XP Defrag Problem

[AJ sheffield 11]

My disk defragmenter in XP Home seems to be playing up. Even though the pc is running fine at the moment whenever I analyze the drive it says I should defrag it but it completes the task in about 45 seconds and when I analyze it immediately afterwards it says I should defrag again.

Are their any freeware ones better than XP's own defragger or would it be possible to reinstall the original one.

[pixellated 10]

here's what i use, just make sure to untick the install yahoo rubbish during the install and disable the auto defrag (unless it's just an office work machine), minimise to tray when closed and schedule when you first run it

 

http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html?Str=download

[*Cinderella* 10]

Defragging generally serves no useful purpose other than shorting the life of your HDD. Don't bother with it.

[AJ sheffield 11]

Defragging generally serves no useful purpose other than shorting the life of your HDD. Don't bother with it.

 

I would have thought the burden of accessing fragmented files continuously would be far worse that the deffragging process used to correct that fragmentation.

[simonj 10]

My disk defragmenter in XP Home seems to be playing up. Even though the pc is running fine at the moment whenever I analyze the drive it says I should defrag it but it completes the task in about 45 seconds and when I analyze it immediately afterwards it says I should defrag again.

Are their any freeware ones better than XP's own defragger or would it be possible to reinstall the original one.

 

How much free space do you have left on the drive you are defragging? Right click on My Computer, select Manage, select Disk Management and check the %Free column. XP won't defrag if the drive has 15 percent or less free space on it.

[sidbobs 10]

defraggin is a waste of time.....didnt know people still bothered?

Edited March 24, 2009 by sidbobs

[simonj 10]

de fraggin is a waste of time.....why bother?

 

It would help the OP and the rest of us if you could expand a little more on your reply. Maybe something along the lines of backing up your statement with some facts?

[AJ sheffield 11]

How much free space do you have left on the drive you are defragging? Right click on My Computer, select Manage, select Disk Management and check the %Free column. XP won't defrag if the drive has 15 percent or less free space on it.

 

It says there is 28% free space on that partition. I have done one thing which could have caused this, I ran CCleaner a while back, maybe I deleted a registry entry that was needed.

[*Cinderella* 10]

I would have thought the burden of accessing fragmented files continuously would be far worse that the deffragging process used to correct that fragmentation.

 

The primary reason that defragging is best avoided is that there is a limit to the number of times a disk can be overwritten, and each overwriting carries a marginally increased risk of data errors. Where the storage capacity of the disk is high relative to the amount of information this is not normally a problem. However the Windows defragger (and I suspect most others) tend to overwrite the same portion of the disc each time, significantly reducing the life of the disk.

 

Files fragment all the time, and there is no significant difference in the amount of arm activity within the HDD on a recently defragged drive as against one that hasn't been (only RAID striping achieves that). There are of course many reasons why hard drives fail, but arm bearing wear is not usually the cause.

 

The Microsoft defragger is not that good, and tends to struggle with heavily used drives (or larger files); your experience is not an uncommon one.

 

My own PC stores data (and backs up) across four drives, themselves heavily partitioned. The 'C' drive is a ten-year-old 13GB Fujitsu that has never been defragged since I installed XP just over seven years ago, and I have yet to suffer any data loss.

[nomis78 10]

defragging is only majorly detrimental when done excessively

 

never defrag more then once in any 6 month period (longer if you can help it) a good tool is Defraggler, comes from the same people who make ccleaner (crap cleaner) highly usefull and allows you to defrag individual files or file clusters

[salmonbones 17]

defragging is only majorly detrimental when done excessively

 

If you think about it, that doesn't make sense.

 

If you defrag today, and you haven't done it for say, six months, it may take a while as there are many fragmented files.

 

however, if you then do the same process again tomorow, it would probably take minutes as very few files will have changed, so you can't do the task excessively.