No clue as to Disk Defragmenter status

[Brandon Taylor]

I remember that in previous versions of Windows all the way up to Windows
XP, the Disk Defragmenter would tell me exactly how much of the
defragmentation process was complete. Now, I find that Windows Vista tells
me absolutely nothing about what Disk Defragmenter is doing, apart from the
fact that the utility is in fact running. My question is, why would
Microsoft throw out such a useful feature in Disk Defragmenter, and is there
any course of action I can take regarding this dilemma?

Brandon Taylor

 

[Dave]

It's designed to work in the background.
Forgetaboutit.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi Brandon,

Every time you use the pc, you incur some measure of fragmentation. Rather
than do it wholesale and then wait for a deterioration in performance before
doing it again, the defrag routine in Vista is ongoing. By doing it this
way, it constantly works to optimize performance, employing times when the
machine isn't in use. You don't need to see it, as the level of
fragmentation is immaterial. If you really want to see a machine defrag,
then there are plenty of third party products that will turn you pc into a
display to watch while you wait for it to finish. Personally, I'd rather
just use my machine and not watch blocks move (unless I'm playing tetris).

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[DDW]

I remember that in previous versions of Windows all the way up to Windows
XP, the Disk Defragmenter would tell me exactly how much of the
defragmentation process was complete. Now, I find that Windows Vista tells
me absolutely nothing about what Disk Defragmenter is doing, apart from the
fact that the utility is in fact running. My question is, why would
Microsoft throw out such a useful feature in Disk Defragmenter, and is there
any course of action I can take regarding this dilemma?

This question has been asked a bazillion times already.

GOT GOOGLE?


DDW

 

[Brandon Taylor]

How in the world Microsoft managed to overcome the need to close all running
processes before you defragment your system is beyond me!

-- B.D.T.

 

[Brandon Taylor]

Thanks for all the suggestions, but I think I'll stick it out with the
Windows program for now.

 

[DevilsPGD]

In message <[email protected]> "Brandon

How in the world Microsoft managed to overcome the need to close all running
processes before you defragment your system is beyond me!

This is actually fairly easy. The physical data on disk, filesystem and
application levels are largely isolated from each other.

Normal applications cannot read/write clusters on the disk directly,
only files, and accessing a file means using an API. The defragment API
and file access APIs were designed to function together.

The way a defragger works is that it first copies a cluster, then
updates the file allocation tables to reflect the file's new location.

(Strictly speaking, defraggers don't do that, they just decide what
clusters to move and use a special defrag API call, Windows then moves
the cluster and updates the file allocation tables)

The Windows file APIs are smart enough to update the location on disk
(if the files are even being read from disk, ideally most file access
will get cached anyway) without the application being aware anything
happened. This is actually not too dissimilar to how disk caching
works, the application doesn't try to read from the disk cache, it
simply tries to read from the file and Windows figures out if the
portion of the file being requested is cached or not.