XP defrag

I installed XP over the weekend and after a few very minor problems it's working great. Thanks for all the help from the board.
I defraged with Norton system works, speed disk, and it seemed to take a very long time to defrag. Tried it again and still took about a half an hour. Tried the defrag that came with XP and it took about the same amount of time. I have a 7.85 GB hard drive with about half of it used. It's seems slower than Speed disk with ME.
Which is the better defrag utility and would I gain any thing other than security by switching to NTFS? As always thanks in advance for your help. Jack

 

Not certain Jack..

Not really sure, but I heard an EXCELLENT reference the other day here on this board..

Try this, repartition your HDD so that Windows XP has about 1-2 Gigs of space, then put all of your programs and data onthe other partition. Windows has the most activity, in which the most going on. That is also where you generally have the most problems, so by limiting the amount of space instead of giving it the full head of steam, should quicken your Defrag time.

As a Side note, I don't trust Norton, a few years back I saw too many HDD totally ruined by individuals using NOrton, in which they did not fully understand what they were doing with it.

And currently, Widnows XP is too new for NOrton to be fully compatible.
In Widnows ME, a version antior to Widnows XP for sure, it is NOT compatible. stick norton on the shelf and stick with MS for the defrag and scandisk. Later when Norton has updated to confidence levels again, revert back.