.
The last time yesterday XP wouldn't close at all and I had to switch
off. I repeated it again and left it running last night. This morning
I had a message from DK to the effect that a problem with drive J:
(only a couple of months old BTW) had prevented defragging, and
recommending I run CHKDSK and repeat the defrag.
I duly ran CHKDSK J: /f, which appeared to behave OK. (Maybe I should
have used some other switch, as I'd like to have seen any fixes it
made?) I haven't rebooted since then (maybe I should have done so?)
but am now running the DK defrag again. That screenshot was taken
about an hour ago, and altogether it's now been running nearly 3 hours
and is *still* at 12%. I can just about access other programs - I'm
composing this in Agent - but with difficulty, and they are running
very slowly.
I'll obviously keep running as long as there are signs of activity
from DK, but I'm not sure whether I'm wasting my time. Should
degragmenting a large HD be as slow and resource-hungry as this? Are
there any other steps I can take to isolate any underlying problems
please?
Any advice/insights would be much appreciated please.
partitions. This is an Athlon 1800 512MB XP Home PC with 3 HDs:
2x200GB and 1x60GB. The other similar size partition, D:, defrags OK.
I normally leave Diskeeper to defrag 3 of my 5 partitions, C:, D: and
J:, using its 'Set it and forget it' feature, while I sleep. I had no
reason to think anything amiss until I tried copying a few 3GB movie
files from N: to J:, and found it very slow. In the first minute or
so, estimates of expected copy time were varying wildly between 10 and
30 minutes. To check, I started copying the same file from N: to D:,
and that ran at its normal speed (estimated at under 2 minutes I
think).
So, to eliminate fragmentation as a possible cause, I used
Diskeeper|Analyze. That reported "very low" fragmentation - I think
'0%'. (As a short digression, I'm puzzled though why its display
seemed to contradict this:
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Images/DK-Defrag1.jpg
If I'm interpreting that correctly, all that red seems to show a *lot*
of fragmentation. BTW, I'm also surprised that such a large slice,
maybe 20GB or so, seems to be 'system reserved'. From DK's Help, I
gather this is sort of usable but not accessible to DK.)
Anyway, upon then running Defragment, it ran excruciatingly slowly.
After 4 hours it was still at 12%. And it seemed to be preventing
access to other applications (not just slowing them down, which of
course I would expect). Whether it was directly due to DK or to my
attempts to run other programs, I eventually had to reboot forcibly.
Closing down took about 20 mins! I repeated the exercise at least
once, with similar consequences. BTW, I switched to the built-in XP
'Disk Defragmenter' for one such session, with similar results. Not
surprising, as it looks like a basic version of my registered DK.
The last time yesterday XP wouldn't close at all and I had to switch
off. I repeated it again and left it running last night. This morning
I had a message from DK to the effect that a problem with drive J:
(only a couple of months old BTW) had prevented defragging, and
recommending I run CHKDSK and repeat the defrag.
I duly ran CHKDSK J: /f, which appeared to behave OK. (Maybe I should
have used some other switch, as I'd like to have seen any fixes it
made?) I haven't rebooted since then (maybe I should have done so?)
but am now running the DK defrag again. That screenshot was taken
about an hour ago, and altogether it's now been running nearly 3 hours
and is *still* at 12%. I can just about access other programs - I'm
composing this in Agent - but with difficulty, and they are running
very slowly.
I'll obviously keep running as long as there are signs of activity
from DK, but I'm not sure whether I'm wasting my time. Should
degragmenting a large HD be as slow and resource-hungry as this? Are
there any other steps I can take to isolate any underlying problems
please?
Any advice/insights would be much appreciated please.
: