I have diskeeper and it's great and all but I want to fully defrag the drive. I hear if i copy files over to a new hdd then it's perfectly not fragmented because all the files go one after another... Is this true ( I heard only in Win XP)? If so what is the safest way to move 80 gigs from one hdd to another and then back to the original hdd?
HDD dying.. I want to defrag it...
- Thread starter HoMeZ
- Start date
If you use an imagine application like Partition Magic, Drive Image or Ghost, the placement of the files will be exactly the same as they are on the current drive; those utilities basically copy the exact layout of the existing drive. If you use a tool that simply copies each file over, they'll all be defragmented but not necessarily in a good order, since the entire file gets copied at one time but you have no control over how it selects which file to copy after another.
If you're trying to prevent losing your data on a dying hard drive, worry about getting it copied, THEN worry about defragging. The only time that fragmentation might be an issue is if you were copying to a smaller drive/partition, since the application then has to relocate any files stored at the end of the current partition. As far as I know, most of them will do that, but it adds time to the transfer.
DiskKeeper is what Microsoft's built-in defragger is based on. It isn't the greatest in my opinion because it doesn't actually completely defrag the drive. I have no idea why they consider that acceptable, since most users expect to see a totally blank space, all free-space consolidated, but DiskKeeper leaves portions of files all over the drive. It may not make a huge difference to performance having such small bits everywhere, but that's not the only reason we defrag.
PerfectDisk does a complete defrag and consolidation, and it's just as fast as anything else. I used the trial version for awhile and decided to pay for it. (The trial version is completely uncrippled and usable for 30 days.)
Why would you make a copy of the drive, then copy it back to the original drive? All the data will still be on the first drive, so there's no need to "copy back", and if the drive is dying why would you want to?
If all you're wanting to do is copy data files and don't need an exact backup, then just drag and drop the files in Windows. If you want to be able to simply put a new drive in and copy an image and boot up and be running again, then something like Ghost is needed.
If you're trying to prevent losing your data on a dying hard drive, worry about getting it copied, THEN worry about defragging. The only time that fragmentation might be an issue is if you were copying to a smaller drive/partition, since the application then has to relocate any files stored at the end of the current partition. As far as I know, most of them will do that, but it adds time to the transfer.
DiskKeeper is what Microsoft's built-in defragger is based on. It isn't the greatest in my opinion because it doesn't actually completely defrag the drive. I have no idea why they consider that acceptable, since most users expect to see a totally blank space, all free-space consolidated, but DiskKeeper leaves portions of files all over the drive. It may not make a huge difference to performance having such small bits everywhere, but that's not the only reason we defrag.
PerfectDisk does a complete defrag and consolidation, and it's just as fast as anything else. I used the trial version for awhile and decided to pay for it. (The trial version is completely uncrippled and usable for 30 days.)
Why would you make a copy of the drive, then copy it back to the original drive? All the data will still be on the first drive, so there's no need to "copy back", and if the drive is dying why would you want to?
If all you're wanting to do is copy data files and don't need an exact backup, then just drag and drop the files in Windows. If you want to be able to simply put a new drive in and copy an image and boot up and be running again, then something like Ghost is needed.
Hmmm mayb I should have worded it better, by dying I meant like everything is really slow if I try to load something from that drive and I figured it was because the drive is fragmented up the wazoo. I want to complete defrag the drive to speed up running programs off the drive.
zephyrprime
Diamond Member
- Feb 18, 2001
- 7,512
- 2
- 81
You're wasting your time. Any time you save from a faster drive will be more than eaten up by all the time needed to perform the data shuttling operation.
And besides if you have and use any sort of defragger, what makes you think your drive is fragmented?
And besides if you have and use any sort of defragger, what makes you think your drive is fragmented?
Jeff7181
Lifer
- Aug 21, 2002
- 18,368
- 11
- 81
There's a program called O&O Defrag that allows you to choose how the files are arranged, you can arrange them by how often they're use, or alphabetically, or by size, etc.
You can get a trial version here. I tried it and didn't think it was worth the registration fee, I just use the defragmenting program that comes with Windows.
DiskKeeper doesn't do a complete defrag. It defrags important files, but by design, and acknowledged in the documentation, it will leave some fragmented files, and it does not consolidate free space. So you can end up with files placed all the way at the end of the partition and interspersed through the rest, with the majority defragged and stored at the front as they should be.
However if you still have severe performance issues after using DiskKeeper, then fragmentation is not your problem. The difference between the full defrag of other products and the mostly defrag of diskkeeper shouldn't be more than a small amount, usually never even noticeable, and just a cosmetic thing and a personal preference. You need to investigate other problems with your system.
Being able to defrag files alphabetically isn't exactly useful. Proper defrags under XP use the application access logging to sort files based on the way they're accessed both during bootup and during program starts, as well as sorting heavily used files differently than less used files (the modification date is used in this case).
PerfectDisk is a little cheaper than O&O and does pretty much everything useful that O&O does. But in either case, the trial versions would let you do a complete defrag just to satisfy yourself.
However if you still have severe performance issues after using DiskKeeper, then fragmentation is not your problem. The difference between the full defrag of other products and the mostly defrag of diskkeeper shouldn't be more than a small amount, usually never even noticeable, and just a cosmetic thing and a personal preference. You need to investigate other problems with your system.
Being able to defrag files alphabetically isn't exactly useful. Proper defrags under XP use the application access logging to sort files based on the way they're accessed both during bootup and during program starts, as well as sorting heavily used files differently than less used files (the modification date is used in this case).
PerfectDisk is a little cheaper than O&O and does pretty much everything useful that O&O does. But in either case, the trial versions would let you do a complete defrag just to satisfy yourself.
XP will line them up pretty neetly if you run it twice. (still can leave a few fragmented, but it's less than 1%, so who cares)
The veiwing window was a nise improvement over the old [details] button
The veiwing window was a nise improvement over the old [details] button
The old "details" button was part of defrag in Win9x. WinNT didn't have a defrag utility, and Win2k had a similar version as the one in XP, based on DiskKeeper which has the same display. I prefer the old details type display to the less than informative display of DiskKeeper, which is also why I like PerfectDisk more. The display may not really make any difference, but I'd rather see blocks moving around so I feel like something's happening, than just see continuous regions of color that occasionally shift a little bit.
Neither XP's defrag or full diskkeeper would go beyond a certain point with the defrag, no matter how many times it ran. Once it determines it's defragged, it won't do anything else. While the files themselves may no longer be fragged, the lack of free space consolidation is just stupid, since it just leaves even more random empty spaces to allow new files to get fragmented.
Neither XP's defrag or full diskkeeper would go beyond a certain point with the defrag, no matter how many times it ran. Once it determines it's defragged, it won't do anything else. While the files themselves may no longer be fragged, the lack of free space consolidation is just stupid, since it just leaves even more random empty spaces to allow new files to get fragmented.
Diskkeeper got stuck at like 12% last night when I tried... can it be because I only have 1 gig free in my 80 gig? and lord evermore should i just use perfect disk? If i read right it's better thank diskeeper?
Well it does a more complete job, which I consider better.
Lack of free space can indeed prevent a defragger from running properly. In fact for an 80GB drive, I think you may want to have at least 4 to 8GB available.
Lack of free space can indeed prevent a defragger from running properly. In fact for an 80GB drive, I think you may want to have at least 4 to 8GB available.
Lord Evermore
Let me put forward my experiences with 3 disk defraggers and how they worked for me. First my hardware setup -
ASUS A7V333 rev 2 board
AMD 2000+ with AX7 HS
IBM 120gb with XP (FAT32) 30gb used
IBM 30GB with ME 17gb used
ASUS 9280 Geforce 4
Audigy 2
Starnet 450w PSU
I used Diskeeper for a couple of months and found that it would take an average of 4 hours to defrag each drive. Both the drives took approx the same time even though they have a big difference in the amount of installed data. This meant a total time of 8 hours every week or so for defragging the 2 drives.
After reading your comments on the Perfectdisk defragger I tried it yesterday and it took 5 hours to defrag the 30GB drive. But it showed some files in the middle of the empty spaces and had still left a few fragmented files.
I had used Norton's Speedisk for many years and today I ran the 2003 version of this defragger - in XP it was too slow so I stopped it. Then I went into WinME and started this same Norton Speedisk and it defragged each drive in 15 minutes flat !!! I thought something was not right with this high speed defrag - so I started up both Diskeeper and Perfectdisk and both reported that the drives had about only 3 - 5 fragmented files, and both showed that the drives were perfectly tightly packed and the page/swap files were right up front on each drive. This is something both Diskeeper and Perfectdisk had not done.
But what does all this defragging do for me in the real world of computer data handling - I find that when the defragging programs show a major file fragment problem I get in Norton's Ghost a data transfer speed of about 500mb per min but when I defrag using any of the 3 programs and have a perfect data layout on the drives the transfer rate drops to about 400mb per minute. Does this make any sense ? I make a Ghost backup image of my drives every day so this speed is important for me.
I know many people luv to bash Norton for various reasons (even I an guilty of this) specially the Norton Utilities programs. Is the Speedisk defragger a good/safe software to use ?? Any inherent problems with this software ? Is it a good idea to let Speedisk move the page file on XP when I start the defrag from within WinME ?
Let me put forward my experiences with 3 disk defraggers and how they worked for me. First my hardware setup -
ASUS A7V333 rev 2 board
AMD 2000+ with AX7 HS
IBM 120gb with XP (FAT32) 30gb used
IBM 30GB with ME 17gb used
ASUS 9280 Geforce 4
Audigy 2
Starnet 450w PSU
I used Diskeeper for a couple of months and found that it would take an average of 4 hours to defrag each drive. Both the drives took approx the same time even though they have a big difference in the amount of installed data. This meant a total time of 8 hours every week or so for defragging the 2 drives.
After reading your comments on the Perfectdisk defragger I tried it yesterday and it took 5 hours to defrag the 30GB drive. But it showed some files in the middle of the empty spaces and had still left a few fragmented files.
I had used Norton's Speedisk for many years and today I ran the 2003 version of this defragger - in XP it was too slow so I stopped it. Then I went into WinME and started this same Norton Speedisk and it defragged each drive in 15 minutes flat !!! I thought something was not right with this high speed defrag - so I started up both Diskeeper and Perfectdisk and both reported that the drives had about only 3 - 5 fragmented files, and both showed that the drives were perfectly tightly packed and the page/swap files were right up front on each drive. This is something both Diskeeper and Perfectdisk had not done.
But what does all this defragging do for me in the real world of computer data handling - I find that when the defragging programs show a major file fragment problem I get in Norton's Ghost a data transfer speed of about 500mb per min but when I defrag using any of the 3 programs and have a perfect data layout on the drives the transfer rate drops to about 400mb per minute. Does this make any sense ? I make a Ghost backup image of my drives every day so this speed is important for me.
I know many people luv to bash Norton for various reasons (even I an guilty of this) specially the Norton Utilities programs. Is the Speedisk defragger a good/safe software to use ?? Any inherent problems with this software ? Is it a good idea to let Speedisk move the page file on XP when I start the defrag from within WinME ?
Norton SpeedDisk no longer uses its own defragger in XP. It uses the standard Windows API, which in fact DiskKeeper does and I think O&O Defrag does as well. PerfectDisk was the only one I found that doesn't. SpeedDisk has NO capability for moving the swap file or defragging metadata or directories. It also doesn't defrag the MFT, at least not properly, since that is only done during a bootup defrag with the swapfile and other things.
I don't know why your system is taking so horribly long to defrag, unless you have limited free-space, or other things going on at the same time. I also couldn't possibly figure out why Ghost would be so much slower with a fully defragged drive, unless possibly the compression is being done faster if there are lots of gaps and non-contiguous files so it looks like more data is being moved than is really.
I think that you should not necessarily let WinME defrag move the page file for XP. I don't know exactly how it keeps track of the location, it may be fine, but the page file's location is important in XP in case of a crash (as I've just learned in another thread).
PerfectDisk does occasionally leave like one or two files not appearing to be moved. It doesn't move the MFT or swapfile or directories or metadata except during a boot-time defrag, so if those are not located at the beginning of the drive, they'll appear to be out of place when you just do a normal defrag.
I don't know why your system is taking so horribly long to defrag, unless you have limited free-space, or other things going on at the same time. I also couldn't possibly figure out why Ghost would be so much slower with a fully defragged drive, unless possibly the compression is being done faster if there are lots of gaps and non-contiguous files so it looks like more data is being moved than is really.
I think that you should not necessarily let WinME defrag move the page file for XP. I don't know exactly how it keeps track of the location, it may be fine, but the page file's location is important in XP in case of a crash (as I've just learned in another thread).
PerfectDisk does occasionally leave like one or two files not appearing to be moved. It doesn't move the MFT or swapfile or directories or metadata except during a boot-time defrag, so if those are not located at the beginning of the drive, they'll appear to be out of place when you just do a normal defrag.
You should also look at the properties page for each drive in PerfectDisk, as the "aggressive freespace consolidation" option is normally not enabled, and you may need to specify that it should defrag the swap and directories since it won't by default.
BY far the best is O&O Defrag in my opinion. It defragments everything it can get it's hands on, it consolidates free space and if it encounters some locked files it can defragment them before windows gets to lock those files on boot up. BTW, It can defrag MFT, pagefile and registry without having to restart like Diskeeper. And to my mind it seems to find more fragmented files.
Download The Tryout Version of O&O Defrag Here
I have to say though, I dont see how defragmenting will help if it's dying anyways...
I dont know why it matters, most people with a 2.4C and a solid motherboard (think 865 with PAT from Asus or Abit) can get at least a 3.2GHz overclock with stock cooling. In my opinion you should put that money saved from the processor into a better motherboard.
Will this option further slow down the defrag process ? Perfectdisk took 5 hours for one drive with this option disabled.
Speedisk's 15min time looks very attractive. I only wonder if Speedisks is doing a good job.
When I ran Diskeeper and Perfectdisk I found that there would be 15mins of drive activity and then the screen would show a little movement of data. Whilst with Norton Speedisk the movement on the screen is constant and in large chunks.
Well, something is wrong with your system when it's taking 5 hours to defrag. So I'm sure the aggressive option would slow it down, but you can't blame PerfectDisk for that. Even a highly fragmented drive with 30GB used out of 120GB shouldn't take 5 hours. However, it might possibly be due to using FAT32 for such a large drive. FAT32 is very inefficient at those sizes, which is why Microsoft tries to prevent you creating such a large partition with anything but NTFS.
I noticed with speeddisk that the screen graph is updated more constantly than any of the others. That doesn't mean it's working better, it just means more time is devoted to updating the graph with speeddisk, while the others are more concentrated on actually doing the defrag.
I noticed with speeddisk that the screen graph is updated more constantly than any of the others. That doesn't mean it's working better, it just means more time is devoted to updating the graph with speeddisk, while the others are more concentrated on actually doing the defrag.
I don't see anything about O&O being able to defrag those items without a reboot. Those files are locked at all times, NT's kernel will not allow anything to modify them while Windows is running because of their importance. (Except of course for writing file data to the MFT.)
Further down in their features list, O&O does mention online defragging of directories, but at the same time they're talking about boot time defrag of directories. So MAYBE they can do that online, but that's not going to make a big difference compared to also doing the MFT and pagefile.
I really don't care about speed.. so with that as not a factor... is perfectdisk the best defragger?
It's the best I've found. I never actually tried O&O, but PerfectDisk will certainly get the job done. It's not going to fix your problems though.
TRENDING THREADS
-
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)- Started by DisEnchantment
- Replies: 24K
-
Discussion Intel Meteor, Arrow, Lunar & Panther Lakes Discussion Threads
- Started by Tigerick
- Replies: 19K
-
-
-
Facebook
Twitter