# Defragging my disk doesn't seem to work **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 10, 2008, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defragging-my-disk-doesnt-seem-to-work/440849 "2008-03-10T17:18:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mr.Slant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c57346/32.png) [@Mr.Slant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Slant)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2008, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defragging-my-disk-doesnt-seem-to-work/440849/21 "2008-03-11T15:11:02Z")
Actually, circa 1995-1996, Microsoft was pretty much telling everyone that NTFS was immune to fragmentation. Due to their sincere belief that they were correct, Windows NT4 did not even include a defragmentation utility. Dave Cutler was the OS engineer behind NT, and before that VMS. Microsoft brought that problem over when they stole Cutler from DEC. I know that older versions of VMS also lacked working defragmentation facilities; Mark Minasi’s old NT Magazine column contained stories about having to backup and restore from tape to degrag VMS systems. ---
**Author:** ![ratatoskK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ratatoskk/32/2987_2.png) [@ratatoskK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ratatoskK)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2008, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defragging-my-disk-doesnt-seem-to-work/440849/22 "2008-03-11T15:25:51Z")
You probably already did this, but make sure you’re in safe mode when you run defrag. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2008, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defragging-my-disk-doesnt-seem-to-work/440849/23 "2008-03-11T18:37:52Z")
[QUOTE=Keeve] “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. [/QUOTE] Of course, the normal sound of a five-year old consumer hard drive is silence. Because it doesn’t work anymore. That’s perhaps an exaggeration, but I try to think of disk drives as consumables with a 5 year life, not long-term capital. Scrape up $50 and get a new one. If it comes in a box, it will almost certainly have a utility to transfer everything from your old drive to the new one. ---
**Author:** ![Keeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2008, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defragging-my-disk-doesnt-seem-to-work/440849/24 "2008-03-11T19:15:34Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#): > > 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. 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). Sounds like a fantastic idea, but it only holds 11 MB of stuff at the moment. > [@KneadToKnow](#): > > 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.) Actually, you got all those buttons correct, and it is currently set at 398 MB on C. So I will certainly move that over to D. I’m guessing that this alone will make a big difference. But can I move the swap file while logged in? Unless someone clues me on that, I’ll do it from safe mode. Thanx! > [@Crocodiles And Boulevards](#): > > What kind of defragger are you using? I suggest getting Diskeeper … Yes, a coworker suggested that, and I tried the free trial version this morning. Despite Diskeeper’s claims of total defrag when only 1% of the disk is free, it was only 5% better than Microsoft’s defrag, when run with a 6% empty disk. Glad I didn’t pay for it. > [@DWMarch](#): > > 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. I empty it several times a week. It rarely holds more than 10 MB. Thanks anyway. > [@DWMarch](#): > > Also, you can delete all but the most recent System Restore point through Disk Cleanup. That could potentially get gigabytes back for you. I NEVER use Microsoft’s Disk Cleanup, because it simply cleans up everything that it thinks is useless, without asking me. But the Norton stuff that I recently installed does delete the Restore points for me. Thanks. > [@DWMarch](#): > > 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. GREAT! I was always wondering about those! My presumption was that the “uninstall” is used by the Control Panel “Add and Delete Programs” option. But if this is only for Windows Update, it is outa here! 239 MB is now history! THANKS! > [@ftg](#): > > the fragmentation of the page file is way too high. You should run pagedefrag from the Sysinternals group at MS TechNet. I’ll take a look at that later. Thanks in advance. If none of the above helps, I’ll replace that drive. Many thanks to the several posters who suggested it. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Slant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c57346/32.png) [@Mr.Slant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Slant)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2008, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defragging-my-disk-doesnt-seem-to-work/440849/25 "2008-03-11T19:38:27Z")
Regarding the swap file: Create a new one on D: Set there to be none on C: Reboot. If there is still a pagefile on C:, it shouldn’t be locked. Delete the pagefile. Reboot. Add a new pagefile to C: and unset the one on D: Reboot Delete the one on D: ---
**Author:** ![Crocodiles\_And\_Boulevards](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ee7513/32.png) [@Crocodiles\_And\_Boulevards](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crocodiles_And_Boulevards)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defragging-my-disk-doesnt-seem-to-work/440849/26 "2008-03-12T01:34:36Z")
[QUOTE=Keeve] Yes, a coworker suggested that, and I tried the free trial version this morning. Despite Diskeeper’s claims of total defrag when only 1% of the disk is free, it was only 5% better than Microsoft’s defrag, when run with a 6% empty disk. Glad I didn’t pay for it. [/QUOTE] Well, like I said, you should clean up your disk to 25%ish, or more. With Diskeeper I was able to reduce my fragmentation to 1% on my hard drive, which Windows Defragger didn’t even come close to. ---
**Author:** ![Keeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2008, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defragging-my-disk-doesnt-seem-to-work/440849/27 "2008-03-13T03:39:30Z")
[QUOTE=Gus Gusterson] 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. [/QUOTE] Done! And it really was very simple and easy. Not to mention cheap: The free-trial download is full-featured; it’ll only work for 15 days, but it turns out that this is about 14.5 days longer than I’ll need it for. (On the other hand, this whole scene :smack: just might put me in the habit of doing backups more often than every other year :eek: , in which case I might spring for the official version.) Instead of an almost-full 6 GB C: drive, I now have an almost-empty 57 GB C: drive, taken from a Win2K machine that was laying around and not being used. (Yeah, I know everyone will yell at me for not buying a brand-new drive, but I’m planning to buy a brand-new laptop in a few weeks for my stuff, and leave this desktop machine for the family.) I can’t tell yet whether or not this is improving performance at all, since it is so soon after rebooting and I haven’t tried having a half-dozen windows open at once. We’ll see tomorrow. Thanks all, for your suggestions. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Slant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c57346/32.png) [@Mr.Slant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Slant)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2008, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defragging-my-disk-doesnt-seem-to-work/440849/28 "2008-03-13T03:45:15Z")
No yelling here. Unless that 60 GB drive has known issues, we can safely assume it’s at least two years newer than your old drive. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defragging-my-disk-doesnt-seem-to-work/440849.md?page=1)