Is there anything better and FREE out there that does a better job defragmenting NTFS than the default program (which lies) that W2K comes with? The reason it lies is b/c I have some movies (really big files b/c they come from camcorders) that, once put on the HD, show up as red spaces i.e. fragmented files. Not only that, but there is a large green area for a system file–this hard drive is specifically for my own data and W2k doesn’t use it for anything (not even recycle bin which shows up anyway for some reason and i can’t get rid of it).
Any 3rd party software that is better at doing NTFS?
Any file can be fragmented. That’s the whole point of defragmenting. A single file, no matter the size (although more likely the bigger the file), can be written all over the place on the computer’s hard drive. This is normal and ok to an extent. However, if it gets out of hand performance may suffer so you defragment. Defragmenting tries to make single files contiguous.
I didn’t explain it well enough–reading over it, i barely explained it. I know these files are fragmented b/c they ARE in red, but when I defrag, they remain red. In other words, this default defragger isn’t doing anything to the movies I have.
If you analyze the partition with the Windows defragger and click View Report on the message box that comes up once it’s finished, it’ll show you the files that are currently fragmented. There might be something there that you don’t know about, like a page file. Something to look at.
You can also try Norton’s defragger, but it’s decidedly not free, and IMO, the whole SystemWorks suite been getting crappier with each new release. If you can find a cheap used copy of SW 2001 or maybe even 2002, however, go for it, since a few of the tools are pretty nice.
I’m kinda reluctant to post this b/c I feel stupid doing so. The reason the defragger wouldn’t do the movies is b/c the folder’s permissions were set to Everyone: Deny Full Control.
I feel dumb. But let’s all try to learn something from this!!