Some files in this volume could not be defragmented

Factual Questions
1

Can anyone help me out with this? Google has not been my friend on this one.

I am trying to defrag a drive that is used strictly for storage. No system files, no program files. Further, I did not use the drive, for anything, during the defrag process.

The results were very disappointing, going by the colored bar display, and the report at the end. “Some files in this volume could not be defragmented.” Nothing about why.

I hate to think what will happen when I actually do try to defrag my C: drive.

The system is Windows XP MCE. The drive is NTFS, mounted in an external enclosure connected via USB. I am using the Windows defrag utility.

All the files that couldn’t be defragmented were large, ranging from about 700 Mb to 4.36 Gb. I did clear space on the drive before defragging, the program wanted at least 15% free space and I got a little higher than that.

Anyone have any ideas?

2

My first guess would be a lack of sufficient free space. The 15% recommendation is for a drive full of average files. If you have large files, there may not be enough room to make a copy of the file out to free space on the drive, then copy it back in an unfragmented form.

One way to get around this would be to back up all the files on the disk, either to CD/DVD or to another external drive, then format the original drive and copy the files back.

3

In addition to what FBG said, I would also say that 100% defragmentation really isn’t a big deal. I don’t have any hard facts about this at the moment, but my impression is that badly fragmented filesystems were more of an issue back in the day. With modern hardware and filesystems, those few large files that are in a handful of fragments won’t make any noticeable difference in performance.