How long does it take to defrag a 60 Gig HD?

[Rick67]

I'm defragging my HD for the first time and would like to know how long I should expect this to take? Thanks,

 

[bacillus]

are you using the windows defragger or norton speed disk?
the actual time also depends on how much stuff you have on your drive!

 

[Rick67]

I'm using the Windows XP defragger and I've got about 30% of the drive full.

 

[qeru]

there's no way to tell how long will a defrag take, it depends on filesizes, no of files, fragmentation degrees, defrag algorythms, etc. don't know about xp, but 2k has an option to analize disk fragmentation that'll give you a hint.

 

[PHATJACK]

It really depends on how much stuff, what drives, and when the lats time it was defragged. I have Norton defrag my drives every day at 2:00 am - I highly recomend getting a copy of it. At most during daily usage I see maybe 150 fragmented files - not much.

 

[Rick67]

Is it normal to have files that can't be defragged?

 

[PHATJACK]

Yes

 

[ivwshane]

File system also plays a big role. I have a 60GB disk 5400rpm(speed also matters) ata 100 that is about 50% full using NTFS and it takes about 20 min or so.

 

[Rick67]

Then how come it takes several hours to defrag my 6 Gig Windows 98 Fat 32 drive on my old PC?

 

[ivwshane]

Because;
a) It's fat32 which fragments alot more
b) It's an older drive which most likely means it's alot slower
c) Win9x defragor doesn't like to be interupted by anything, such as antivirus software.
d) It's an older system