File Fragmentation

[BobV]

I was surprised yesterday when doing a partition analysis on my hard drives that the percent of fragmentation was so high. My six partitions were about 50% fragmented and seemed independent of the percentage of disk space usaged. I normally run a defrag about every three months and have never seen anywhere near that amount of fragmentation. I thought it might be a virus although Norton found nothing. Any ideas?

[bazooka]

How many drives are we talking about?

Are you using a raid?

Is the data striped?

How many partitions are on each drive?

[Capmaster]

I was surprised yesterday when doing a partition analysis on my hard drives that the percent of fragmentation was so high. My six partitions were about 50% fragmented and seemed independent of the percentage of disk space usaged. I normally run a defrag about every three months and have never seen anywhere near that amount of fragmentation. I thought it might be a virus although Norton found nothing. Any ideas?

Every three months isn't nearly often enough. Every week is more like it.

Try setting your Windows swap file so the minimum and maximum values are the same ...say 700MB or so. Then reboot. That should eliminate much of the fragmentaton.

When the swapfile is left at the default setting - dynamic - it is constantly changing its size depending on the memory load. This fragments your disk like crazy. Setting it to the same size leaves all the sectors in the same place and doesn't constantly shuffle them around.

And it's a myth that you don't need to defrag with XP

[bazooka]

Every week is overkill and rough on the hard drive.

I usually defrag once a month.

[Capmaster]

Every week is overkill and rough on the hard drive.

I usually defrag once a month.

Different strokes .... I think you stress it more reading in 56 different HD locations each time you read a fragmented file .....time after time .....

[bazooka]

Every week is overkill and rough on the hard drive.

I usually defrag once a month.

Different strokes .... I think you stress it more reading in 56 different HD locations each time you read a fragmented file .....time after time .....

You may have a point. I had not considered that.

[LSchafroth]

Every week is overkill and rough on the hard drive.

I usually defrag once a month.

Different strokes .... I think you stress it more reading in 56 different HD locations each time you read a fragmented file .....time after time .....

You may have a point. I had not considered that.

I set our work PC's to do a scandisk every morning, clean out the temp folders every boot and defrag once a week. Going on 8 years with that configruation. Keeps them as effecient as possible.

I agree, keeping it organized often means defrag will require much less time to run each time and at teh same time keeping the reading of files fragmentation down.

LS

[BobV]

Thanks for the suggestions.

A little more info: I'm using win XP Pro and have a raid 0 configuration that uses two 60gig hd yielding one 120gig Drive. This "Drive" is partitioned into 4 partitions of 30 gig each. The first partition is contains the boot and os. It was only about 12% at the time of my first analisys. I I freed up another 10% before the defrag. I also have one additional drive a 60 gig that I use for backups with one partition of 60gig.

One more question: Can defrags be scheduled to run at night once a week with no intervention from me. I'm curently using XPs disk management.

[Capmaster]

Thanks for the suggestions.

A little more info: I'm using win XP Pro and have a raid 0 configuration that uses two 60gig hd yielding one 120gig drive "C". Drive C is partitioned into 4 partitions of 30 gig each. I have one additional drive a 60 gig that I use for backups with one partition of 60gig.

One more question: Can defrags be scheduled to run at night once a week with no intervention from me. I'm curently using XPs disk management.

I know that with Norton Speed Disk you can, for what that's worth. My work machine is set to be defragged every day at lunchtime Full defrag takes about 4 or 5 minutes (XP Pro SP1, U320 15K SCSI).

I've never relied on the OS-bundled defrag for more than a few hours ....until I can get a good one installed

[BobV]

one more thing... I think I have a HD at home thats maybe a 3gig. Would it be worth my while to make it a dedicated swap file disk?

[Capmaster]

one more thing... I think I have a HD at home thats maybe a 3gig. Would it be worth my while to make it a dedicated swap file disk?

Depends on how old and slow it is. If it's one from the mid-'90s when 3GB was the best you could get, I'd say no. If it's a newer one with a decent transfer speed and access time then it would save you from having to use the big disk for the swapfile

[Dr. DOS]

Try setting your Windows swap file so the minimum and maximum values are the same ...say 700MB or so. Then reboot. That should eliminate much of the fragmentaton.

Outstanding suggestion.... swap file .... denoted as paging file in XP, right? (Just to make sure I am setting the correct item tonight when I get home)