VERY SLOW DEFRAG

[DRowland]

Since I have upgraded to WP, the defrag takes forever.
WinME used to take a few minutes with Norton, or the ME defrag. Now with XP, defrag takes over two hours.
I have a 28 gig hard drive, with 75% free space. What takes so long, and what to do to speed things up?

GamPaw

|========================|
I sure wish there was a way
to receive the best teaching,
without having to go through
some of the worst experiences!
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[kiddpete]

XP does not just defrag. It moves files to faster or slower portions of the disk based on how much they are used. The idea is to improve the system's speed. If the system is slow, that may take a while.

Once the usage pattern stabilizes, it should speed up because it's no longer moving things around.

 

[cdogg]

Right. There are different options that can be set within a defragging utility. Options to just defrag are usually a lot quicker than defragging & reordering data. The "reordering" part helps to slow the rate at which future fragmentation will occur.

Are you sure you are using the exact same version of Norton than you were using in ME?


~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind";
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[DRowland]

I am using the defrag that comes with XP now.
The version of Norton that I have is not compatible with it.

GamPaw

|========================|
I sure wish there was a way
to receive the best teaching,
without having to go through
some of the worst experiences!
|========================|

 

[Auger282]

your problem is that you upgraded a 9X os to an NT platform

did you change to NTFS when you upgraded?

 

[DRowland]

I guess I'm too much of a junior to understand that.
What do I look for to find the answer to your question?

GamPaw

|========================|
I sure wish there was a way
to receive the best teaching,
without having to go through
some of the worst experiences!
|========================|

 

[rrsub]

Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Manaement

Then

Storage > Disk Management

Look for File System and you'll see either Fat16/Fat32/NTFS

NTFS is optimized for Win NT4 and above of which XP is NT5.1

---------------------------
<rant>
Microsoft said that defragging won't be neecessary prior to the release of NT4 (lie) which is why there was no defrag tool available from MS for NT4. Diskkeeper wrote a defrag tool then MS licensed it from them for NT5.
Here we are in 2004 and NTFS is the only current filesystem that _Requires_ manual defragging.
HPFS (Mac) defrags automatically based on called file conditions. Linux/Unix filesystems do the same.
</rant>

 

[DRowland]

Thanks for the instructions.
I guess the upgrade did the changes needed. It shows

27.95 GB NTFS
Healthy(System)

GamPaw

|========================|
I sure wish there was a way
to receive the best teaching,
without having to go through
some of the worst experiences!
|========================|