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Why does XP fragment so quickly?

S

ShaggyDogg

Member
I am running Xp pro. I have a single partiton of 45 gig formatted Fat 32 then converted to NTFS. This thing seems to fragment very quickly. Much faster than I remember with Windows Me or 98. What could be causing this? I do have system restore enabled and I reboot fairly often. Could that be the problem? I operated Windows Me basically the same way and didn't have it fragment this quickly. Any ideas? BTW, I am using Norton Speed Disk for defragging
 
Straight from Andy Hui's FAQs.

Under FAT, if a sector that is the location of one of the file system's special objects fails, then a single sector failure will occur. NTFS avoids this in two ways: first, by not using special objects on the disk and tracking and protecting all objects that are on the disk. Secondly, under NTFS, multiple copies (the number depends on the volume size) of the Master File Table are kept. The role of the MFT is critical in NTFS, and it is easily fragmented: regular use of a good defragmentation tool is recommended. Programs such as Diskeeper, PerfectDisk and O&O Defrag will do the job. The Defragmentation Tool that ships with Win2K and WinXP DOES NOT defrag the MFT.

Please check here for invaluable information.
 
hmm.. tell you the truth i don't really like Speed Disk, try the One in XP... I KNOW its not the best, but does a half decent job... do you move large files alot or anything of that sort?
 
A friend of mine said if you set up your HD in 2 partitions, a small one for windows - 2 gig maybe, and the rest for all your programs and such, that just the Windows one gets all fragged. The other stays fairly clean.
I have not tried this, just what a friend claimed. Not sure if this will help you now though.
 
the post right above me is right on the money. i have an 80GB drive in 10 8 gb partitions, and the most fragged drive is the windows one, followed by games, then programs. personal data, music, and videos dont frag, so this might be something to keep in mind for next setup. since yours are all on same partition, i would recommend getting ExecSoft's Diskeeper 7.0. it is VERY fast and since they designed the lite one included in winxp, it is totally compatible.
 
Because it's representative of many Microsoft technologies.. it contains a nice list of gee-whiz features, but it also has fundamental flaws.

Just be thankful it isn't NTFS4, which was even worse.
 


<< Maybe you should try using a file system that isnt a total POS >>


Heh well remember Winblows is not a modular OS, so they couldn't plug-in another FS even if they wanted to. 😉

Seriously though, FAT32 is an albatross so for better or worse, lusers are stuck w/ NTFS, at least until Mickeysoft changes the default FS again.

I was trying to stay civil, but you couldn't help yourself. 😉

<sarcasm>
Besides, what's so bad about Diskeeper's advice to schedule a daily defragmentation?
</sarcasm>
 
I have just posted a question on the tech support site which I think may have a bearing on this question. The fact is when XP converts your drive to NTFS it defaults the cluster size to 512 bytes. now this is I think far to small and may be the reason that the ntfs drives are fragmenting so much. see my question in tech support.
 


<<

<< Maybe you should try using a file system that isnt a total POS >>


Heh well remember Winblows is not a modular OS, so they couldn't plug-in another FS even if they wanted to. 😉

Seriously though, FAT32 is an albatross so for better or worse, lusers are stuck w/ NTFS, at least until Mickeysoft changes the default FS again.

I was trying to stay civil, but you couldn't help yourself. 😉

<sarcasm>
Besides, what's so bad about Diskeeper's advice to schedule a daily defragmentation?
</sarcasm> >>



No, I missed the converted to NTFS part of the comment. NTFS isnt too bad, but converting to it isnt as good as starting with it.
 
I had no choice but to convert it since you can't format a partition >32 Gig NTFS. I guess next time around I'll make it a smaller partition. I have tried several partitions before and I didn't like it. It seemed the programs always wanted to install to the C drive and if I forced them to install elseware, when I removed them they always left fragments on the c drive and things get all cluttered and fragmented that way also.
 


<< I had no choice but to convert it since you can't format a partition >32 Gig NTFS. >>



From everything I have read and experienced (mostly with win2k) you cannot create a FAT32 partition over 32GB, but you can make a large NTFS partition.
 


<< I had no choice but to convert it since you can't format a partition >32 Gig NTFS. I guess next time around I'll make it a smaller partition. I have tried several partitions before and I didn't like it. It seemed the programs always wanted to install to the C drive and if I forced them to install elseware, when I removed them they always left fragments on the c drive and things get all cluttered and fragmented that way also. >>



The NTFS partition limit is 2^64 bytes. Windows XP can't format a 32 GB FAT32 partition, but that's mainly to force users to switch to NTFS since FAT32 becomes more and more inefficient as partition sizes increase.
 
So I should be able to create a 45 Gig NTFS partition and then format it using XP then? This is what I tried to do originally and it would not work. So I finally formatted it Fat 32 and converted it. I tried several different ways of doing it (fdisk/Xp Cd) and was not succesful. How exactly do you go about this? I'll just reformat and try again, but I don't want to have the problems I had before. I was trying for two or three hours to get any OS installed. I finally ended up installing windows 98 and upgraded to xp once it was installed.
 
> Heh well remember Winblows is not a modular OS, so they couldn't plug-in another FS even if they wanted to.

This statement isn't true of the NT family of Windows OS's. The NT/2k/XP architecture is modular, thats why you can run fat or ntfs (or hpfs on NT 3.x).
Bill
 


<< > Heh well remember Winblows is not a modular OS, so they couldn't plug-in another FS even if they wanted to.

This statement isn't true of the NT family of Windows OS's. The NT/2k/XP architecture is modular, thats why you can run fat or ntfs (or hpfs on NT 3.x).
Bill >>



Sorry, you missed the facetious reference.

In response to the states seeking Microsoft to offer a "modular" Windows OS, the company claims that it cannot do so because Windows is not modular. CEO Ballmer essentially said in a deposition that they would pull Windows from the marketplace rather than comply with such terms.

In other words, they are full of sh1t.
 
> Sorry, you missed the facetious reference.
> In response to the states seeking Microsoft to offer a "modular" Windows OS, the company claims that it cannot do so because Windows is not modular. CEO Ballmer essentially said in a deposition that they would pull Windows from the marketplace rather than comply with such terms.

Whoops, did miss the reference 😉 Sorry!
Bill

 


<< So I should be able to create a 45 Gig NTFS partition and then format it using XP then? >>



I format my 75GB NTFS capture array in XP.
 
I did a little experiment as to why Win Xp Pro was fragmenting my drive so quickly. I mean after just 2 days of normal use my drive was 23 to 30 percent fragmented. That seemed a little retarded to me since I ran Win 2000 for over a year on an NTFS partition and my drive would only fragment 2 to 3 percent after a week. So I figured that the system restore had something to do with it. I turned it off for a week and lo and behold I was only fragmented 3%. So if you back up with ghost or some other method, try turning off system restore and see if you defragment at the same rate that you did before. Bet you won't.
 
> I had no choice but to convert it since you can't format a partition >32 Gig NTFS

Looks like this was covered well, but just so we are all clear. The 32gig limitation is on FAT32 not NTFS. I've formatted terrabyte NTFS drives (chkdsk takes for fricken ever 😉). My home server runs 6 80's hardware raided at about 380meg (one partition) NTFS.

Bill
 


<< > I had no choice but to convert it since you can't format a partition >32 Gig NTFS Looks like this was covered well, but just so we are all clear. The 32gig limitation is on FAT32 not NTFS. I've formatted terrabyte NTFS drives (chkdsk takes for fricken ever 😉). My home server runs 6 80's hardware raided at about 380meg (one partition) NTFS. Bill >>


Actually, the top partition size for FAT32 is above 100GB. I know because for a week or two (I was waiting for my WinXP disc to arrive) I was running Win98SE on a single FAT32 partition on my 100GB WD hard drive.
 


<<

<< > I had no choice but to convert it since you can't format a partition >32 Gig NTFS Looks like this was covered well, but just so we are all clear. The 32gig limitation is on FAT32 not NTFS. I've formatted terrabyte NTFS drives (chkdsk takes for fricken ever 😉). My home server runs 6 80's hardware raided at about 380meg (one partition) NTFS. Bill >>


Actually, the top partition size for FAT32 is above 100GB. I know because for a week or two (I was waiting for my WinXP disc to arrive) I was running Win98SE on a single FAT32 partition on my 100GB WD hard drive. >>



Have you used or seen anything about XP? XP limits the FAT32 partition size to 32GB.
 
> Have you used or seen anything about XP? XP limits the FAT32 partition size to 32GB.

The limitation, as I recall, is that the formatter won't format a disk like that. The file system will read drives upto the size the filesystem can handle. The limitation is due to the file allocation size getting huge on the larger drives.

Bill
 
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