How long does defrag take?

[Daniel]

Hi

I have a PC running Vista Ultimate, it has the following specs
CPU- P4 3.2 HT
2.5 Gig RAM
256 Meg Graphics Card.
2 x 160 Gig Hard Drives (1 is 10,000RPM)

Both hard Dives are a bit less that 40% full.

Defrag has has been running for 14 hours so far,
is that normal? (last defrag was in May)

thanks

Daniel

 

[Richard G. Harper]

It takes as long as it takes. If you've recently installed new software,
deleted large files, etc. it could be some time.

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[Guest]

Hello Daniel,

I'd try running a chkdsk to see if there are any problems that need
identifying.

Run chkdsk /r

Good luck

 

[Richard Urban]

It can take many hours, if not days. Remember, the Vista defrag runs as a
background service and at a very low priority. Everything else you do on the
computer will take precedence over defrag.
--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Haydon]

Only done it once so far as I have only had the PC a week, but it took quite
a few hours on my PC. However, that was only one drive and it was fairly
empty.

One of the things I don't like is that it gives you no feedback AT ALL on
what it is doing and how long it will be.

I don't know if you remember the Windows 98 defrag, it took forever, but at
least you could see what it was doing and because you knew it was going to
take a long time, you would do it over night. Windows XP was good, because
it was quick and you could see what is was doing.

I have no problems with it taking a while if it needs to, as long as you
know it's going to take a while. But, when it just says 'This may take from
a few minutes, to a few hours', this is very, very poor!

 

[Daniel]

Hi

thanks for the replies to all

I have not used the PC since I started Defrag, is there a way to increase
the priority
for CPU and RAM usage?

thanks

Daniel

 

[Daniel]

The same PC used to run XP and Defrag to a couple of hours in total.

cheers

Daniel

 

[Haydon]

Hello Richard

What you said makes sense and I can understand this when it is doing a
background defrag, however when doing a forced (manual) defrag, surely the
developers should have designed it so that it gives some feedback on what it
is doing?

Sounds like an Italian developed this part of it. 'Well it's done when it's
done'. ;-)

 

[Ray Rogers]

Actually, why don't we all pretend that there is no defrag anymore,
Microsoft rejigged the file system so that it doesn't get fragmented ;-) If
you are bored and want something to do, go read the performance and error
reports, or even. . . go outside, yeh I know it's raining.

 

[R. McCarty]

Doesn't get fragmented ? - Really, a normal day's worth of use on
my Vista notebook generally results in a 1-2% fragmentation. To
my knowledge there is no way to create an OS/File System that is
100% resilient to fragmentation.

On the speed, time to complete of Vista's defrag it is set to a low
priority and background service type operation. To defrag faster
and more effectively I'd recommend Perfect Disk, Diskeeper or
O&O defrag. Otherwise, just let it run for however long it takes to
finish.

 

[muzzy]

diskkeeper degragged my 80 gig c drive in about an hour, my smaller
drives in several minutes

 

[John Barnes]

Don't know if it has been fixed, but Perfect Disk used to crunch Vista
restore points.

 

[Richard Urban]

It still does, for the same reason that dual booting with Windows XP and the
built in boot manager does.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[R. McCarty]

Resolved with the current build #63 of version 8.0.

 

[R. McCarty]

Pardon me - Latest build is #64 posted just a couple of days ago.

 

[Richard Urban]

Better. I knew that build 63 still had the problem.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[R. McCarty]

Maybe I'm confused, I thought Perfect Disk had a different issue than
the Shadow Copy & System Volume Information "Quirk" that purges
Restore Points on Dual-boot rigs running XP/Vista. I guess I need to
review the change logs for Perfect Disk and see if I'm missing something.

 

[Richard Urban]

PerfectDisk also deleted all restore points and shadow copies. I was told by
PerfectDisk that the cause was due to the same reason as the incompatibility
in the dual boot scenario. They did not see a way around this unless
Microsoft made some changes.

From Raxco:

Richard,

Wanted to let you know that we are still working on this. We have traced it
to Volsnap. At boot time if a large amount of data is moved (i.e a large
file like the pagefile or hibernate file), volsnap detects the large amount
of cluster changes due to the boot time defrag and may overwrite existing
restore points. We are looking into why the difference between online
defrags (where Volsnap does have this behavior) and boot time defrags.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Chad Harris]

Hi Daniel

I would not expect defrag to take hours or days in the bell shaped curve of
cases no matter when you last did it or how badly you needed defragging.

It's a bit like how long it takes to clean your kitchen (having just
scrubbed the floor)--how dirty was it?

How fragmented was your drive? It depends on how long since you defragged
and what activities you've had. Installs and graphics apps can increase or
add to fragmentation.

If I were you, I'd go to www.raxco.com and download Perfect Disk free full
functionality. I'd use it two ways: Defrag your drive or every drive you
have, and then select offline defrag and do that to every drive. Then I'd
run a chkdsk /r (good for Engel) my favorite switch (it implies or includes
a chkdsk /F).

I haven't had a defrag last very long since Redmond went nuts and released
lol ME and instead of defrag and they offered Scandisk beginning with Win
95.

Let us know what happens when you run Perfect Disk.

CH

 

[Chad Harris]

I haven't seen it do that John.

CH

Don't know if it has been fixed, but Perfect Disk used to crunch Vista
restore points.