Win2K server defrag question

[HoosierDadE]

Hi,

My church has a Win2K server and small network and no tech (the volunteer who installed it has moved). I was asked to take a look at the server but don't know much about Win2K server. One issue is that the volumes (a SCSI Raid 0-1) are horribly fragmented from a year+ of no maintenance. Explorer and the built-in defragger say there is nearly 30% free space but the defrag map shows almost no free space, just tiny alternating bands of fragged, defraged, and system files. As expected, the built-in defrag didn't do much. I downloaded Diskeeper 8 trial for Win2K server and hoped its boot defrag could fix the problem. Diskeeper reported the MFT was in hundreds of pieces and MANY files had hundreds or even thousands of fragments. I assumed most of the system file pieces in the defrag map were the MFT. I did a boot defrag and it couldn't even reunite the 5 pieces of the paging file so I moved the paging file to another volume and tried again. It consolidated the MFT but after Windows started again, the Diskeeper map still showed a lot of fragmented files but more importantly, much of the system volume was still alternating tiny bands of system files and other files. Other than where the paging file used to be, there is almost no contiguous space (used or available) between the many (visually estimate hundreds) pieces of system files.

Any idea what these system files are and how to defrag them? I am guessing they have something to do with Exchange. TIA

Extra info: I had applied all MS updates to the OS before I did anything else. The recycle bin is empty.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

look into diskeeper


JB

 

[Nothinman]

Are they complaining of speed problems? Most of the time fragmentation isn't as big of a deal as companies like Executive Software would like you to think, and if Exchange is on it and the store is on the system drive that would probably be a bigger factor than fragmentation.

 

[HoosierDadE]

Originally posted by: JonnyBlaze
look into diskeeper

Haha. That was what my post was about, i.e. Diskeeper didn't fix the prob.

 

[HoosierDadE]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Are they complaining of speed problems? Most of the time fragmentation isn't as big of a deal as companies like Executive Software would like you to think, and if Exchange is on it and the store is on the system drive that would probably be a bigger factor than fragmentation.

Yes they are complaining. :-(

I am assuming the Exchange store is on the system drive but don't even know where to look to confirm. Per explorer there are only a C: drive and a D: drive which is user data. If there is just one drive (the RAID array), is there an advantage to moving Exchange to another volume? BTW, that reminds me, I meant to mention that "dynamic volumes" is NOT turned on.

On that note, another issue was that the backup software they use with their DAT drive doesn't back up Exchange, so until they have the money for that, I installed a removable HD and boot from Ghost (2003) and image the one server "drive" (2 volumes) to it every Sunday while I'm at church. I am begining to wonder if the images will work if they need to do a complete restore. Maybe I should clone instead.....

 

[Nothinman]

Not another volume, but another physical disk. Putting it on another partition would probably just make things worse as it would increase seeking.

 

[HoosierDadE]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Not another volume, but another physical disk. Putting it on another partition would probably just make things worse as it would increase seeking.

Thanks. The server is a 1gHz P3 Dell Poweredge 1400SC and the the MB/RAID combo only supports the single SCSI array although the documentation says you can add IDE drives (if you can find a place to mount them) with an add on IDE card. And yes, I have confirmed that; I had to add an IDE card to get the removable HD to work. It would not work on the MB's IDE. Even the doc for the server says the MB IDE is only for a CD-ROM or other non-HD device :-(