Fastest way to Defragment and Scan Disk?

I am all for automation and it is what computers are best at but I do have a problem with letting scandisk fix anything automatically.

For the most part scandisk can be left to fix problems but there are occasions when an auto fix will knock seven bells out of your data and I have seen many a cautionary tale in other forums.

I do not want to be a scaremonger but if you use autofix religiously then go here for a rude awakening. It not a bedtime read. Sorry

 

And I am very much against automation. I would rather do it manually and know what it is doing.

But I still do not understand why it takes so long to defrag on the machine of mccoady Unless it is due to the size of the drive.

Also there is a setting in defrag for " Rearange files so that programs start faster " If that is checked it might have some effect.

I also do not understand why anything has to be shut down. But that may depend on what that anything is.

I do not understand why Scandisk has to be run separately. ME Defrag checks the drive for errors ( if the setting for it is checked ) and if there are any it will stop defrag and tell me that I need to run scandisk.

I just defraged the other machine ( using ME defrag ) with the 8 & 30 gig drives in 40 minutes. And a couple of them looked like they had not been defraged in months. ( probably haven't been )

And I was also over here writing a reply so there may have been a longer time lapse between drives.

Also the drive that has some 20-30 meg files does take a bit longer than the others.

BillyBob

 

"I do not understand why Scandisk has to be run separately. ME Defrag checks the drive for errors ( if the setting for it is checked ) and if there are any it will stop defrag and tell me that I need to run scandisk. "

The disk checking portion of Defrag is "just enough" to ensure the integrity of the FAT and disk directory before it starts moving data around. It is no where as comprehensive as Scandisk and should not be viewed as the equivalent.
(if it really was, then there would be no reason for it to tell you to run Scandisk)

 

OK. Then explain this.

On one or two occasions I did run scandisk on all partitions.

I then started Defrag and it still came up with and error and told me to run scandisk. Which I did and it then fixed the problem.

Anyway I have not had any problems with just running defrag.

One of the more important things in regards to scandisk is to make sure that it runs after a bad shutdown. If it does not then that can create problems.

I do leave that on Auto Pilot.

BillyBob

 

I can't explain it. All I know is that the scan in Defrag is not as complete as the Scandisk one.

As for leaving the Scandisk after a bad shutdown on autopilot, you want to read the link from Gammaepsilon above.

This is one time when having Scandisk to auto fixes can completely mangle your system. You want to modify the scandisk.ini file to take back control.

 

I do not need the link that gammaepsilon pointed to to know the pros and cons about scandisk.

But to each his/her own.

All I am saying is that it all the years that have used Windows scandisk has NEVER created a problem for me.

I very seldom if ever run it as a separate run. But I have found it to be a better to let it run after an illegal shutdown. If not problems can multiply.

Same with chkdsk in XP Pro.

If defrag will not run even after a scandisk run I SHUTDOWN and go to good old solid DOS boot up and Norton DiskDoctor any way. That will fix things that scandisk won't.

But really I am only trying to understand why some users are having problems with scandisk and defrag.

It does not seem to be be busted so I ain't gonna attempt to fix it.

Well I will be darned. I just LEARNED something NEW. I was looking through the various folders for Win98SE. I saw something that I DID NOT KNOW was even there.

In the Windows folder there is a file named SCANDSKW.EXE It is a smaller file and could be the one that runs when we run defrag ? Even if it is it seems to do its job quite well so I guess it is Ok

BillyBob

 

Scandskw is the GUI for the Windows Scandisk and has nothing to do with Defrag. (and I repeat, the defrag scan is NOT a replacement for scandisk. The bulk of the scandisk work is done by DSKMAINT.dll. This DLL is NOT used by defrag.)

You may not have had any issues with scandisk running after a bad shutdown. Basically because, in 9999/10000 times it will do it's thing OK.

BUT, on that one time it will blow the living H*** out of your disk directory and/or files. If you have adequate backup, then not to worry.
If not, read the link and see the types of things that scandisk is being allowed to "fix" after a bad shutdown.

These are similar things that it will TRY to "fix ", if you run it with automatically fix errors selected. Which is the reason why this is NOT a recommended option.

"But really I am only trying to understand why some users are having problems with scandisk and defrag. "

This is because they have programs running in the background that periodically write to disk. When this happens, defrag/scandisk restart.