Defragging

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

I am trying to defragment my computer using the Windows Disk Defragmenter. When I try to defragment it it says that it need more that 15% of free space. Can I do it without having 15% free space, maybe 11% or 5%?

 

[potato28]

You could loose some of the data that it moves around. I almost lost 30 gigs of videos when I tried defragging with only 2 gigs on a 149 gig HDD.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Ahh, the weekly defrag question. Use the search tool to find other posts on the matter.

 

[WildHorse]

If your "main" logical drive is low on free space, move your Paging File to a different drive and then you'll defrag just fine.

If on WInXP, it's Start/Right click My Computer / Properties / Advanced tab / Performance Settings button / Advanced tab again / Virtual memory Change button. Go in there & remove the Paging file from the full drive & make a paging file on a different drive.

Set both the Initial and the MAx page file sizes to 2560.

That'll fix you.

Defrag need the extra space to have somewhere to put data temporarily.
With the Page File moved elsewhere, then you don't need that extra space on the drive where the data is.

 

[Bateluer]

Alternatively, you could delete some unused materials and back them up DVDs.

 

[corkyg]

You need a bigger drive or at least, a second drive. 15% freeboard is sort of minimal for healthy drive maintenance. With NTFS, I like at least 25% free.

 

[Nothinman]

You could loose some of the data that it moves around. I almost lost 30 gigs of videos when I tried defragging with only 2 gigs on a 149 gig HDD.

Only if the defrag software is grossly incompetent.

 

[tranceport]

You will be fine. It will just run slow.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Slow in what way, I am going to defrag at night when I am not on it. I do have a second hard drive, but the question is do I need 15% fre space. Will anything bad happen to my data if I defrag when it does not have 15% free space?

 

[Nothinman]

Slow in what way, I am going to defrag at night when I am not on it. I do have a second hard drive, but the question is do I need 15% fre space. Will anything bad happen to my data if I defrag when it does not have 15% free space?

For general use I doubt you'll ever notice the difference between the fragmented and defragmented files. And no, nothing bad will happen if you try to defrag it with too little space. It'll either just skip the files larger than your free space or do them in very small chunks and take a lot longer to defrag.