Norton Speed Disk, still shows I need to defrag?

[quadcells]

I have Norton Utilities 2002 with all the updates(from Live Update) and ran Speed Disk, yet Speed Disk still shows that I am 59% fragmented. Any insight on this one would be great.
TIA

 

[Iron Woode]

Forget Norton. There are better defraggers out there. O&O and DiskKeeper are the best, although some like Perfect Disk.

 

[quadcells]

Thanks for your input

 

[brunell8]

Diskkeeper does the same thing to me. Ran it 18 times in one day, and it still said I was 49% fragmented.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: brunell8
Diskkeeper does the same thing to me. Ran it 18 times in one day, and it still said I was 49% fragmented.

Must be something peculiar to win9x based OSes. NT based OSes defrag great.

 

[Auric]

Is there any reason to use third party defraggers with XP since it includes its own Prefetch database for optimum file sorting?

 

[Mavrick007]

Originally posted by: Auric
Is there any reason to use third party defraggers with XP since it includes its own Prefetch database for optimum file sorting?

Yep, probably cause of speed of the defragger and the fact that even NTFS could use a bit of tidying up every so often.

 

[corkyg]

Agree with IronWoods about Norton - I happen to like PerfectDisk. But there are several things that can cause constant fragmenting, especially if you are running NTFS.

First, if you have your PageFile on "C" drive, and have not fixed its size, it will constantly be changing and that causes other files to move around and get fragmented. The best place for the PageFile is on a separate partition dedicated to it and nothing esle. It works and is harmless that way.

Second, NTFS is managed by the MFT system, Microsoft's MetaFileTable. That reserves a big chunk of real estate right in the middle of the drive that cannot be used by applications, or defragged, or optimized. It's size is a function of how many files you have on that partition and how much space is available. In effect, it gut-shoots your drive and causes fragmentation.

You can defrag (I always do a full optimization) now and as soon as you are finished, you will have new fragmentation - it is constantly happening with XP and NTFS. Once your files exceed the space "above" the reserved area, and have to go below it, files get fragmented. You can actually see it with PerfectDisk and DiskKeeper. Both of them are much faster and better than Norton - and the built in defragger is a lite version of DiskKeeper.

O&O I know nothing about.

 

[Auric]

Do DiskKeeper or PerfectDisk use XP's Prefetch or their own database? I have been using Ontrack's Fix-It Utilities which has it's own IntelliCluster db but with XP's system & BootVis it seems like one less component worth using.

 

[RalfHutter]

Originally posted by: Auric
Do DiskKeeper or PerfectDisk use XP's Prefetch or their own database?

They both use XP's prefetch scheme, but PerfectDisk also gives you the ability to override MS's layout.ini and let PerfectDisk defragment and manage the boot files. One of these days I'll break out the stopwatch and do a little experiment to see who's faster, MS or Raxco.