Trouble defragging large disk

Topic

New Reply

I’ve used MyDefrag (previously JKDefrag) for a long time now but I recently started having an issue using it to defrag my 2TB drive. After analyzing for a while it’ll tell me that there’s too many items of the disk and there isn’t enough memory (I’ve 4GB RAM on x86 Windows 7 laptop). I’ve also tried the built in defragger via the command line (because it’s a lot more efficient that way) and it seems to have run through but with further analysis it seems my drive is still quite fragmented. Is there any way to give a program more memory or something so I can defrag and optimize the way I always have?

Reply | Quote

Replies

If the drive is heavily fragmented try several more passes with the Windows 7 default tool.
Run MyDefrag again after you have tried the above, but try booting the laptop first.

I’m familiar with JKDefrag, but I’ve stoped using it a while back in favor of Vopt.

Reply | Quote

I’ve seen common mechanical hard drives still running strong after 12+ years. The jury is still out on whether an SSD will ever last that long. Personally, I’m still waiting to get my first SATA III hard drive.

😎

Reply | Quote

Try Auslogics Disk defragmenter. Works great for me.

Reply | Quote

I’ve used MyDefrag (previously JKDefrag) for a long time now but I recently started having an issue using it to defrag my 2TB drive.

grnorris,
Hello… I use Raxco PerfectDisk 11 Raxco and now they have a new version, 12 which i have not tried … 11 works … might have a look at their product. :cheers: Regards Fred

Reply | Quote

Hi grnorris, use ‘chkdsk’ first then follow Ted’s post.

Reply | Quote

Sounds like a waste of good electricity to me. The thing will be fragmented in another month and you will waste more time attempting to make it look tidy….
/grumpiness off

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

@Paul: Most of the data on my drive won’t change for a while and it’s so heavily fragmented that I can see a visible difference in performance. There’s also the fact that since I mostly read data on the disk and not write to it I will ultimately save my disk and even electricity as less seek operations will be necessary. @RodeRunner: I doubt my disk is damaged at all but I will still check it to be on the safe side. The problem is simply that I have way to many files on it (backup files, videos, books, installers, ect.) I will also check out Auslogics and if that doesn’t work I’ll check out Raxco (though I’m not big on the idea of paying money to defrag my disk).

Reply | Quote

:rolleyes: Hi, I think thats the latest version – MyDefrag 4.3.1.– can take care of your problem. Filled with
several options of scripts

/Oscarius38

I’ve used MyDefrag (previously JKDefrag) for a long time now but I recently started having an issue using it to defrag my 2TB drive. After analyzing for a while it’ll tell me that there’s too many items of the disk and there isn’t enough memory (I’ve 4GB RAM on x86 Windows 7 laptop). I’ve also tried the built in defragger via the command line (because it’s a lot more efficient that way) and it seems to have run through but with further analysis it seems my drive is still quite fragmented. Is there any way to give a program more memory or something so I can defrag and optimize the way I always have?

Reply | Quote

I’ve used MyDefrag (previously JKDefrag) for a long time now but I recently started having an issue using it to defrag my 2TB drive. After analyzing for a while it’ll tell me that there’s too many items of the disk and there isn’t enough memory (I’ve 4GB RAM on x86 Windows 7 laptop). I’ve also tried the built in defragger via the command line (because it’s a lot more efficient that way) and it seems to have run through but with further analysis it seems my drive is still quite fragmented. Is there any way to give a program more memory or something so I can defrag and optimize the way I always have?

One of your problems could arise if you’re not measuring fragmentation with the same program that did the defragmenting. As I’ve reported in the forum thread on Woody’s article on the topic of “software you don’t need,” defragmentation is in the eye of the beholder, and there is no single functional defintion used by all utility developers for what that means. For example, Win7 Disk Defragmenter tells me right now that my C:, D:, E:, W:, and Y: drives are 0%, 1%, 0%, 0%, and 0% fragmented, respectively (after defragmenting yesterday). Defraggler (from Piriform, makers of CCleaner) reports the same drives as 42%, 10% 6%, 6%, and 0% fragmented.

There’s a bigger question, though: Do you really need to “defrag and optimize the way I always have”?

In the old days (perhaps more than 5 years ago, and certainly more than 10), when small hard disk sizes meant that disk space was precious (and costly to expand) and disk access speeds were glacial (by today’s standards), disk defrag & optimization utilities were in their heyday–shoot, I even remember users talking about defragging and optimizing floppy disks back in the ’80s! Current disk capacities and access speeds have done away with most (not all, but most) of the gains that those programs brought, however. I’m not saying that defragging isn’t worth it, just that it’s not worth spending the kind of time on (let alone any money on) that it used to (and “optimization” is probably even less important, if it has any real-world significance at all).

Yes, I know that some forum members are already pulling out their benchmarking numbers to show how much better their disk access times are after using their favorite defrag tool, but can they demonstrate that they’re really getting their work done any faster than they would by just letting Win7 take care of it? In fact, are they even breaking even, compared to the time they put in chasing down the best tool and proving that it’s the best? As I said, there has to be real-world significance for this topic to mean any more than just bragging rights. (Oh, and if you’re not polishing your processor and heat sink surfaces before applying the thermal paste and overclocking to the max, are you really doing all that you can to get the most out of your system?) Oh, well, at least your browser will run faster, right? Right?

Yeah, I know that if feels like letting Win7 simply run Disk Defragmenter in the background and ignoring any further thought on the matter feels like cheating (particularly if you’ve got a tool that you’ve been loyal to for many years), but ask yourself if some microscopic performance gain is really worth the time and energy you’re putting into the pursuit of better, when what you have for free is already more than good enough. My drives were all defragmented yesterday, and I never noticed that it was happening or had happened (not until I just went and looked, that is)–it just worked.

If you just have to know what’s going on, though, here’s an enlightening online tutorial that explains what Win7’s Disk Defragmenter utility is doing: http://sourcedaddy.com/windows-7/fil…mentation.html

Scroll down to the section titled “Defragmentation Algorithm Improvements.”

There’s also a helpful command line switch explanation for defrag.exe later on the same page.

Reply | Quote

Disk Defragmentation – Background and Engineering the Windows 7 Improvements is an interesting read about the decisions made during Windows 7 development.

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

First off I tried Auslogics and it did work though it seems to have left a little fragmentation I suspect that’s because it was trying to optimize. @Oskarius: I’m already using the newest version and it’s still not able to handle my disk. @bethel95: I’ve had this discussion before (most times on these forums) and the answer is simply that I don’t have a lot of money (I bought my large disk with Christmas money and almost all of my programs I got for free) but I have noticed that on my large and often times extremely full EHDD’s if I don’t defrag and optimize they get annoyingly slow (as in it’s not microscopic, it’s quite macroscopic). As I mentioned in an earlier post I use my EHDD for Backups (not just my devices but also other computers), Large Installers (so I can install them on other computers without having to find a disk and because I download quite a few of my installers from MSDNAA [student partnership so I paid once and continue to get stuff] and never bother burning them in the first place and because I like to have a backup in case the original disk gets destroyed), Videos and pictures. As for spending money on a disk defrag software I’d have to be quite desperate, no offense to anyone who thinks it’s necessary but I believe there’s almost always a better freeware solution (and most will agree with me). That’s why the only software I pay for on my computer is the proprietary stuff like Office 2007 Student (and I know about OpenOffice but it fails to follow the format of most of my docs and I end up having to redo half of my editing when I move it to another computer that uses Office so yes, buying Office was necessary for me).

Reply | Quote

I evaluate tons of software in a years time, including an occasional Defrag program. I tried one called the “Defraggler” and it totally trashed my hard drive. It wouldn’t even boot.
I had to do a Ghost restore of a backup image of my C: drive to get my computer to boot again.

Then I tried Auslogic’s defrag and it made a total mess of my HD, with data scattered from one end of the drive to another. That’s not what I call a Defrag. Again, a Ghost backup came to my rescue.

Making a Ghost backup and then doing an immediate Restore is how I do my own defragmentation. It’s the same tack we used to take when defragmenting the big Mainframe drives.

On my XP PC, after doing a backup and restore, my drive looks like this:

The blue area is of course my data, while the green is the Pagefile.
I delete the pagefile and all the junk files before I do my backups, and once Windows reboots,
it makes a new pagefile at the end of the data area.

Now if you have a defrag program that will make your own drive look like that, let me know. I’d like to see it.
In the mean time, I’ll continue to do it MY WAY, like I’ve done for years.

Cheers Mates,
😎

Reply | Quote

I’ve rarely heard of a defragger damaging a drive and every time i have heard of such a thing it was because the persons drive was damaged, usually physically though occasionally just a screwed up MBR. That’s probably why RodeRunner suggested to do a chkdsk first so I made sure not to screw anything up.

Reply | Quote

The downside of the Dr’s strategy is every change from here on in fragments files across the page file, resulting in relatively large head movements for small accesses. A good defragger should leave some space for Windows to work with.

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

Well, I could, of course, put the Pagefile on a separate partition, but then again that works the snot out of the drives’ head positioner.
Or let everything go to RAM and just forget the pagefile. (that wasn’t MS’s first choice and it’s not mine)
Well I do my backup and restore every week, at least, and I’ve seen only very good speed and efficiency from my computer.
As I save new files, they always go into free space and don’t get fragmented, instead of having to load into little free sectors scattered among fragments of other files. That creates massive fragmentation.

Often, I find a Hard drive in a customer’s PC, that is so horribly fragmented and so laced with junk files that the only sensible way to recover the drive is to do a massive cleanup and then a backup, re-format and restore to bring it to some sense of order.
That’s much faster than the hours a Defrag would take. And, that computer will then run so much faster.
By the way, my PC is about five years old and still runs faster than most of the new computers coming out of the stores today.

I’ve been working these forums for as long as there has been Forums and it makes no difference what I say about anything, someone will find fault with it, or make fun of it. That’s just a given. But I still have an extremely FAST computer and I’ve not seen a BSOD, or had a virus, in years.

Do let me know if you can match that defrag of mine. Eh?
Show screen shots!
😎

Reply | Quote

Not saying your solution isn’t good, just pointing out there is no perfect solution – except maybe an SSD.

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

SSD? You really should read more!
The internet is awash with SSD problems. I’ll pass on the SSD, for the time being anyway.
Too pricey and too iffy. :rolleyes:

Just one little trick, to load the entire Kernel into RAM on boot up, greatly increases any PC’s
performance.

Even the fastest hard drives, in common use today, will bog down to MFM speeds if not kept clean
and defragmented.

I just worked on an OLD PC last week, that was 7 years old, with Windows XP-Home on it and it had
never been cleaned out or defragmented in all that time. It was way beyond S….L….O….W !!
When I got done cleaning and tuning that old PC, it ran faster than when it was new.
The guy was ready to buy a new PC, but now he’s a happy camper again.

It’s amazing what one can do with just a little time and effort, and the knowledge to properly apply it.

Cheers Mates!
The Doctor 😎

Reply | Quote

I know of NO hard disc drives nor any O/S that will load data onto disc platters without filling up the lower empty sectors first. This means that unless you defrag with a proggie that fills all empty sectors which is normally called packing, you will find that your hard disc will immediately become fragmented the instant you copy files to it unless you repack them before writing to it. If you have a relatively static setup, i.e. a single partition that does very little add or delete, you may not have much need of anything more than the bot Win7 carries with it if you run it regularly. However, if you are constantly changing things, adding things, deleting things, it is at best, mediocre. The picture it displays is not a true depiction of your disc sector layout. Very few defraggers actually can pack files thereby completely alleviating empty sectors between files left after moves or deletions. Even fewer will place used and unused called data into their preferred locations on the disc for faster access. I use multiple drives each having multiple partitions and mirrors for all of them so I am not terribly at risk for fragmentation as SCSI320 mirrors will access the striped data from the nearest location to the head’s current location on either disc automatically and yet packing remains essential for optimum performance. Look at how the larger data storage sites run their data storage. It ain’t using the Win7 defragger or anything like it.

SSD’s are not the general answer as they seem to have finite lives (reads/writes) among other issues. I have drives (SCSI320 10k and 15k on mirroring controllers running dual channel for 640 Mb/sec) that have tens of thousands of hours of use that run 24/7. Good luck getting SSD’s to do that.

I backup to an 8 disk 300/600GB per tape DLT Library running at about 1.8GB/min with restore within 45 secs away. Hard drives break and platter media fails with no error reporting and cost a lot more than a simple cheap tape that has error reporting and error recovery built in. Harry Homeowner has no need for these expensive intricate hardware solutions, but please, stop with the Win7 bull, OK? Fine for mom at home doing ebay or email, but totally inept for machines that are used hard.

If you are running XP+, and you are looking for a well built, fast, packing utility that will perform as advertised, give Vopt a try. You will thank me later. And no, I have nothing to do with this product other than being a ten year long user who has tried most of them out there over the years. It will handle any capacity you can muster to throw at it. And for fast, reliable storage, give dual channel, mirrored SCSI a tumble, SATA is a comparative joke.

Reply | Quote

please, stop with the Win7 bull, OK? Fine for mom at home doing ebay or email, but totally inept for machines that are used hard.

Not even fine for that; I worked on a PC 3 days ago that’s used every weekend and occasionally during the week, defrag was set to a different day/time but otherwise had all the default settings. Yet the last time defrag had run was February 2nd!

Reply | Quote

SSD? You really should read more!
The internet is awash with SSD problems. I’ll pass on the SSD, for the time being anyway.
Too pricey and too iffy. :rolleyes:

There are some differing opinions on that, actually: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/ssds-are-fast-but-do-they-last/3621?tag=content;selector-blogs

I think they are expensive, but seems reliability may not be an issue, not more than with regular drives, anyway.

Reply | Quote

For my customers, I set up a weekly maintenance routine for them, including my own batch file to clean out all the standard garbage, followed by Windows own Disk Cleanup and a Windows Defrag.
Some will do it religiously, and some won’t. But the ones who do, have a lot less problems with their PC and they enjoy nice fast operation, week after week.

Garbage buildup on a HD and fragmentation can bring a nice fast PC down to a crawl.
And it’s so unnecessary! Microsoft actually gave us all the tools to keep our PC’s running smoothly and efficiently.
So why not just use what came for FREE with every install of Windows? There’s NO need to install any more software, adding to the already bloated Hard Drive.

A simple thing like running the Disk Cleanup app in the Extended mode, really helps to get rid of more junk.
Copy and paste this line into a desktop shortcut, for a much improved Disk Cleanup:
%SystemRoot%System32Cmd.exe /c Cleanmgr /sageset:65535 & Cleanmgr /sagerun:65535

The first time you run it, you will need to put a check next to each item you want it to clean out.
I just check everything but, Office Setup files, Compress Old Files and Setup Log files. Leave those UN-Selected.
Then click OK to run the app. Much garbage will be quickly deleted. Do run this program weekly or put it in your Task Manager, for an automatic cleanup.

I put my own Cleanup.bat program in my customer’s Startup Folders, for a FREE daily Cleanup.
It doesn’t get everything, but does get rid of a lot of temp files, etc., left over from the day before.

Cheers Mates!
The Doctor 😎

Reply | Quote

I just read back through most of this thread and realize that people have completely forgotten what I posted about. For a quick recap I was looking to defrag an External hard drive. DrWho’s method would probably work well for an OS or small EHDD but for the largest thing I got I can’t exactly do a backup and restore. As for this Windows VS 3rd party debate it’s generally a matter of opinion though I do have my own. My own computer died do to a hardware problem (the HDD is still running perfectly fine by the way, it seems to be the processor or some other aspect of the motherboard/power system, in other words I’m stuck without it for quite a while). When I did have my computer I had a setup that worked well for me: Comodo Firewall (just the firewall), Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (just the free version I used a batch file/Windows Scheduler to scan and update), I use CCLeaner and sometimes PowerTools Lite. The only time I had any problems was when I neglected to do maintenance. So although it’s completely against what I created this thread for: CCleaner, MyDefrag and a AV/Firewall are the only things I think most Windows Computers need that isn’t already installed. Although I used my computer frequently MyDefrag was good enough for my internal HDD defragging. I’ve heard people swear by all sorts of others out there but for me it works. What it couldn’t do was defrag my External hard drive when I put too many files in one partition for it to handle. Also when I work on other peoples computers I set them up with the following (off the top of my head). I give them CCleaner and set it up (so it won’t erase anything they really want but will erase all the extra stuff they don’t and that Windows and 3rd party softwares that create the extra files often don’t. I also give them Avira which isn’t as powerful as my personal solution but is good enough for most people and is easy to use. I also give them Malwarebyte’s and tell them to use it at least once a month (though few actually do). I typically set them up with Firefox if they are using IE as I’ve not only heard how much better FF is than IE I’ve personally seen the difference. If they are using Opera or Chrome I usually leave that alone (I use Opera as an alt and haven’t gotten into Chrome but I’ve read enough about it to know that it’s not yet as vulnerable as even FF is (of course it’s also much newer and not yet as popular). As far as a defrag goes (which is the closest thing to being on topic here) I usually give them a sample of my MyDefrag setup. MyDefrag has a screensaver mode that will run a script (generally System Disk Daily which does numerous things to optimize an OS partition including leaving a little free space where Temp Data can go so as to avoid having it all over the place). Since a lot of people leave there computers running this method will automatically defrag there OS disk (which for the average user is there only HDD) whenever they leave their computer. Unless you are doing some serious computing or using a really old and/or slow drive (like this desktops secondary drive a 120GB SATA running at 1700 RPM) you don’t need to do anything fancy. The problem with normal schedules is that the computer may or may not be on to do it. I can at least guarantee the System disk will be maintained.

Reply | Quote