Community Newsletter: Q&A: 11/05/04 Hard drive cannot be defragged

Re: 11/05/04 Hard drive cannot be defragged

I found this to be a very interesting topic and wish to contribute to the mix.

One item not touched on was that this defrag issue, as addressed, is for a workstation-like machine and not a server. Addressing server-level defrags for windows machines is a whole other issue that I've dealt with but have little real experience with (maybe a good topic for another day, hmmmm).

Workstation-level PC's, laptops and personal computers at home seem to have been the basic focus for your question and answers. I've owned my own laptop for a number of years now and certainly defragmenting the hard drive is essential to continuing smooth operation.

I've discovered that the more processes executing in memory, the more files that are marked/locked busy on the system drive and thus those files cannot be defragmented. To deal with this issue, I save all data, close all applications, 'exit' all tools in the system tray to nicely and cleanly close them down and then I've experimented with killing off processes through task manager until I've the absolute bare minimum running. Be aware that there are processes under XP (svchost is one example) where you kill the process and it initiates an unstopable 60-second process resulting in the system shutting down (or rebooting). When this happens, you need to essentially resume at killing off processes again and then initiate the defrag(s).

I regularly scan my system with antivirus and Ad-Aware to ensure it is clean, so these are operations that are not strictly defrag related, but ultimately can have a positive impact. So, another point is that before I kill off my Ad-Aware and Symantec Anti-Virus utilities, I disconnect the cable for my internet connection as well to prevent any communications (good or bad) that would interfere. These are among the tools I gracefully exit.

It was mentioned about running chkdsk/scandisk, and I totally agree. In my experience with machines from Windoze for Workgroups 3.11 through XP Pro---scanning the drive BEFORE defragging is essential. As a preliminary step to any defrag, I always execute a complete check of the disk, via reboot, immediately beforehand to ensure the integrity of the drive/drives. The other benefit from this drive check at reboot, is that before you defrag your system you've cleanly booted your system. I've found that attempting to defrag a system drive after you've been using it for a while has resulted in some files becoming corrupt during a defrag. I've attributed this to the natural (built-in?) instability in Micro$loths OS.

Another interesting point is for those of us with multiple partitions on our hard drive, as well as those of us with secondary (or more) drives. I've an external hard drive connected via USB 2.0, as well as two partitions on the internal drive on my laptop. These facilitate seperating applications and data and give me a live backup capability. What is pertinant here is that the most important drive to defrag is the system (C:\) drive, and then to make sure you remember the other drives as well.

I use Symantec's SpeedDisk to defrag my internal drives and Micro$loths defrag (under Accessories->system tools) to defrag my external drive.

In my experience, and I don't completely understand why, Symantec's SpeedDisk that comes with System Works 2004 (and 2005 version) takes DAYS to defrag my external 250GB drive. It only has one partition, is set to compress all files and a number of the files are quite large (10+GB for virtual drives under VMware). The defrag that comes with XP will do a decent job in 5-6 hours.

Which leads me to another good point. Defragging, like full-system AVscanning, should be done regularly. The frequency of defragging is up to you, and based upon when you work, how often you work, and how MUCH work you do on your system. You may very well work 6 hours a day on your system, 7 days a week, but if most of that time is spent browsing the internet, with FEW downloads, few new/modified/deleted files, then defragging once a month is sufficient (I'm guessing). I do a LOT of work, in a bunch of applications, I'm adding, deleting and moving files and even whole directory structures around frequently, so I tend to defrag once a week (all of my drives). The point is to set a pace, schedule and frequency for yourself that is good and comfortable.

Related to this is the TIME it takes to defrag. The first time or two you do all these steps (or the ones you want to do)- notice the amount of time it takes from start to finish of the whole process. This will be a good guide for future efforts and thus you can plan your time accordingly. I'll do all the preliminary work for the AV scan and Ad-Aware scans usually in some down time (when I'm not going to be using my system) the day before, and then do the drive check and process killing-efforts before I go to bed at night, and then initiate the defrag and head to sleep. The next day I get up, and check for any errors or nasty-grams my lovely system has to offer.

As a final step to my defrag process, I shut my system down which lets the OS sync all those buffers to disk and remove power to the CPU giving it a chance to cool down for a moment and forget everything from memory that was there before. This leaves nothing hanging around in system memory to affect my next system startup. After a few minutes, I'll then power my system on, get it fully booted, log in as an Administrator and check my event logs for the "System" This is a good followup to ensure the drive check and defrag processes didn't cough and report any errors to the logs for my review.

Good luck and happy defragging!!!!!