Question about Defrag?

[Guest]

I have mine set to run starting at 11pm and it's been performing
fine......until last night. It stated on time but was still running when I
got up at 7am? What the.......that's the first time that's happened and I'm
wondering why? Does anyone have a clue why it would still be running 8 hours
later?

 

[Adam Albright]

I have mine set to run starting at 11pm and it's been performing
fine......until last night. It stated on time but was still running when I
got up at 7am? What the.......that's the first time that's happened and I'm
wondering why? Does anyone have a clue why it would still be running 8 hours
later?

How any defrag operation runs probably can be classified under the
black arts. Sometimes it is reasonably fast, other times it can be
painfully slow. Chances are it ran into something odd that it might be
having trouble digesting. As long as you already have that much time
invested in running it pointless to stop it now, just let it finish.
If it runs over 24 hours and still hasn't finished I would stop it
suspecting it ran into a problem it can't resolve then do a system
check to check/repair the file system.

My advice,turn off Microsoft build-in defrag. Like most Microsoft
software it's crap. Much better third party products out there that do
a better job and of course do it much faster.

 

[Jon]

I have mine set to run starting at 11pm and it's been performing
fine......until last night. It stated on time but was still running when I
got up at 7am? What the.......that's the first time that's happened and
I'm
wondering why? Does anyone have a clue why it would still be running 8
hours
later?

If your hard drive is drastically short of space, then it can take a lot
longer. Defrag needs a certain amount of free space to work effectively. So,
if you've got less than 15% free space on the drive, then try freeing up
some space eg shifting some files elsewhere, and then rerunning your defrag.

 

[Guest]

That's not it, have TONS of space. It's never done this before, always runs
fine and I've never encountered a problem before. But maybe it did just run
into something odd for the first time. *shrugs* Okay, thanks guys!

 

[Jon]

In which case try running some disk checks eg chkdsk, as Adam suggested.

 

[Spirit]

Good chance you had some conflicting programs running. Check
Task Manager, Defender and MSCONFIG. There also could
have been a conflict with an indexing routine especially if you
added a lot of files recently. Typically a conflicting program will
cause defrag to restart often which slows it down a lot.

Better defrag program - free
http://www.auslogics.com/

 

[Communikator]

Ahem... I installed Windows 2000 for a dual-boot, and due to the fact that
Vista does not provide me with ANY sort of image of the defragmentation
process (nor with the currently defragmented drive for that matter), I
started to defragment the Vista HDD with the Win2000 Defragmenter. Surprise
! "Windows takes care of your drive by defragmenting it in the background"
(or such): yeah, right ! The schedule is one time a week, but the Win2000
Defragmenter presented almost all of the Vista drive IN RED LINES. Now, the
Vista Defragmenter REALLY defragments, or makes things worse ? Because it
just doesn't seem to work ! Aside of the fact that it does not INFORM me on
the process ! This is a shame.

 

[Kosmo]

Yes, I couldn't believe that Vista shows and tells you nothing about the
defrag process

Glad I didn't pay for my copy of Vista, FYI it is a legal copy

Richard

 

[Kosmo]

Really? I just have suspicions of a company that wants to sell software that
claims

"Click here if you would like to optimize CPU, memory and graphics - FREE
trial download"

This sounds like the RAM optimizers that really do nothing. See
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=41095&DisplayTab=Article

What was the software called that was popular years ago, it was during that
brief time when
Cyrix was making processors, something like ram boosters or... anyone
remember that?

Richard




Good chance you had some conflicting programs running. Check
Task Manager, Defender and MSCONFIG. There also could
have been a conflict with an indexing routine especially if you
added a lot of files recently. Typically a conflicting program will
cause defrag to restart often which slows it down a lot.

Better defrag program - free
http://www.auslogics.com/

 

[Spirit]

Yes I have the same suspicions however their defragger is very good.