Defrag Question

[Mike1949]

Videocard: BFG 6800 GT OC
Processor: Athlon XP 2600+ 2.2 Ghz
Mainboard: Shuttle AN35/Ultra v1.1
Memory: 2 X 512 PQI PC3200 Turbo Ram
Soundcard: Onboard / Cambridge Soundworks sub-
PSU: Antec TruPower 430w
Windows XP Service Pack 2

I have a 90 Gig HD divided into a 30gig and a 60gig partition.
The 30 Gig is my primary.
I recently tried to defrag it and was told by Windows XP defragger that I needed 15% free space in order to defrag the primary.

I used a 3rd party defragger called DeFrag-2.27 which has worked well in the past.

After defragging its giving me this message:


I Volume MAIN_DISK1_30 (C
Volume size = 29.29 GB
Cluster size = 4 KB
Used space = 25.93 GB
Free space = 3.36 GB
Percent free space = 11 %

Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 8 %
File fragmentation = 16 %
Free space fragmentation = 0 %

File fragmentation
Total files = 140,029
Average file size = 413 KB
Total fragmented files = 152
Total excess fragments = 1,087
Average fragments per file = 1.00

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 1.50 GB
Total fragments = 5

Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 5,683
Fragmented folders = 9
Excess folder fragments = 101

Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT size = 151 MB
MFT record count = 145,947
Percent MFT in use = 94 %
Total MFT fragments = 4

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fragments File Size Most fragmented files
78 320 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP197
35 27 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP197\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
21 27 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP191\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
12 707 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP194\A0081388.exe
12 64 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP195
11 4 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP197\A0085615.exe
11 4 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP197\A0083076.exe
11 4 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP197\A0085806.exe
10 147 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP197\change.log.22
9 145 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP197\change.log.51
8 32 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP198
8 27 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP196\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
8 27 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP194\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
8 27 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP192\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
8 27 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP195\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
8 27 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP199\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
7 27 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP198\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
7 216 KB \Documents and Settings\Primary\ntuser.dat.LOG
7 107 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP197\change.log.32
6 368 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP194\A0081405.dll
6 352 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP194\A0081406.dll
6 89 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP197\change.log.57
6 95 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP197\change.log.37
5 71 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP195\change.log.8
5 79 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP195\change.log.12
5 64 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP197\change.log.30
5 95 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP197\change.log.86
5 68 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP197\change.log.46
5 74 KB \System Volume Information\_restore{35BFB7BD-C222-4431-BAB5-7F51D511E94B}\RP197\change.log.75



Its telling me my page file is in 5 fragments.

I have I gig of ram and have set my page file to:

MINIMUM 1534
MAXIMUM 1534

Is there any way to defrag my page file?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[bsobel]

The page file is never read sequentially, only in small chunks. As such, a small number of fragments really doesn't matter (e.g. dont worry about it).

 

[Mike1949]

The reason I ask is that the last time I defragged , 2 weeks ago, the message was that I had only 1 fragment
Looking at my results overall: does this look normal?

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Mike1949
The reason I ask is that the last time I defragged , 2 weeks ago, the message was that I had only 1 fragment
Looking at my results overall: does this look normal?

It looks fine. There is really too much information there for most users to digest. The defragger is doint it's job. You can try another one which will invariably do the job slightly differently, but 99%+ of any benefit you get from defragging you've already got.

 

[Mike1949]

O.K. Thanks

 

[Nothinman]

The reason I ask is that the last time I defragged , 2 weeks ago, the message was that I had only 1 fragment
Looking at my results overall: does this look normal?

You've already wasted more time than you will ever save by defragmenting things, just ignore it and do something useful with your machine.

 

[Tegeril]

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/PageDefrag.mspx

If you do wish to waste more time defragmenting though. This has the potential to defragment the registry hives, your pagefile, and a few other fun things.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
You've already wasted more time than you will ever save by defragmenting things, just ignore it and do something useful with your machine.

I think that the last time I defragged one of my own desktop PCs was in 1992. It was fun watching PCTools move stuff around. In those days of slower drives, you could actually watch each clump of data being moved from one location to another. Great entertainment, but scary because you always wondered what would happen if something went wrong!

I've done defrags for a few friends who complained about problems with Windows 98 performance, but it NEVER helped them.

I consider defragmenting to be akin to RAID 0. For MOST situations, you spend more time staring at the defrag screen or building the RAID 0 array than you'll ever save as a result of your work.

Originally posted by: Tegeril
If you do wish to waste more time defragmenting though. This has the potential to defragment the registry hives, your pagefile, and a few other fun things.

Not to mention the "Registry Cleaners".

 

[Lemon law]

My guess is that no defragger is going to do a good job with your hard drive. Any time the free space on a hard drive falls below 25%, the defragger has no room to work. Compare it to organizing a desk drawer full of all kinds of crap---your best bet is to dump the whole thing onto a surface---and then put things back in a more organized fashion. And your free space is like working inside the cramped desk drawer with no real room to work.