How to defrag network drive..?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ivor Jones
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Ivor Jones

I've just installed a Maxtor 300GB external Shared Storage Drive, which
connects via Ethernet to the network rather than USB to an individual
computer.

However, it doesn't show up on either Norton Speed Disk or the Disk
Defragmenter built into XP - how do I defrag it..? Is there a utility
which will do it..? The drive is formatted NTFS.

Ivor
 
A network drive is not a physical entity. To defrag it, you'll need to be at
the computer that has physical access to the drive.

....kurt
 
You didn't say it was a storage server, you said it was a network drive. In
windows speak for those of us who have been around for 50 years or so, a
network drive is a share on some other computer that is mapped to a local
logical drive, i.e. "net use X: \\server\share.

Even so, I'm willing to bet you that the unit is running some variant of
Linux (note the "Gnu Public License" reference) and samba, so you still
connect to it from your windows box as a mapped drive or an smb share. And
the result is still the same, you can't defrag a remote drive. From the
perspective of your windows computer, it is NOT a physically attached piece
of hardware. It has no access to the tracks, sectors and platters. If it is
Linux, it's probably running on ext3, which really shouldn't need defragging
anyway.

....kurt
 
Kurt said:
You didn't say it was a storage server, you said it was a
network drive. In windows speak for those of us who have
been around for 50 years or so, a network drive is a
share on some other computer that is mapped to a local
logical drive, i.e. "net use X: \\server\share.
Even so, I'm willing to bet you that the unit is running
some variant of Linux (note the "Gnu Public License"
reference) and samba, so you still connect to it from
your windows box as a mapped drive or an smb share. And
the result is still the same, you can't defrag a remote
drive. From the perspective of your windows computer, it
is NOT a physically attached piece of hardware. It has no
access to the tracks, sectors and platters. If it is
Linux, it's probably running on ext3, which really
shouldn't need defragging anyway.
Click to expand...

Ok Kurt, thanks for that, I was unaware of the terminology niceties..!
I'll take your word for it, athough the fact that the documentation says
it requires Windows to work leads me to wonder..

Ivor
 
Ivor Jones said:
I've just installed a Maxtor 300GB external Shared Storage Drive, which
connects via Ethernet to the network rather than USB to an individual
computer.

However, it doesn't show up on either Norton Speed Disk or the Disk
Defragmenter built into XP - how do I defrag it..? Is there a utility
which will do it..? The drive is formatted NTFS.

Ivor
Click to expand...
Hello, I see they techies here do not understand your question,
I do :)


I had the same issue, as I have the " Iomega Home Network Media Drive "
See below.
http://go.iomega.com/en/products/network-storage-desktop/home-network-hard-drives/home-media/

Now, drives like this have their ip address, and even a dashboard when you log onto the ip via browser.
You will see once you logged on to the drive via browser (similar to the way you log onto a router)
there will be settings to either
- format
- fix hard drive
- some time defrag, etc.

and more cool features.


Alternatively, there should have been software for your drive,
which allows you to manage your network drive from your computer.
If not, have a look at the website of the make of your network drive, and see if they have.

hope you have some luck here.
 
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