I have Windows XP Home SP2. The C drive holds 6 Gb, of which 359 Mb are currently free. I ran defrag several times, with only slight improvement over the first few times, and even less improvement after that.
Here are some interesting statistics from the defrag output:
Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 35 %
File fragmentation = 60 %
Free space fragmentation = 10 %
Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 384 MB
Total fragments = 177
File fragmentation
Total files = 52,809
Average file size = 151 KB
Total fragmented files = 1,205
Total excess fragments = 65,121
Average fragments per file = 2.23
Fragments File Size Files that cannot be defragmented
376 8 MB \Documents and Settings\Keeve
tuser.dat
446 8 MB \WINDOWS\$hf_mig$\KB943460\SP2QFE\shell32.dll
405 8 MB \WINDOWS\$hf_mig$\KB928255\SP2QFE\shell32.dll
580 9 MB \Documents and Settings\Keeve\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\index.dat
(many other fragmented files too, but these seem to be the only important ones)
How does an 8 MB file get sliced into several hundred fragments?
With over 350 MB free, why couldn’t it defrag an 8 MB file into a single block?
Okay, let’s say that the free space itself is in tiny slices. But surely it could have condensed these files into at least a smaller number of fragments?
My real problem is that the system runs slow, and the slowness seems directly related to loads of clicking and spinning of the hard drive. Given that I’ve done all the usual stuff like getting rid of spyware and viruses and startup programs, etc, the evidence seems to strongly suggest that the fragmenting is (at least part of) my problem. But how do I do it? Why won’t it defrag? Is there a stronger defragger to use?
(BTW: The defrag program suggests having 15% of the drive free, and I got it up to that point by moving some stuff to another drive, but that didn’t make the defrag any better.)
You can’t defrag certain important system files while they’re open. Try booting from another drive (or an install cd?) and defrag from there. Note: backup anything important first.
Since specific user files seem to be badly fragmented, you might also try logging on with a different user account (one with admin privilege), or as admin, and defragging so that it won’t have your “Keeve” user data files open and can defrag them.
Assuming that the drive is formatted with the NTFS file system, defragging is not going to make much difference in the speed of your computer. I’d be more concerned about the clicking noises you’re hearing from the drive - they might mean that the drive is close to failure. That would account for the loss of speed. As a drive starts to fail it is more prone to errors, and errors mean re-reading data. Make sure you back up anything you don’t want to lose.
I’m not surprised you can’t defrag your user.dat while you’re logged in. That could be worked around by logging in as another user, but I don’t think you’ll be able to move around shell.dll files (although, I’m not sure why there are more than one in use).
NTUser.Dat is your user settings, and I’m a bit worried that it’s as big as 8 MB. 8 MB is also a very suspicious size as (IIRC) it’s the size of one of the internal structures of NTFS.
I’ve long been taught that NTFS doesn’t like running on a disk that’s more than 90% full and is prone to fragmentation in such a scenario. Given the clicking, play safe and get yourself a new HDD.
“Clicking” was probably too strong of a word. I know the clicking of a failed drive, and this doesn’t sound as serious. The machine is at least 5 years old, and I really think that it is just the normal sounds.
Logging on under another admin name sounds good. I’ll try that tonite.
Getting a new c drive — A few years ago I did get a second hard drive, and almost all of my data has been moved to it, and the programs that I have install cds for, but a lot of stuff has been gotten via downloads etc, and without reinstall programs, I just can’t figure out how to move them. And a lot of lower-quality programs don’t offer the option of where to install them even WITH the install program.
Replacing the c drive is an idea, but I don’t know of a reliable way to back up and restore everything such that I could be confident of it working on the new drive. Any suggestions?
Acronis True Image makes it very easy to clone the contents of one drive to another. You simply install the new drive in the machine alongside the existing drive and tell True Image to copy your existing stuff to the new drive. Then you take out the old drive and put the new one in its place.
Your drive is full. With only 6% free space, you’re not far from running headlong into a data disaster as Windows needs some space to work in. 359MB is just not enough room.
Actually, on re-read, your drive is tiny by this decade’s standards.
I agree with this; you don’t have enough free space to do a proper defragment. Windows needs at least 10% empty space (and preferable 25%) to do a complete derfragment. The smalller the available space (under 10%) the less likely Windows will be able to complete a defragment.
True, but my D drive is 80 GB, and after 2 years use still has 52 GB free. I try to keep all my data there, and also whatever new programs allow me to install them there. (Some don’t give any such option. Example: McAfee Internet Suite is eating 78 MB of my C drive. ARRGH!)
So I’ve been trying to whittle away at the C drive to keep as much free space there as I can. But some programs stopped working when I moved them to D, so I’m stuck unless I replace C entirely. (Examples: My Palm Desktop stopped working when I moved it to D. Same for my Juno email - the desktop version has some features which I prefer way over the on-line version.)
But even when I moved some folders to the D drive temporarily, bringing C up to being 16% free, it helped almost not at all. I’m not asking for a complete defragment, just to bring my “Average fragments per file” to something less than 2.23
Is your temp file on drive C? If so, delete it and re-establish it on your faster drive D. You’d be amazed how much free space that can free up on C. Also, make sure your trashcan is empty as well.
Do that by going to Control Panel > System > Advanced > Environment Variables and changing both TEMP and TMP to point to a folder on D:\ (I’d call it “d: emp” myself, but whatever you like). After doing this and rebooting, it should be 100% safe to delete anything that’s still in the old swap file folder. I still wouldn’t delete anything that has today’s date on it, though, just to be extra safe.
Moving your swap file to D: may help a lot, too. Do that by going to Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory and changing the swap file settings from whatever they are on C: it the same settings, just on D:. (Going mostly from memory here, so please don’t sue if I got a button name wrong.)
If you haven’t changed the default size of your recycle bin, it would be taking up 600mb. So if you’re not deleting a bunch of 600mb files on a regular basis, I’d set it smaller. Right click on the recycle bin and choose properties to set it.
Also, you can delete all but the most recent System Restore point through Disk Cleanup. That could potentially get gigabytes back for you. If you’re feeling really brave, shut system restore off altogether. I could be wrong but I don’t think it can save your bacon with so little hard drive space anyhow.
If you enable “show hidden files and folders” under Folder Options you can go into the Windows directory and delete all the update backup directories. They’ll be in blue and they’ll have names like $NTUninstallKB936782… If you do this, you won’t be able to remove whatever Windows update it corresponds to but how often do you remove Windows updates anyhow? My blue folders in Windows are taking up 109mb. That’s 109mb doing absolutely nothing.
The immunity of NTFS to fragmentation problems has been vastly overstated. As to the OP, the fragmentation of the page file is way too high. You should run pagedefrag from the Sysinternals group at MS TechNet.
In my professional opinion, the ‘clicking and spinning’ may not be a failed drive, but it is quite possible that the drive is having health problems.
As drives age, they can experience minute physical wear and defect resulting in them going ‘out of alignment’ [1].
Some odd clicking and spinning sounds may be indicative of a drive that is repeatedly retrying in an effort to hit a sector that it missed on the first attempt to read or write[2]. As the drive ages, it will not come back into alignment and may go further out.
I submit that your problem is likely not related to your file system’s condition: rather, out of alignment drives are simply not good at finding your data quickly.
My suggestions:
Back up any needed files. If you must continue using this drive, contine backing them up on a fequent basis, as indicated by the value of the stored data.
If data read/write speed is important to you, or if downtime on this system would be a serious problem, I strongly urge you to replace this drive[4]. I can find compatible new drives for under $50.
[1] Google phrase:
hard drive out of alignment
for more information on this topic.
[2] As an aside, SMART heuristics adopted by industry indicate that hard drive OEMs believe that retries are positively correlated with increasing risk of drive failure.
[3] There is no [3]
[4] In fact, I suggest replacing any consumer-grade hard drive over 2 years old in situations where downtime might cause loss of money or serious personal inconvenience.
I don’t think many say that NTFS is significantly immune to fragmentation. Rather, it is resilient to fragmentation - a small amount of fragmentation has no significant impact on performance.