Defragmentation Taking Too Long!

[sohaibrazzaq]

Hi Everyone,
Today i did windows defragmentation on my E: drive first time after making this partition and it took around 4 Hours to complete.
The size of the partition is 19 GB and it is around 5.4 GB Free.The file system is FAT32.The partition is not a OS installed partition and about 70% of the data it contains is audio and video.
Before someone asks here are the harddisk specs :
Segate 320 GB
7200 RPM
8 MB Cache

I check the DMA mode from hardware tab and it said that Ultra DMA Mode 2 is installed for the disk.

Now is this time is normal to run defragmantation on a 19GB Partition?

Pls need comments, thanks.

[ROF]

Depends on the last time it was defragged, how many times you've deleted/overwritten/deleted/overwritten etc. to the drive. The time it takes is related to how fragmented the data is on the drive. 4 hours isn't too long if you've got a well fragmented drive that hasn't had maintenance(defragmentation) performed on it in some time.

[hech54]

I use an app called PowerDefragmenter myself. There are quite a few apps that are better than the Windows defrag. from what I've been told.

BUT...the time it takes to defrag can and will vary each and every time you do it.

[sohaibrazzaq]

I never fragged it before since i created it some 4 months ago and i think the drive was moderatelly fragmented.
i.e. The blue color blocks (unfragmented) was equal or less then red color blocks (fragmented).

Diskeeper 8 lite came with my motherboard cd, i am gonna check it now for other partitions.
Thanks for the post.

[smearbrick1]

What was the fragmentation percentage? If the drive is large and heavily fragmented, four hours is not too extreme.

[BobK]

Hi Everyone,
Today i did windows defragmentation on my E: drive first time after making this partition and it took around 4 Hours to complete.
The size of the partition is 19 GB and it is around 5.4 GB Free.

Everyone who says 4 hours isn't too long probably knows more about it than I do, but 4 hours for 19 GB with 5 GB free seems a little excessive to me. I've defragged a 120 GB with 12 GB free in much less than 4 hours and my system is slower than yours.

However, if it's going to take 4 hours then you could save some time by just copying everything on the drive to a different partition, reformat E: and copy everything back. That shouldn't take more than an hour and would accomplish the same thing.

[smearbrick1]

Hi Everyone,
Today i did windows defragmentation on my E: drive first time after making this partition and it took around 4 Hours to complete.
The size of the partition is 19 GB and it is around 5.4 GB Free.

Everyone who says 4 hours isn't too long probably knows more about it than I do, but 4 hours for 19 GB with 5 GB free seems a little excessive to me. I've defragged a 120 GB with 12 GB free in much less than 4 hours and my system is slower than yours.

However, if it's going to take 4 hours then you could save some time by just copying everything on the drive to a different partition, reformat E: and copy everything back. That shouldn't take more than an hour and would accomplish the same thing.

It's like ROF mentioned; the degree of fragmentation depends on the amount of writing, re-writing, deleting, overwriting. You can fragment the hell out of 19GB especially on FAT32. Windows 98 used to take forever to defrag even a 10gb drive (this does not mean that you are running win98. I was just giving an example of FAT32 situation I knew of.)

[whitejremiah]

However, if it's going to take 4 hours then you could save some time by just copying everything on the drive to a different partition, reformat E: and copy everything back. That shouldn't take more than an hour and would accomplish the same thing.

this is actually a pretty good idea, and it would probably work slightly MORE efficiantly than defragging it, cuz it will completely clean the drive of left over corrupt files and such....

[redwudz]

I'm not sure why you would want to use FAT32 on a hard drive with XP installed. But DMA 2 is not good. It should be DMA 4 or better. That would be a problem for me. My boot drive is DMA 6 and even my burner is DMA 4.

With your system specs., I would use a separate boot drive and your system throughput would improve. Partitions aren't really a good alternative to separate hard drives on separate channels or controllers. Your OS may be doing 'housekeeping' in the background while you are defragging and that may have an effect of speed.

[gadgetguy]

However, if it's going to take 4 hours then you could save some time by just copying everything on the drive to a different partition, reformat E: and copy everything back. That shouldn't take more than an hour and would accomplish the same thing.

this is actually a pretty good idea, and it would probably work slightly MORE efficiantly than defragging it, cuz it will completely clean the drive of left over corrupt files and such....

It's a good idea to do that periodically but that does not accomplish the same thing. When you copy that data back it can still end up fragmented.

[Bjs]

Copy all to another partition .
Run scandisk on the old partition .
Then defrag old partition .
Copy all back to old partition .
Run scandisk again .

Much faster this way .

And xp is non the wiser ... there is no fragmentation , cause it now think's this is all new crap ... it the right place .

It's how I treat my video capture partition's ...

[richdvd]

Hi Everyone,
Today i did windows defragmentation on my E: drive first time after making this partition and it took around 4 Hours to complete.
The size of the partition is 19 GB and it is around 5.4 GB Free.The file system is FAT32.The partition is not a OS installed partition and about 70% of the data it contains is audio and video.
Before someone asks here are the harddisk specs :
Segate 320 GB
7200 RPM
8 MB Cache

I check the DMA mode from hardware tab and it said that Ultra DMA Mode 2 is installed for the disk.

Now is this time is normal to run defragmantation on a 19GB Partition?

Pls need comments, thanks.

If I were you, I would convert to NTFS....first of all.

[BobK]

[quote="gadgetguy"]

However, if it's going to take 4 hours then you could save some time by just copying everything on the drive to a different partition, reformat E: and copy everything back. That shouldn't take more than an hour and would accomplish the same thing.

It's a good idea to do that periodically but that does not accomplish the same thing. When you copy that data back it can still end up fragmented.

That's true, but it will be fairly minor and you can then run defrag immediately after copying everything back to the reformatted drive and it shouldn't take very long at all.

I missed the part about FAT 32- that could slow it down too.

[rallynavvie]

Can I indulge myself and ask why you're partitioning a drive like that? And why FAT32? Are you running an emulator on that partition that requires FAT32? These are both likely causes of your slow defrag times. Emulators (like Basilisk likes FAT32 over NTFS for instance) use the disk space in pretty odd ways that can throw some defrag apps off.

I have been using O&O Defrag on all my workstations for a couple years now. It runs as a service and defrags in the background when idle (much like HFS+ does). It uses up some system resources keeping the process/service alive but nothing that today's PCs can't tackle easily enough. But the fact that it maintains all 5 internal disk drives in my main at well below 5% fragmentation daily make it totally worthwile. You can set thresholds for individual drives so that it raises priority of defragging to drives that need it more and so forth. It's not freeware though, and I think only the expensive Server version has the background defragging.

Even if not you should still be setting a time every week to defrag each drive. I used to do this with SpeedDisk before I got O&O and set it to do one drive each weeknight at 2am so it was done well before I got up.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

I use O&O Defrag (it's the shiznit!) and my 160G drive can sometimes take 2 hours.....
big drives take a long time to defrag, especially with a good defrag program.
the defrag that comes with Windows is pure shit.

[sohaibrazzaq]

thnx for all suggestions, i have converted all of my partitions to NTFS and installed diskeeper 8 lite, hope to see some improvement in speed in the near future.
thnx for the advise, i am also thinking to purchase a new 160 gb wd and dedicate this one only for my audio video projects i.e capturing, rendering, authoring etc.

[FulciLives]

Hell my first Intel / DOS / Windows computer had an 80MB HDD and a defrag would take overnight sometimes.

You young people blow me away with your concept of "too long".

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
Yes you read right ... 80MB not 80GB

[Xylob the Destroyer]

haha!
I remember when my mom blew her tax refund on a 1G hard drive.
1 gig!!! wow, you'll NEVER use all that space....

[sohaibrazzaq]

*********POST EDITED*******

how can i delete my post??

[JerryB]

Hi Everyone,
Today i did windows defragmentation on my E: drive first time after making this partition and it took around 4 Hours to complete.
The size of the partition is 19 GB and it is around 5.4 GB Free.The file system is FAT32.The partition is not a OS installed partition and about 70% of the data it contains is audio and video.
Before someone asks here are the harddisk specs :
Segate 320 GB
7200 RPM
8 MB Cache

I check the DMA mode from hardware tab and it said that Ultra DMA Mode 2 is installed for the disk.

Now is this time is normal to run defragmantation on a 19GB Partition?

Pls need comments, thanks.

hi,
mm...defrag takes a long time..... short answere.. to long!! however there a few thing that have to be thought about ...
1. the very time time you do defrag you can expect it to take a longer time to do... however there after it will/should be much much shorter...!!!
2. there a couple of factors that effect how long it take to defrag...!!
a. how badly fragmented the hard drive is!!
b. and this is a biggie, how many programs are running in the background... that is the biggie!!!!! you have programs running in the background it will take a lot longer...!! defrag will take longer because it either it has to wait for (or interferred by) other programs and/or it will restart because of interference of programs
bottom line...... a couple of choices..
1. disable all programs running in the background before doing your defrag
2. or go into safe mode and do defrag there...!! in safe mode all those normal startup programs are shut down.. hense thing are faster. smile...!
Note: somthing you might want to think about doing just in general,, disable all needless programs that statup at windows boot..... helps in many ways.....!!
just to give you an idea... on my 80 gig HD with about appx 18gig of files.... it take my system about 15-20 minutes to defrag...!! that in regular windows, using M$ defrag program, AND keeping to a minimum programs running int background!!!!!

[redwudz]

You can't delete your own post.

And does your hard drive still show as DMA 2 or was that a typo? DMA 2 is DVD ROM speed, 33Mhz. It should be a ATA100 or ATA133 drive, which would show as a DMA 4 to DMA 6.

[sohaibrazzaq]

@JerryB
nothing was running in the background except windows XP only startup tasks, i even turn my antivirus protection and spyware protectio down.

@redwudz
sorry, i think DMA 2 is for my DVD Writer, i can't see any for my harddisk, plz tell me how i can, my hd is SATA. i am a completely noob

[sohaibrazzaq]

WOW, i can't beleive this, i cannot beleive this, i just defragged D: drive, it was even more fragmmented then E: drive and it took less then 15 minutes to complete while i was also downloading a file at 150 KB/s.
The size of D: is also 19 GB and it is only 3 GB free.
Only difference here is that it is NTFS so i think all was due to FAT32 but that much difference, at FAT32 it took nearly 4 hours and at NTFS it took less then 15 minutes to defrag even more fragmented drive.
FAT32 sucks, i will never go back to FAT32 now

[JerryB]

@JerryB
nothing was running in the background except windows XP only startup tasks, i even turn my antivirus protection and spyware protectio down.

@redwudz
sorry, i think DMA 2 is for my DVD Writer, i can't see any for my harddisk, plz tell me how i can, my hd is SATA. i am a completely noob

hi,
smile... you be surprised how much is running.. first how about screen saver???? it notorious for slowing defrag..... that can only be disable via display properties!!

were you looking at the task manager? only? that only shows a few things!!, one needs to look at the msconfig.exe>startup tab.... that will show a ton of things... that not shown in the systra (notification area) or the task manager...!!

now the possiblity of spyware... i always use two antispyware programs one is not enough for secuirty...! my opnion only...

[redwudz]

I missed the SATA part. DMA doesn't apply. It should be running at the proper speed then.

I would still recommend 2 or more hard drives on a system. I'm not a fan of multiple partitions. You are using only one controller and channel to pass all the data back and forth within the partitions. Not a big hit on performance, but for capturing and editing, it could slow things down.

If there is an advantage to multiple partitions, it might be when you defrag it will take less time if you just need to defrag individual partitions than defragging a large drive all at once. One advantage to NTFS is it should need less defragging. Just my opinion, but constant defragging may end up wearing out your drives prematurely. Just listen to one during a defrag, it's working pretty hard.

If you have a smaller hard drive just for your OS and the bigger hard drive for capture, etc., it's more efficient, IMO.

[sohaibrazzaq]

@JerryB
no screensaver, i don't like screensavers, i think 24 tasks were running in total.nothing big mostly like (svchost.exe, services.exe, smss.exe, csrss.exe etc)

@redwudz
i have 5 partitions on my drive
C: 80 GB (OS installed)
D: 20 GB (For installers backup only)
E: 20 GB (For music and videos)
F: 100 GB (For Games)
G: 100 GB (For capturing, authoring etc)
NOTE : Partition sizes here are approximate and can vary like 18.9 GB instead of 20 GB etc

Now i am gonna buy 160 GB Western Digital hard for capturing purposes
okay my defragmentation problem is solved now, thanks for everyone's help.

[JerryB]

@JerryB
no screensaver, i don't like screensavers, i think 24 tasks were running in total.nothing big mostly like (svchost.exe, services.exe, smss.exe, csrss.exe etc)

@redwudz
i have 5 partitions on my drive
C: 80 GB (OS installed)
D: 20 GB (For installers backup only)
E: 20 GB (For music and videos)
F: 100 GB (For Games)
G: 100 GB (For capturing, authoring etc)
NOTE : Partition sizes here are approximate and can vary like 18.9 GB instead of 20 GB etc

Now i am gonna buy 160 GB Western Digital hard for capturing purposes
okay my defragmentation problem is solved now, thanks for everyone's help.

great to hear about your issue solved... what finally worked for you? just curious...
it might be a good idea to go to safe mode and do defrag there.. it would give you a base line on h ow fast it can be...

24 tasks.. generally in msconfig you'll see about 15-20 normal startups and in services you'll see abut 30-50... smiling...!! I know iam currently reviewing again my startup.. what going to be fun is figuring out the needless services.. smile.... a lot of thinking goes into those.... smile..

[The_Pioneer]

Nothing to contribute except a further push towards O&O defrag.

It'll get you far closer to the 0% fragmentation (often impossible for legitimate reasons) we'd all like.

[sp8rt1cus]

Allways defragment in Safe Mode it is always so much better and will always be quicker.

[edDV]

Fastest way to defrag a drive is to copy maximum GB of less essential files to a different drive, defrag and then copy back. This groups the essential stuff at the front of the drive.