Defrag leaving mess and holes?

Hi all

Using the ME defrag, all seemed to be going well; I was watching the end of the drive, watching it tidy up the mess 'coz it's fun.

But, it went to 100% leaving quite a lot of untidy bits.

puzzled as I haven't seen this before. So I did it again and when it got to 99% I paused to scroll up and down.

I found a lot of holes right at the start of the drive - although this had appeared solid while that part of the drive was being defragmented.

( screenshot )

I suppose it doesn't really matter as long as the files themselves are not fragmented; the program's options don't actually say that is coalescing the spare space - but I always thought it did.

Is this normal? I didn't have "Check drive for errors" selected but had just scandisked previously - the only errors scandisk found were the MS-DOS length errors which come with Mozilla

I do have some files with date/time set to "unknown" which could maybe explain the mess at the end. But the holes at the beginning are a puzzle.

best wishes, HJ.

 

Hugh, I don't think there is much to worry about there, although
I agree with you that the ME defrag usually moves file up so that empty sectors are eliminated.
Maybe a scandisk in DOS mode to recheck the FAT ?
regards

PS I am intrigued by the Screenshot - always very helpful - but
admin says / said it is a no-no on the BBS Boards ..
So I do not know how you managed to post it.

 

Hi merlin

thanks for replying

will check with DOS-type defrag after writing this

when I get a chance I'll have a go with the W98 defrag also - at the moment I'd rather use the PC than fiddle with it though!

I'd just cleaned up the mess after the clock thing (my previous post a few hours earlier), was pushed into getting rid of temporary internet files etc, so it seemed like a good time to defrag. For all I know it always leaves the HDD like that, I've never thought to look before.

not so much worrying as puzzling - I'm trying to use the PC rather than fiddle with it... And I'm stuck with dates/times saying "Unknown" after the scandisk. Which is unknown territory for me. The less "funnies" I have going on the better.

The empty bits were eliminated at the start of the defrag. These clusters must have got moved again after defrag had scrolled down a bit...

what does worry me is that I've ruffled feathers by putting the link to the screenshot - not what I was trying to do. I just thought a picture would make it easier for people to see what's gone on. "A picture can paint a thousand words..." that sort of logic. So I uploaded it to a bit of my own webspace and put a link using the button h-t-t-p-:-/-/ (remove hyphens!) above the top of the BBS edit window, like people put links to Spybot and the like.

Is that what they mean by "post attachment "? I thought post attachment was more like embedding it into the post - like you can put a smiley in - and that "May Not post attachment" meant that it's disabled.

The picture itself's not posted - only a link to it... merlin: isn't that rather the same as putting the link to your own webpage? OK it's a GIF rather than an HTML file, but browsers don't seem to mind

Oh dear I suppose I'd better go read the instructions...

best wishes, HJ

(aside: anyone remember Speed Disk? Norton's equivalent to DEFRAG in the old DOS days... nearly the same but with a gem of an extra feature: you could "walk the map" and find out what files were in which cluster. Ahh - happy memories)

 

Hugh Jarss

I think you have problems that may require Norton Disk Doctor run from a DOS bootup.

Windows ME defrag run on 98 should not do that.

BillyBob

 

Hi Pete

thanks for looking in, also thanks for putting my mind at rest. Diagrams can be really useful sometimes.

BB - I'm going to do a reinstall as soon as I'm through the current work overload - trying to keep the old dinosaur limping along for the next couple of days. Got more "funnies" going on than feels comfortable - see my other post about losing a day...

...will also test the drive at that point with the WD toolkit.

I did try the defrag once again - and it left what looks suspiciously like exactly the same mess, again. And, the same corresponding mess at the end of the drive.

very best wishes, HJ.

 

Hugh

A surface scan woudn't come amiss but don't let either Scandisk or Norton fix anything automatically - you could end up with a drive full of garbage.

 

Hi gammaepsilon

I'm afraid I already have let scandisk automatically fix a load of future dates. The PC threw a wobbly at midnight 24th>25th, it missed the 25th and went straight on to the 26th?!? (see my other post)(with luck this should get you there)

I didin't notice this until 3AM when it put the clock back. I then reset the clock. This was probably a bad move - I should have pruned before I did that - ooodles of temporary internet files now with invalid date in the future. I couldn't get rid of them "normally" - File system error 1026. Tried lots of ways.

So I scandisked the wrong dates off them, got left with "unknown" for the dates. But at least I could now delete most of the mess. All sorts of confusion - the AV thought that had it sucessfully downloaded tomorrow's update (oversimplified) tons of hassle. Lots of "scheduled" stuff in total confusion.

The bit that gets me about this: looking at the defrag as it ran, it looked to have consolidated that zone of the disk to a nice contiguous blue block. No gaps. All going just like it should.

The gaps came later; it looks like it must have decided to move those files again, after it had scrolled down so I couldn't see that area of the drive.

Going offline to check a few things, will check back later...

thanks all for your help, and very best wishes, HJ.

 

Sorry Hugh, I hadn't seen your other post. My post now looks like advice on how to keep the horse indoors whilst it's half way down the meadow.

If these 'holes' appeared after being used it looks as if the algorithm has gots its pants in a twist.

You're not using that Applog caper by any chance are you. A clever idea when drives were pedestrian but more trouble than it is worth nowadays and corrupted info may have defrag not knowing whether it is coming or going. I may be talking codswallop here. If I am no doubt someone will put me right.

 

Hi again

gammaepsilon - applog - yes I was using it still - because I never got round to getting rid of it until about 20 minutes ago! I never had that much trouble with slow defrags, what problems I did have disappeared when I nobbled out OSA from startup.

and yes, deleting (actually I'm moving them to start with) the applog folder contents is precisely what I was doing as you were typing - because applog.ind was one of the files which had suffered from bad date trouble.

meanwhile, to report that along the lines of merlin's advice I've tried a scandisk in DOS mode - in case of files Windows cannot recognise - but found nothing nasty.

surface scan I will try somewhen soon - but it takes ages - about 2 hours I seem to recall! (P1 100MHz; C: is 5GB partition, FAT32)

the other reason why I haven't deleted applog contents prior to this is AVS (lightshow part of Winamp); the applog for this is enormous, unlike other applogs (I peeked); AVS is tricksy anyway, using both DDRAW16 and DDRAW32 and lots of other modules. I can't see why such an enormous amount of information is required for this applog just to tell defrag what to do.

I was wondering - just because Windows only uses applogs for defrag purposes - doesn't really rule out an applog could be used by something else? Justin Frankel is one heck of a clever programmer and the applog would be in a known, findable place... just an idea. Probably way off beam. I may well soon find the answer! whatever the truth of it there's surely no point in leaving it probably corrupted - better to let it rebuild if necessary.

so next up (after letting the clocks go back!) I'm going to try the ME defrag with the applog folder contents removed. will report back, whatever...

very best wishes, HJ

 

Hi all

gammaepsilon, you deserve brownie points (or something); I had just about got there but you had it, hole in one.

applog folder was indeed the culprit; I nobbled taskmon, got rid of all the files in the applog folder etc - it recreated applog.ind afresh but that's all; tried ME defrag and all worked smoothly. I checked for mess at both the start and the end with defrag paused at 99% - none found.

Also tried the AVS - a bit rough getting into and out of fullscreen mode, but that always is cathartic - a bit like quickres and then some(!) - it does get better after a bit of "practice" but that's probably down to having the right stuff in memory. Curiously it seems worse when there's nothing else running - can freeze for up to about 2 seconds, or not at all - has a mind of its own. I'm amazed it runs at all (early P1 no MMX support). Bottom line is that it doesn't seem any worse without the applog.

I should have got rid of taskmon ages ago - PC has little clout, it only makes sense to keep the little it has for constructive purposes.

many thanks all, for your kind help...

best wishes, HJ.

 

Hugh

" ... deserve brownie points (or something) ... " . For something read a pint of Guinness.

"I nobbled taskmon" - touché!

I've nobbled Power Management, Systray, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Via chipset and I've even nobbled Scanreg /autorun. I still use scanreg but my way - on an error it is automatically trapped and the automatic replacement of an earlier registry is thwarted.

Anyway, well done - I think some of us initially thought your drive was just about to go up in smoke.

 

I say good job too.

I had forgotten about that useless, space & time wasting item.

BillyBob