Defragment VS. Norton Speed disk

I am trying to defrag my 12 GB hard drive. I run Defrag for Win 98 and it never completes the task. Always restarts itself and never does any defragmenting. Same holds true for Norton Speed disk (which I always believed did the same thing). Also tried to run Scan Disk VS Norton Disk Doctor to see if there are any disk issues to deal with. Same problems. Starts the process then either starts over and over again or hangs up. The only escape is a Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart the entire system.

Is there another utility out there that can do the job...maybe even better?

Thanks for the input.

Rick

 

Restart to SAFE mode and run scandisk/defrag there.

The restarts are caused by one of your background programs writing to the harddrive.
I don't think Speedisk will run in Safe mode.

Also, btw, you do not want to mix and match defrag programs. They are take their own view of fragmentation, and one will undo what the other has done.

I personally think Norton is better than the Windows version because of the various options that it offers in file placement. Speed is very difficult to gauge, since you would actually have to run one defrag program and then fully restore the partition to do a valid comparison.

If you agree, you will need to find the culpit that is doing the writing and disable it.
Or, do a google search for a program called EndItAll that will kill non necessary apps.

 

Thanks Phill...I'll give it a try and let you know what happens

Rick

 

Don't know if this will help, but I recently had the same problem. Couldn't find anything writing to disk so ran Scandisk from DOS (not DOS-prompt) letting it repair whatever problems encountered. Scandisk ran all the way through and reported that the index.dat file in IE was corrupt along with Windows reporting incorrect free space on HDD. Seem to have worked as my utilities (Windows and Norton Systemworks) appear to be working normally now.

shotsi

 

I had same problems. Was getting a lot of free space errors.

Only thing I did defferent than shotsi was I used Norton DiskDoctor from a Startup Disk boot and the Norton Utilities CDROM.

It found and fixed boot records and free space errors. Much better operating machine since.

Also Norton Protection for the Recycle Bin will cause problem once in awhile. I stopped using that a long time ago.

I myself run NDD from DOS ( floppy boot ) at least once a Month. I find it does help. NO surface check unless real big problems exist.

But as far as Defrag goes. Use one or the other not both.

BillyBob