Disk Drefragment Utility?

More information??

I gave up on GoBack 3 for that very reason. Seems like every time I needed it, it wasn't available, "due to massive hard drive activity" What hard drive activity must have been defrag?? Or whatever caused this machine to need to use GoBack??

I'm now using Powerquest's Drive Image 7. I have dedicated a partition for the backups.

Now, comes time to defrag and find nothing but red and white on that partition, with an analyse message: "you should defrag this drive" This happens even if I delete, reformat and burn a new image. Well, I'm afraid to defrag it in fear of losing the images, mostly because of my experiences with GoBack 3. So, I just leave this drive alone and defrag everything else.

I have also quit using Norton Speed Disk, mainly because of what I have read on this site, that XP just re-aranges Speed Disk's re-arrangement.

Since I started using DI7, I have had to do a restore twice. Both times went without a hitch with DI7's non defragged image.

I know it ain't broke, 'cause it works, but seeing all that red.......maybe I should fix it???

Martin

 

Hello all,

This degraging for me has been a problem for a long time. I use to use Norton's and I had a fatal error once. Norton's stopped running and stated "Norton's made a catastrophic mistake and must shut down ". That was the end of that. No rebooting, had to re-install. Granted Norton's worked for a long long time before this happened, but I could not take that chance again.

I then switched to Diskeeper 7. Everything was going smooth until I did what they call a Boot Time Degrag. Things did not work as well after that and the next time I tried a Boot Time Defrag, The computer was almost impossible to use.

I believe both the Norton's and Diskeeper move system files that is a risky business. During normal defrag they can't move system files around, but during the Boot Time Defrag the system files got corrupt or misplaced.

I have tried the XP defrag and don't like it stating it is compressing the files. I have a lot of room and don't want files compressed.

So I am not defraging at this time.

 

One of the computer magazines- I think PC Magazine- says that in their tests, they consistently find that drefragging causes no improvement in performance. It did cause some improvement on the older, slower hard drives; but no measureable improvement on the newer ones. So even for you hot-rodders -(if you are going to drive those things on the road, you have to get them legal; install and use the firewall, even if it slows you down by 0.001 miles per hour)- even for you hot-rodders, there is not much point in making a big deal about drefragging.
Basic intuition tells me that having a badly fragmented drive must put a lot more wear and tear on the system, so I set my alarm at 90 % (10% fragmented).
I use Norton speed disk with Windows XP Home. I like it because it runs smoothly and relatively quickly in the background while I keep doing other things. The Windows defragmenter seems a lot slower; and if you are doing anything else at all, it keeps restarting itself. To run the Windows defragmenter, nothing else can be writing to the hard drive during the whole operation.
There was a period of time when I would defrag with Norton, and in one day my system would drop from 99% to 94%. I wondered if that was the onboard defragger you guys were talking about. But I started cleaning my temp files, etc. after every session, and now it takes two weeks to a month for my system to drop from 99% to 90%.
What exactly is this onboard defragger? Is it that thing which keeps your most recently used programs listed at the head of your.... (duh, whatever that list is that pops up when you push the Start button)? If PC Magazine is correct- and they sound pretty scientific to me- then that little bit of refragmentation should not make any difference to anybody, certainly not to users like me who plod around town in the old family sedan.

 

The Windows defrager is a lite version of the Diskeeper program. I purchased the pro version from Diskeeper. It works well andm I have had no problems. It has several features that I like. The best of these is that it defrages on the fly as you use your computer. It is transparent during normal operation, and it keep my drives clean all the time. Even the partitions that I store large backup file on. I check the drives sometimes, but they never need to be defraged. It is a winner for me!

 

There is no reason not to let XP compress files. It is similar to defragging, where data is moved to the optimal spot, and when jpg or mp3 files are compressed, there is no loss of quality, stability or retrieval. I like the handy (luna) blue color to distinguish which files in storage are compressed, too. Compression on XP works like a zip file, but compression on OE is just plain goofy. But then, so is OE, anyway. To minimze the chances of OE going astray, do not let any dbx folders get too big. Periodically clean them out, and things you want to save should go to a folder (maybe in your Docs file) in the .eml style. OE was never intended for storage, and tends to crash if it gets too full.

Johanna

 

Diskeeper Home

I recommend Diskeeper Home for XP. It schedules when the drives are to be defraged, the time of day and within 2 hours of each defrag. After the first defrag, defrags are quick (depending upon processor and hard drive access times). It's cheap, (cheaper than the Norton utility would be stand alone), and quick and thorough. Diskeeper Lite is OK, but Diskeeper Home is so automated that it's definately worth the extra bucks.

Harry

 

Gaps?

I haven't found gaps with Diskeeper Home. I have been using it for months now, as a matter of fact, years. Since they have had the pre-release versions. I think it does a great job. It compresses the files after the defrag as well.

Harry

 

Re. GoBack: I had it reformat a 20 gig hard drive that (supposedly) was not even it's protection. This is apparently rare, but not unknown. Suggest you do not rely on it protecting anything vital.

 

Any comment on VoptXp. Seems to be fast.

 

First of all, I'm new in this forum and want to apologize for my English. I'm form Spain and I speak Spanish better .

Well the question....

does anybody know why when I run the disk defragmenter my HD changes from Ultra DMA 5 to PIO mode?

Note: answered in a separate thread. - Newt

Thanks in advance.

Juan_Miguel Exposito_Lopez
Almeria
Spain