Disc Defrag (WME)

[corina]

I have a 40 Giga hard disk, and the defrag operation goes on forever. When I defragged using Norton SystemWorks, it went much faster. But the techies at my repair shop frown on that program, uninstalled it, and have forbidden me to install it again.

Any suggestions on how to speed up this process? Or failing that, is there any reason why I should NOT use the computer as I normally would while the defrag is in process?

Corina

[Gernot]

The defrag tool coming with WME is much faster than the one of e. g. W98. I think it's not possible to defrag your system while using it. Why don't you defrag it over night or at times you don't need your PC? And once completely defragmented, you should run this process weekly. Then it will only last a couple of minutes.

Greetings,
Gernot

[DanK]

Hi corina

Boot into safe mode to defrag, you'll probably find its faster

DanK<font color=green> (http://www.winguides.com/forums/sendprivate.php?Cat=&User=DanK><font) /images/forums/icons/laugh.gif

[Nana]

Corina,
Regarding your question:
"Or failing that, is there any reason why I should NOT use the computer as I normally would while the defrag is in process?"

This information is taken directly from WinMe Help.

<font color=blue>"While your disk is being defragmented, you can use your computer for other tasks. However, your computer operates more slowly, and Disk Defragmenter takes longer to finish. To temporarily stop Disk Defragmenter so you can run other programs faster, click Pause.
During defragmentation, Disk Defragmenter must restart each time other programs write to the disk. If Disk Defragmenter restarts too often, you may want to close other programs while defragmenting your disk."</font color=blue>

Dan's suggestion to defragment in Safe Mode is excellent.
Hope this helps,
Nana /images/forums/icons/smile.gif

[ah8]

If you have a 40 gigs hard disk, it should be normal if it takes about 2~4 hours to finish the job (it really depends on how much you use your hard disk, how often you move/delete/create/edit files, how much you use the internet, and of course the speed of your computer.)

I usually boot if Safe Mode first, then I delete all the files of my TIF folder (Temporary Internet Files) using IE´s (or whatever you use to go online) cleaning feature. Then, I clean my Internet History. I delete all the files older than a week in my Temp folder. Then I run Scandisk (and if it creates .chk files I just delete them)

I also like to turn off the screensaver (so the defrag tool does not re-start everytime the screensaver is activated)


You should not use your computer while the scandisk/defrag tool is running because the performance of the utilities gets decreased, and because files would be edited/created making the utilities restart over and over.

I have a 20 gigs hard disk (10 gigs are used and 10 are "clean") and it takes about 3 to 4 hours to defrag (I move/create files a lot so that is why it takes so much)
I also have a 1.1 gigs hard disk that gets defragged in about 1 or 2 minutes (it isn´t used much!)

Btw, do not be surprised if you don´t notice an increase of performance because although it helps, it isn´t that much.


<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by ah8 on 05/19/03 11:40.</FONT></P>