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I'm running xp.
ever since I have had a computer I have defragged about every 3 months. It always said it wasn't necessary but I did it as routine maintenance. Recently I have been getting the message that it
needs defragging about twice a week. Why is it beginning to fragment so much?
Thanks Tom
Discussion is locked
No version of windows today asks you to defrag the drive without you running it.
I'd identify where this message is coming from since it could be a great way to get people to run a trojan.
Bob
I apologize for not being clear. I just happened to run tools a couple weeks ago and the drive was heavily fragmented. I defragged. Since then I have checked back 4 times and each time it was very heavily fragmented. I defragged and a couple days later it was heavily fragmented again.
Tom
It's not known to keep a tidy file system. I'll just write I see nothing wrong here given your new reply.
Bob
Some questions first. Do you shut down your computer daily/ nightly? Do you have your web browser and email programs set to clear your cache/ history/ deleted emails at the end of each session? Do you open various programs, games, antivirus, etc. If you answered yes to first and no to the second two then there are your culprits!
Every time you shut down and reboot/ restart you save and access/ open files along the way. Once the system is done using them, they aren't always returned to the EXACT same location as your last defrag. Windows Defrag, for the most part, just compresses them into one big pile,i.e. you've spilt water, milk, and soda on the floor, Windows pushes them all together ergo doesn't sort and reorder them by program and/ or directory as well as some after market and on defragers.
I personnaly use Diskeeper 2007 Professional which, when setup correctly will defrag your machine on a ongoing basis with no user intervention required. Even running this, when I manually check, about once a week, I still find some level of defragmentation. I then run a manual defrag to reduce the number of fragmented files.
Remember, anytime you access/ open, add or remove programs, use your browser, check your email, etc you create fragmentation of your hard drive. It's a fact of computing, but continue to defrag and your machine will perform better and lessen the work your hard drive has to do to load your files.
Hope this helps!!
Glenn51
Defragging regularly is good practice to keep the files arranged in order on the hard drive to speed up access and also decrease write times for future files.
Incidentally, the XP defragger does not defrag all files- it doesn't touch the paging file, system restore points or the master file table. Maybe those files are heavily fragmented in turn causing fragmentation of newer files that are written, that's why you are getting these messages. Third party software such as the excellent Diskeeper 11 will defrag those files apart from providing other options.
Lastly, if a hard drive is free of other problems then defragging is not going to endanger it, no matter what others say. So, defrag as part of routine system maintainence with Diskeeper or the XP defragger, or ________(insert your preference of defragger here).
I assume you are using the Windows integrated defragger.
Have you checked the pre-defrag report to see if the files and folders are actually so fragmented that they need defragging?. This report is generated following the Analyze option in the Windows Defrag tool.
Also, could it be that the tool is scheduled to run. I think, when the tool is scheduled in the Scheduled Tasks/Programs > Startup that it will not run while the machine is not idle, and will continue to hound you until you either run it or cancel it or select No.
Hope this is helpful.
Charlie
Yes I do use the analyze option. It shows lots of frags before running defrag and a clean report after. Same with the colored
bar visual. I of course have ran virus scans with my Kapersky which
is current with the updates.
I am stumped and afraid if I don't figure it out it may lead to a serious problem.
Running background programs such as Boinc projects or audio/video can also cause a buildup if various temp files quickly resulting in heavy file fragmentation.
A while back on XP Home when I was using the Windows defrag tool I had it scheduled in Scheduled Tasks. When I would boot the machine after the scheduled defrag [should] have run, I would get an alert to the effect that a scheduled task could not run and to click OK to run then or NO to cancel the scheduled task.
Charlie
There is absolutely no maintenance functionality in defragmenting. All it does is shuffle bits of files around on the physical surface of the HDD. There's no error checking, no error correction, no fixing of corrupted files, nothing diagnostic about it at all. It can actually help spread some of these problems.
The performance gains are also negligible for the average person. There are exceptions, but they deal mostly with things like large database servers and high end video editing. So, if you ask me, it's not worth the added strain on the disk to defragment. The performance bottleneck is more the antiquated IDE system bus than fragmentation. Even the newer SATA standards don't really bring HDD performance to a level even approaching about every other bus on a computer. There's also a limit to how fast you can spin the platters in the drive before the forces involved cause them to shatter. All making defragmenting something of an act of futility.
And to answer the question of why the drive fragments so much, it has to do with the way FAT and NTFS store files. They both use a simple FIFO (First In First Out) method. When you want to save a file, they look for the first open bit of space, and store as much of the file in there as possible, then move on to the next bit of open space until the entire file is stored. As opposed to using a slightly more intelligent system, like you find in Linux, where it looks for the first block of space big enough to store the entire file. If it can't find one, it tries to break it up into as few pieces as possible. Creating, in effect, a self-defragmenting filesystem.
Of course Bob is also correct. Windows doesn't issue such a notification, so you must be using some third party program.
a good defragger is effectively testing your disk because as it is defragging, it copies the data to a new area and compares it to the original data. if it fails, it aborts and notifies you of the problem.
a good defragger can reduce app load time because contiguous data can be read faster than fragmented data. when ms first released windows nt, they didn't anticipate any degradation from fragmentation, but benchmarks soon showed otherwise. true, the performance degradation is especially noticeable on servers but a severly fragmented drive can and will cause a noticeable slow down in a personal computers also.
as for the original poster's need to frequently defrag, one cause is most likely due to the number of files on the drive increasing. xp's built-it defragger does not try to consolidate free space. so as new files are added, they start occupying the 'holes' and wind up fragmenting quickly. on my pc, over 1000 files are fragmented on my boot drive within 3-4 days of use.
xp's built-in defragger also becomes less effective as the disk becomes full. on a 200+gb drive that's usually not an issue, but if the original poster has a 80gb drive that's 85% full, he'll be running into defragmentation issues constantly.
since the hard drive is the slowest device in the computer, and thus the performance bottleneck, you should ensuring it's level of performance is maintained since any slowdown with it will be noticeable.
of file fragmentation are repeated modification of files, and storing files, especially large ones, on a disk so full and fragmented that there is insufficient contiguous space for the file. (And, of course, there is the inefficient way Windows handles storage, especially in FAT partitions -- but you have no control over that.)
You indicate that you surf a lot. I can envision that "churning" of temporary files, combined with an overly-full disk, could lead to some fragmentation. But even under extreme conditions, a need to defrag twice a week seems excessive to the max. I modify Word and
Excel documents a lot, and also surf the Web. Nevertheless, I find defrag is actually needed only once or twice a year.
You don't say which file system you are using, nor how full your disk is. In any event, however, you should run Disk Cleanup, getting rid of all unneeded files, and Checkdisk /f before defragging. Also, run defrag in analyze mode immediately after to verify that the operation was successful. If you are again badly fragmented within a week, something extremely strange is going on.
Hopr this helps a little
Frank
I surf the net a lot and I have a similar problem with files getting fragmented. I use Diskeeper 7.0 which is pretty fast at defragging the drive. It has a frag guard feature that I don't understand and which doesn't seem to be particularly effective at preventing file fragmentation. It also has a boot-time defrag function that I don't use since it apparently does some serious file manipulation and they caution to always have a "backup, etc." The bad thing about using the boot-time defrag is that you can't use the "Restore" command and you have to load the backup. I would also like to know why the drive gets fragmented when I am mainly using only the XP system files and the program files for IE7 and Outlook Express.
I Purchased Diskeeper 7 and used it for quite a while, but was getting a lot of blue screens, now I only use the one that came with XP.
Wes
You said all you do is 'Surf the net'! Do you regularly delete, Cookies, temporary internet files etc. They can fill your hard drive in a very short time and will put themselves all over it making it look like a defrag is urgent!
My system was running a bit slow and freezing at times. Its a desktop with an 80Gb drive, i use it mainly for browsing, music, playin games etc. The drive was fragmented, i dont remember the stats, but it definitely needed a defrag. I dont experience the lag before opening programs anymore. So if your drive is getting fragmented very often it might be a good idea to use a tool that will keep it under check regularly. In my opinion its better to tackle it when it starts than when the entire drive is fragged.
An almost full harddisk is much, much, much more easily fragmented than an almost empty harddisk. Generally, when the harddisk has filled around 75% of its full capacity, you'll start having a lot of need to defragment. And as a bonus, an almost full harddisk is much harder to be defragmented compared to an almost empty harddisk.
IObit SmartDefrag.com
This program is free and defrags your hard drive as you go, in real time. I've been using it for months and it works great. I still defrag occasionally to compact the drive(s).
If you don't us it, defrag your hard drive daily or at least ever few days, the boost in performance is worth it and it will only take a few minutes if you keep on top of it.
If Windows is constantly expanding and contracting your swap file fragmentation levels will be higher than usual.
Check that the minimum size of the swap file has been set to 1.5 times the amount of RAM on your computer.
Also aim to keep at least 10% of your drive free.
I have a machine with 2GB RAM. If I use 1.5 that gives me a 3GB paging file. Since this 32 bit VM can only address 2^32 bytes the combined RAM and paging file is greater than 2^32 and appears to be a waste.
Is that 1.5 number from some ancient rune text that needs updating?
Bob
If all you do is surfing, it may just be maintenance. When you defrag you have to close down all active windows and programs in order for those applications to be defragged also.
Regarding your registry, if you haven't cleaned and organized your registry in a while, This is necessary. Your registry holds all the information regarding updates, installs, un-installs etc. If can become quite fragmented if not kept in check. Do a registry scan if you got more than 20 errors you should clean it.
Other general maintenance were mentioned previously cleaning the cache, cookies, temp internet files etc. The link below will give some more maintenance tips.
http://www.delete-computer-history.com/how-to-speed-up-pc.html
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