R
Richard
You're welcome. I've been following the continuing replies, and it looks
like you have done about everything that can be done. You know about disk
cleanup, to increase the free space on your drive. In Safe Mode there are
fewer processes preventing sector clusters from being defragged, so that
helps a little. I looked back at your fragmentation report, you only had 6
fragmented files and 1 fragmented folder which is possibly old mail. With
the Outlook Express mail reader, the "Compact and Backup Email folders"
operations accomplish a similar function as defrag. I do not recommend
directly deleting the Recycler folder or its contents. Special files and
folders have special programs that know better how to manage things. If you
have backup copies of your mail, then use your mail reader program to get
rid of old files there. And if your Recycle Bin is empty, that's about as
good as it gets, as far as freeing up space.
The main purpose of defragging your drive is to re-arrange fragmented files
in consecutive sectors so they can be READ faster. Files that are sitting in
folders not being accessed don't matter. The total number of files taking up
space on your drive does not matter much, as long as you have free space for
new additions. It takes longer for your drive to write, than to read, since
it also has to verify that what it wrote is actually there. Write operations
are generally faster when the free space sectors are consecutive, but as far
back as the Windows 95 defrag, which had a graphics display of each sector,
I noticed that the files were being written to every other sector, skipping
every other free sector. The defrag moved those "every other sector" pieces
and put them elsewhere one after another. If any of those files were ever
accessed again by any program, then they were probably accessed a little
faster. I've never noticed any faster disk access time after defrag. I have
noticed slower disk access time when more than one program is doing a lot of
reads or writes.
Summary: Fragmented files that are not being accessed are not "slowing down"
your system. Disk cleanup, getting rid of temporary or otherwise unneeded
files, and defragging will improve disk read and write operations, but only
up to a point. Drives sometimes slow down and wear out from old age. Make
sure you keep your backup copies of "Valued Data" up to date. (Murphy's law
has no mercy.)
You are still left with the PUZZLE of what else is "slowing down" your
computer. You might want to start a separate "What is slowing my computer?"
subject thread, and briefly mention the various things in this thread that
you have tried, to improve its operation. You need to supply additional
information, like what age and brand of computer, how much RAM (1GB?) what
processor speed (3GB?) what version of Windows XP (Home, Pro, 64bit), what
Service Packs (SP3?) and what sort of major programs that you run on your
computer that might be making excessive demands on your computer's physical
RAM memory, and causing excessive virtual memory disk drive pagefile
swapping. (There was only 1 fragment in your Pagefile, so that matters
little.) It is actually somewhat normal for computers to slow down as they
are upgraded with newer versions of software that make more and more demands
on the computer. And all this is about as far as my memory goes.
(Triple-Click to here, to be of good cheer! --Richard
