defragmenter

[userfriendly]

Can you recommend a good free defragmenter for win xp? My drive is heavily fragmented from downloading *******s, 38% fragmentation. Used windows defragmenter to no avail.

[mikmik316]

which means your hard disk may have a bad sector... run scan disk or the error checking utility with option of bad sector checking on restart then use defrag.

[nugundam93]

heavy fragmentation is not actually a sign na may bad sector na yung hard drive.

think of the hard drive platters as a pizza. cut the pizza into wedges, then idivide mo pa each wedge into smaller pieces, and so on - that's a representation of the sectors in your hard drive. as data gets written on the hard drive, it goes to the first available free sector, and so on. now, if you delete some data taking up a couple of sectors, once new data is written, some of it may be put into the newly-freed sectors, or the other sectors na always free before. repeat the process, and that's how fragmentation happens.

now how is this bad?

if you're familiar with those choose-your-own-adventure books (addict ako nun nung gradeschool, yun lang dahilan ko to go to the library, hehehe), diba you keep skipping pages instead of front cover to back cover yung babasahin mo (usual books)? ganun if fragmented, matatagalan magbasa yung system from the drive kasi kesa less than one sweep to get all the data for a sequential or lightly fragmented hard drive, it has to do at least one full sweep of all the sectors, adding to the access time.

when you're running defrag, the best way to do it is in safe mode and with the screensaver and any other startup applications off as they interfere with the data-in-the-sector rearrganging process, forcing defrag to go back to square one.

anyway, nobela na nasulat ko. hyper nako with a lot of brazo de mercedes ice cream. hehehehehehe!!!

[userfriendly]

downloaded diskeeper helped a little. Is it possible that my having 20% free disk space left hinders defragmentation?

[badkuk]

er...doesn't xp come with its own defragmenter?

[Jun aka Pekto]

downloaded diskeeper helped a little. Is it possible that my having 20% free disk space left hinders defragmentation?

Normally, it's 10%. But, if you take into account XP having a dynamic page file, then maybe even 20% may hinder the defrag. That's why I always have 2 internal hard drives. I keep Windows XP in one drive, the page file in another. I also keep the page file permanent by keeping the Max and Min Size the same. That way, I'm always sure of the real size of free space left.

[GerardTagayty]

i think there should be anough space to defrag. my other system only had 15% of disk space left... i got a box saying that i need this amount of space to continue defragmenting... so i moved all my mp3s to an external drive

[userfriendly]

er...doesn't xp come with its own defragmenter?

yes it does used it but heavy fragmentation pa rin. Can't reduce my fragmentation below 38%

Normally, it's 10%. But, if you take into account XP having a dynamic page file, then maybe even 20% may hinder the defrag. That's why I always have 2 internal hard drives. I keep Windows XP in one drive, the page file in another. I also keep the page file permanent by keeping the Max and Min Size the same. That way, I'm always sure of the real size of free space left.

Laptop so only one drive. How do you change the size of the page file? I'll try burning my *******s into dvds and deleting them from my hard drive. Just need to buy blank dvds. Then defrag again.

[roninblade]

Laptop so only one drive. How do you change the size of the page file? I'll try burning my *******s into dvds and deleting them from my hard drive. Just need to buy blank dvds. Then defrag again.

page file size is at:
My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory > Change

Normally, it's 10%. But, if you take into account XP having a dynamic page file, then maybe even 20% may hinder the defrag. That's why I always have 2 internal hard drives. I keep Windows XP in one drive, the page file in another. I also keep the page file permanent by keeping the Max and Min Size the same. That way, I'm always sure of the real size of free space left.

side note: since you have two hard drives you can have two page files - one on each drive. ang hindi lang pwede is having page files in multiple partitions on a single hard drive.

[Jun aka Pekto]

page file size is at:
My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory > Change



side note: since you have two hard drives you can have two page files - one on each drive. ang hindi lang pwede is having page files in multiple partitions on a single hard drive.

I rather keep the (permanent) page file on one physical hard drive and Windows on another. It's a setup I've used all the way from Win 3.1. I don't care what MS says. All the versions of Windows I've used with that setup have been very speedy and stable up to this point. I'm going to stick with the same setup in Vista.

As for defrag. I do temporarily disable the page file while the defrag process is ongoing and then re-enable it again once defrag is done.

I also have 2 gb of ram. So, one page file should be sufficient.

[Jun aka Pekto]

yes it does used it but heavy fragmentation pa rin. Can't reduce my fragmentation below 38%



Laptop so only one drive. How do you change the size of the page file? I'll try burning my *******s into dvds and deleting them from my hard drive. Just need to buy blank dvds. Then defrag again.

My suggestion would be to buy an external usb2 hard drive no larger than 2.5". That way, it can be powered through the usb port. If you have a Mac laptop, it has 6-pin firewire ports which would be my preference (most pc laptops only have 4-pin firewire). If you're going to get into video files, an external hard drive is a critical storage option. DVD platters are ok. DVD+/-RW will be even better with Vista. But, they do take an awfully long time to write into. An external hard drive is the most painless way to store large video files.

[radiazone]

diskeeper gamit ko dati but now i don't use defragmenter

[roninblade]

I don't care what MS says.

its not what MS says, its the general rule for creating page files in any OS not just windows.

[Jun aka Pekto]

its not what MS says, its the general rule for creating page files in any OS not just windows.

That's true. But, most computers come with only 1 hard drive and MS has maintained that it's best to let the OS manage the page file. On that aspect, I disagree with MS.

Add: Even on tech sites like Ars Technica, there's still a big disagreement on that issue.

[metatron]

try contig and its freeware power defragmenter gui. both utilities are available as free downloads from softpedia.com. contig is dos based and the gui is frugal to say the least so there's no progress indicator. just run it, keep yourself from hitting the close window button on the dos box and wait for the defrag complete notification. can defrag 60% full 250gig hd in 3/4 the time required for winxp's defrag utility.