Hard drive takes 2 to 3 hours to defragment?

[geokilla]

On the laptop, it takes 2 to 3 hours to defragment, and the worst part is that once it says defragment is complete, there's still lots of fragmented files left in the hard drive. Just analyzing takes around 20 min! Is there a way to speed it up? Or is the hard drive dying? I remember each time I defragment the hard drive after restoring to factory defaults, it takes well over 3 hours.

The specs are as follows.

Intel Core Duo 1.6GHz.
2GB RAM
100GB Hard Drive (IDE and FAT32)
Windows XP Media Center Edition

Thanks.

 

[Blain]

SmartDefrag is the only way to fly. :thumbsup::laugh:

 

[Old Hippie]

The 4200rpm HDD ain't helping ya. Are you running a clean-up tool like CrapCleaner befre the defrag? I clean and defrag twice a week. Good Housekeeping FTW. :thumbsup:

 

[MegaVovaN]

Don't know how plausible it is on a laptop (which isn't on 24/7) but on my PC I had defrags scheduled to run at 3am, along with spyware and virus scans.

Schedule and forget!

 

[oynaz]

Originally posted by: MegaVovaN
Don't know how plausible it is on a laptop (which isn't on 24/7) but on my PC I had defrags scheduled to run at 3am, along with spyware and virus scans.

Schedule and forget!

...and pay huge power bills!

 

[geokilla]

The hard drive spins at 5400rpm. I don't run CrapCleaner because there was this one time, after running CrapCleaner I couldn't boot back into Windows and was forced to do a clean install of XP. And when I'm defragging, nothing else is running in the background.

@Blain, I'll try SmartDefrag and see what happens tonight.

 

[MegaVovaN]

Originally posted by: oynaz

Originally posted by: MegaVovaN
Don't know how plausible it is on a laptop (which isn't on 24/7) but on my PC I had defrags scheduled to run at 3am, along with spyware and virus scans.

Schedule and forget!

...and pay huge power bills!

My electronics are in bystand at night...sure draws some power but it's no big deal.

 

[Old Hippie]

The hard drive spins at 5400rpm.

Better than 4200, but still part of the problem.

I don't run CrapCleaner because there was this one time, after running CrapCleaner

You should run some kinda disc cleaning utility. You're not helping the defrag situation by not using one. If you read the directions, and/or pay attention, you can set the program's cleaning parameters.
When I go to clean a room, I throw all the trash out, then organize, then sweep. The same things happen for a decent disc clean-up.

The other thing is.......

100GB Hard Drive (IDE and FAT32)

I'm not quite sure what that means. You have an IDE HDD formatted in FAT32? If your OS and files are on the FAT32 partition, seems it's well known('cept by me and you), that FAT32 fragements easier and more often then NTFS. Naturally, this would make it more difficult to defrag.

Good Luck!

 

[geokilla]

Originally posted by: Old Hippie

The hard drive spins at 5400rpm.

Better than 4200, but still part of the problem.

I don't run CrapCleaner because there was this one time, after running CrapCleaner

You should run some kinda disc cleaning utility. You're not helping the defrag situation by not using one. If you read the directions, and/or pay attention, you can set the program's cleaning parameters.
When I go to clean a room, I throw all the trash out, then organize, then sweep. The same things happen for a decent disc clean-up.

The other thing is.......

100GB Hard Drive (IDE and FAT32)

I'm not quite sure what that means. You have an IDE HDD formatted in FAT32? If your OS and files are on the FAT32 partition, seems it's well known('cept by me and you), that FAT32 fragements easier and more often then NTFS. Naturally, this would make it more difficult to defrag.

Good Luck!

The hard drive came formatted as FAT32 from the day I bought it. Is there a way to change it to NTFS without doing a format?

I'll trying CrapCleaner and see what happens afterwards.

 

[Old Hippie]

Is there a way to change it to NTFS without doing a format?

I think so. But that's right at the top of my "Things that you DON"T want to do Without a Backup", list.
Google it if you want to, but I'm not being a party to it.....Especially for a degfrag time problem.

Defrag time "Just doesn't matter"!

Good Luck!

 

[0roo0roo]

honestly don't worry about it. defrag is overrated for most folks. its generally not going to make much of a difference. hard drives are reasonably fast these days. to get a speed boost you really need to upgrade the drive with a newer one, either more rpm or higher density. older laptop drives were pretty slow, they lag behind desktop drives quite a bit. its only recently gotten better. perhaps you are expecting too much from it. fat32 to ntsf isn't going to give you a speed boost thats noticable. each has its own speed advantages and disadvantages. in the end its even on speed for general user, but ntsf is more secure. if its fat32 right now, just leave it be. as said, not worth the bother/risk of conversion.

100gb is a lot of space.
be happy it only takes 3 hours.
back in the bad old days a 486 could take a day to defrag its freakin 400mb harddrive.
i think it was then that defragging actually mattered much.

newer mtron ssd flash drives are raptor fast and laptop size.
course they cost much $$$!