XTREME.... defragmenting?

[Axle Gear]

Okay. I got a wierd problem.

My HDD has really slowed down, and I don't think it's due to the drive.

I did a scandisk and noticed that some 12% of my primary partition is marked as green 'unmovable'. Now, every file in the system is fragmented, or so it says. And yet it also says:



Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 8 %
File fragmentation = 16 %
Free space fragmentation = 0 %

File fragmentation
Total files = 23,209
Average file size = 225 KB
Total fragmented files = 2
Total excess fragments = 13,221
Average fragments per file = 1.56


Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 64 MB
Total fragments = 41

Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 2,195
Fragmented folders = 2
Excess folder fragments = 0

Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT size = 30 MB
MFT record count = 26,651
Percent MFT in use = 86 %
Total MFT fragments = 13



Anyone know a program I can use to fragment these unlisted fragmented files?
As well, how can I fix my hideous pagefile? And Master File Table?

I'd really like to get my PC faster than crawling again.

[NWEng]

We'll need to know what OS you're running.


:cool:

[Axle Gear]

Oh! Sowwy. ^.^

Windows XP Pro.

[sinn]

tried diskeeper? its always been a great defragger for me

[Axle Gear]

Their site doesn't seem to work. Get a script timeout error when I try to download.

[Axle Gear]

Managed to get a copy of it anyway.

I defragmented... and absolutely no change. Diskkeeper can't defrag MFTs and Pagefiles, or folders and other invisible files.
It's just a glorified Windows Disk Defragmenter.

[sinn]

darn, maybe if you disabled your paging file and then tried defragging? just a guess

[Axle Gear]

What about the MFT? I can't exactly disable that.

[Sovereignty]

Get O&O Defrag. I've been using it for a while and it's awesome. Does the paging file, MFT, even locked system files.

[PTK]

Another vote for O&O. Been using it for a while.

PTK

[Axle Gear]

O&O got it!

Had to find the culprit files, tho. Turns out the horror was due to the 1.6 /GB/ hiberfil.sys, which shouldn't even exist because I have hibernation disabled!
I enabled then disabled it again, and poof. 1.6 GB more freespace, and a large % less fragmentation.

Few tiny system files remaining. I'm adding them to the boot-defrag exclusives list, so it'll snatch every last one the next time.

Thanks, dudes!

[MentholMoose]

Originally posted by Axle Gear
Managed to get a copy of it anyway.

I defragmented... and absolutely no change. Diskkeeper can't defrag MFTs and Pagefiles, or folders and other invisible files.
It's just a glorified Windows Disk Defragmenter. Maybe the trial version has such restrictions, but the full version can definitely do all that with the Boot-Time Defragmentation option.

[Soulburner]

Originally posted by Axle Gear
Managed to get a copy of it anyway.

I defragmented... and absolutely no change. Diskkeeper can't defrag MFTs and Pagefiles, or folders and other invisible files.
It's just a glorified Windows Disk Defragmenter.
That is not true. I have Diskeeper and it does do all of those things you said. It is the best Defragger there is.

[JeffPH]

I am using VoptXP its faster than diskeeper and O&O :)

try it

[Soulburner]

I don't see how it can possibly be faster than this, I run it regularly and even if its full of red it only takes maybe 20 seconds.

[Vlad Draculea]

for me eating when i am in hunger works great, and it also makes me feel good.

[Axle Gear]

I won't touch Norton products with a 20 foot pole after the last time the virus scanner so royally screwed me. It 'quaruntined' a virus (Klez.E) that escaped quarutine. Then AVG couldn't clean it because Norton was restricting access. It ended up corrupting some key windows files and forcing a reformat.

So, yeah. Crap on Norton.


As for diskkeeper: It had the 'boot time defragmentation' option, but when I told it to defrag and rebooted, it went in and gave something like 'Error: Cannot defragment MFT. Error: Cannot defragment page file. Error: Cannot acces hiberfil.sys', and so on. Eventually, it failed /every/ file I wanted defragmented, so... yeah. Forget it.

O&O didn't get the MFT the first time around, and it missed the big nasties like hiberfil.sys. But it's got it all now.
My PC is, quite literally, 0.0% fragmented. Not a single file on drive C is reported fragmented. =3


Aside from the ntldr problem, which seems to have oddly resolved itself... O&O seems good.
I'll keep you all updated in case ntldr takes another leave of absence.

[Axle Gear]

Some new updates on O&O.

I've discovered it can cause some problems when you defragment with it while running other things. It killed my cookies in Netscape, corrupted my ntldr file, and screwed with some of my Microsoft Office DLLs.

So while it /does/ do a good job of defragmenting.. it seems to be rather risky to use.

[Dud3!]

Well, Diskeeper is the best as far as I'm concerned. I install Diskeeper Lite on every computer I work on and I get all their latest software either mailed to me or they set up an FTP login for me.

I got the DK8 line last month or so and I love it. So much better than DK7.

The boot time defragging will consolidate folders, unmovable files, etc.

If you're running 2000, XP, or 2003 with the FAT32 file system it's pretty sluggish, but if you're running 98 with FAT32 or 2K/XP/2003 with NTFS it's very fast.

Make sure Event Logging and Error Reporting services are enable, Nookie had these disabled and it wouldn't work for him. I found out what it was by accident...

[amd3001]

id give roxico perfect disk 6 a try.. i have been using it and
i really like it.

[STeel Chicken]

the defrag issue with the pagefile can be avoided by disabling it (warning might slow your puter down if you got low mem) run your defrag, then create a NON-dyanmic pagefile so it never moves or changes size again. I do that right away anytime I build a new OS drive.

[Axle Gear]

While that does work, there's a better way.

Simple go and set the settings to have a set, static size. Assuming your HDD is fully defragmented (both file-wise and free-space-wise)

Doing it your way has 3 major risks:

1) Disabling virtual memory can cause most machines to fail to boot. This is NOT a good idea, EVER.

2) You should ALWAYS have at least 32-64 MB of swapfile on the primary partition (and windows partition, if they're not the same) Windows (especially XP) can sometimes 'forget' where it's swapfile is, and will revert to the defaults (which are the primary drive and/or windows drive)
In any setting, you should have at least 32 MB set aside on windows' partition.

3) It'd be faster to just go in and set a static size. IE, set the Min and Max to the same thing.

Looking at modern games and requirements on RAM and swapfile, i've come up with a chart that should work for the average heavy-gamer.

>2 GB: 32 MB on the primary drive is fine.
2 GB: 32-96 MB
1 GB: 64-288 MB
512 MB: 268-1056 MB
256 MB: 1056-2080 MB
128 MB: You prolly can't play any new games. 2048-4096 MB.
<128 MB: Swapfile will do you no good, friend. Upgrade. Now.


THis hasn't been tested on some of the really new games like Aquanauts 2. I've tested it with stuff like GTA, Morrowind, and some emulators (such as PSX), which tend to consume a lot of swapfile.

Usage Chart:
AVG: 2-19 MB
Trillian: 10-30 MB
Winamp: 4-20 MB
Folding@Home: 32-64 MB
SNES9x: 21-128 MB
RM2K3: 20-170 MB
Windows XP Pro: 55-72 MB
WinMX: 40-1200 MB
PSEMU: 250-890 MB
Morrowind: 300-810 MB
Hiberfil.sys: 1400-2200 MB (this is the file Windows stores a 'snapshot' of itself in when your PC goes into hibernation mode. When hibernating, this file is loaded into virtual memory, and the contents of your RAM and swapfile are dumped into it, hence the ludicrous size. I reccomend turning OFF hibernation mode, since it eats so much virtual memory and also HDD space.)

I've also noticed while zipping some 1.4 GB of files during a backup that the process began to consume close to 600 MB of swapfile.

So depending on what you do, and how much you want to do at once, you may need a great deal of swapfile. For example: Morrowind won't run on my PC when the swapfile is set for less than around 400 MB total. And it's quite crashy when set below 1 GB. Runs like a charm (even with my bajillion mods) when at or above that, tho.


My PC at minimum usage still uses about 102-205 MB of swapfile. That's just windows, trillian, winamp, and AVG.