Disk defrag questions

I am running Win XP home SP3. All hard drives are NTFS. Should defrag move all the movable files to one end of the partition? When I defrag my partitions, all the data does not get moved to one end of the disk. The free space is not all in one large block.

My H drive has a capacity of 25.68 GB, 84% free, about 4 GB used. It has no fragmented files and no unmovable files. This drive is used for music and pictures only. By looking at the defrag screen, it looks like about 3 GB of data is moved to the left, then about 5 GB of free space, then another 1 GB of data, followed by the remaining 16 GB of free space. Is there a way to force defrag to move all the data and leave all the free space in one large contiguous block?

Also, what is that block of unmovable files that show up on my boot drive C? The C drive holds Windows XP and all other installed software.

Thanks, Gordon

 

That's not necessary since it would require moving many more file than an ordinary defrag would require and would make absolutely no difference in performance.

That would be what is known as the swap file. It's real name in the XP system is pagefile.sys. You could move it to your second drive and then do the C: drive defrag, then move it back afterwards, if it bothers you, but it makes precious little difference. The modern hard drive seek time makes defragging less necessary than the older gear did. Added to that is the fact that XP, when using the NTFS file storage system, doesn't seem to get fragmented as much in the first place.

FWIW, I leave my system alone and never defrag unless there is some direct indication that it might make things better. Frankly, it never has. Actually it crashed my drive on two different occasions down through the years when the power failed during the process. There is always a risk when manipulating all the data on your drive. I think the reward isn't worth it for the most part.

If it helps you any, think of it this way; XP Defrag puts the files that you use most frequently in the place that makes them most accessible. Hold that thought and you'll be OK, even if it doesn't work that way.

How To Move The Paging File

 

Thank you for the information. Much appreciated.
Gordon

 

I disagree. Defragmenting a drive is an important part of regular maintenance. I agree that sometimes it doesn't seem to make a whole lot of difference. But that's probably due to the read/write speed of newer drives like the 10000 spin and faster variety. Regular defragmenting "generally" increases access speed and can reduce drive thrashing during access. Not to mention the reduction in physical wear and tear. Although I'm not sure that is as valid as it once was with the newer drives.

I defrag on a regular basis, and DO notice a difference on a heavily fragmented drive. I've never seen a drive not become heavily fragmented if it hasn't been defragmented for some time. Even if it has 80-90% free space.

The risk of a power failure whilst defragging is small and most newer drives will pretty much instantly park the read/write head to reduce the likelyhood of corruption. Even if the power plug is pulled.

Even Microsoft has set the defragmenter in Vista to automatically defragment the drive. Although I turned that feature off. So even they think it's important enough to do. Unlike when they introduced NT 4.0 with no defragger. They learnt the mistake. NTFS file system does fragment!

 

defrag

I always keep my drives defragmented. Helps a lot to keep the gaming/photo rig running smoothly when working with lots of image files, loading games etc;. Despite the critics who claim that defragging NTFS is unnecessary, I will continue to always keep the 4 drives in my system (total 1.x TB) defragmented, since I have clearly noticed the drop is responsiveness and speed when dealing with lots of small files, loading games, copying files etc. Apart from critical files like the MFT, smaller files (< 50-60 MB) are usually most affected by fragmentation.

The best thing, as mentioned previously, I use an automatic defragmenter on my system. I never have to waste time with defragging the array via scheduled defrag, and the drives are always in excellent shape due to the 'smart' background automatic defrag.

Microsoft went to the trouble of *rewriting* the Vista defragger from scratch and to make it pseudo-automatic (it's actually a scheduled defrag) so users won't forget to defrag. I don't particularly like the vista defragger, but their action shows how important they consider it. Vista accesses the drive very often, so it's good to keep them defragmented.