Defrag Details in Vista

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Hi. I was wondering how I could see the details of my disk fragmentation in
Vista Home Premium. I recently had my computer go through a full diagnostic
at Best Buy and it said that my disk was 26% fragmented with a suggestion
that it stay below 10%. I was wondering if there was anything in Vista that
would allow me to see the percentage so I can defrag to keep under the 10% or
if I need a third party program.
 
Jon said:
Hi. I was wondering how I could see the details of my disk fragmentation in
Vista Home Premium. I recently had my computer go through a full diagnostic
at Best Buy and it said that my disk was 26% fragmented with a suggestion
that it stay below 10%. I was wondering if there was anything in Vista that
would allow me to see the percentage so I can defrag to keep under the 10% or
if I need a third party program.
Click to expand...

if you do need another prog, may i suggest,
Auslogics Disk Defrag,
http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/

its free

ghost
 
Jon said:
Hi. I was wondering how I could see the details of my disk fragmentation
in
Vista Home Premium. I recently had my computer go through a full
diagnostic
at Best Buy and it said that my disk was 26% fragmented with a suggestion
that it stay below 10%. I was wondering if there was anything in Vista
that
would allow me to see the percentage so I can defrag to keep under the 10%
or
if I need a third party program.
Click to expand...


From an elevated command prompt:
Defrag <vol>: /a /v
Or
Defrag <vol>: /a
(for less verbose output. The statistic you're concerned about, % file
fragmentation, will be in either report).

Defrag should be scheduled to run automatically once per week on Wednesday
night when your computer is idle and not asleep.
See All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Disk Defragmenter to check your
schedule.

If your computer is never idle+not asleep, you can run defrag manually from
the command prompt (defrag /? for details)

-Victoria
 
Victoria

Users are not interested in statistics.. they want bars and little squares
to watch.. it doesn't matter that one would require 4 billion more squares
in the Win 9x family or a 5 mile long bar in XP to portray accurately what
is happening.. just a few thousand will do as long as the user can see
something moving about.. :)


Victoria House said:
From an elevated command prompt:
Defrag <vol>: /a /v
Or
Defrag <vol>: /a
(for less verbose output. The statistic you're concerned about, % file
fragmentation, will be in either report).

Defrag should be scheduled to run automatically once per week on Wednesday
night when your computer is idle and not asleep.
See All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Disk Defragmenter to check
your schedule.

If your computer is never idle+not asleep, you can run defrag manually
from the command prompt (defrag /? for details)

-Victoria
Click to expand...

--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/
 
Mike Hall - MS MVP said:
Victoria

Users are not interested in statistics.. they want bars and little squares
to watch.. it doesn't matter that one would require 4 billion more squares
in the Win 9x family or a 5 mile long bar in XP to portray accurately what
is happening.. just a few thousand will do as long as the user can see
something moving about.. :)




--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/
Click to expand...



Ahhh, I see. :)
 
Or a progress bar, or a percentage, anything but a meaningless spinning thingy.
 
Cal Bear '66 said:
Or a progress bar, or a percentage, anything but a meaningless spinning
thingy.
Click to expand...

But the way defraggers work just about *anything* except the beginning and
end reports might as well be a "meaningless spinning thingy" for all the
good it does you.

I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again; if you want to watch
something while your computer is defragmenting then put on a movie or visit
youtube.com or something
 
I prefer to defrag at the end of the day, and would like to know when, or
approximately when, I can turn the computer off and go to bed.

I was hypnotized by the moving multicolored boxes, but, yes indeed, it
would be nice to know just how badly fragmented the drive is before I
proceeded with defragmenting, and a report of how successful the process
was after completion.

One Care (free with purchase of Vista) gives you a percentage, but it doesn't
tell you which drive, and only after it completes it's whole optimizing routine, can
you see which drives completed. C: ALWAYS fails (too defragmented, will
try again the next time One Care optimization runs).
 
I have a laptop at home running Vista. When I get home I turn it on and I
use it intermittently until bed, when I turn it off. Last night I think I
heard it defragging while I was watching The Office (a very good episode).
This took me zero effort. And you know what? Even if I turned the computer
off before defrag completed, defrag would've picked up again the next day
while I was in the bathroom, or cooking dinner, or doing laundry. I've never
seen my fragmentation level go above 5% when I've bothered to check it,
which is rare.

Give Vista a chance to do this task while you're doing better things with
your time. Give it a month, see how you like it.

--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Want to learn more about Windows file and storage technologies? Visit our
team blog at http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/default.aspx.


I prefer to defrag at the end of the day, and would like to know when, or
approximately when, I can turn the computer off and go to bed.

I was hypnotized by the moving multicolored boxes, but, yes indeed, it
would be nice to know just how badly fragmented the drive is before I
proceeded with defragmenting, and a report of how successful the process
was after completion.

One Care (free with purchase of Vista) gives you a percentage, but it
doesn't
tell you which drive, and only after it completes it's whole optimizing
routine, can
you see which drives completed. C: ALWAYS fails (too defragmented, will
try again the next time One Care optimization runs).
 
Victoria, I may have an answer for you.

Back when XP first can out, I did an internet search for Defraggers, because
all my friends kept asking which they should use. I tested a few and I came
up with only one really good defragger. I had been using Norton's Speed
Disk, but when XP came out with NTFS and Symantec couldn't or wouldn't keep
up. Finally, I discovered PerfectDisk. The thing the PerfectDisk did that
few, if any, of the others, did was provide a means to defrag the system
files during boot up (because that's the only time that the system files
could be moved). I've been using PerfectDisk ever since. As for your
percentage question, my external drive is always defragged to 0%. My C:
drive, because the Operating System is always moving a few files around
while the defrag is going on, will usually finish with 0.1 or 0.2 percent.
The finished results folder will even show you which files are still
fragmented, what their size is, and into how many fragments they are divided
into. Usually, it's a file I wouldn't even have known existed if it wasn't
listed in the results. There is one tab in the folder for System file
fragmentation results and another tab for regular files. You can give it a
30 day free try and see for yourself. That's what I did. And, by the way,
it's Vista friendly. Oh, yea. The display, while running, looks just like
Norton's Speed Disk did. I've also found their tech support to be very
good, even when you ask them dumb questions, which I have a habit of doing
from time to time.

If you're interested, here's the link...
http://www.raxco.com/products/downloadit/perfectdisk_download.cfm
 
Jill

I wasn't joking when I explained to Victoria that people like to see Defrag
work..

It is not enough that Vista does the best defrag job of any before it, and
the people don't question that part.. they have gotten used to see Defrag
work, and they miss it.. you may well think that it is arcane behavior to
sit and watch defrag, but millions have be doing it for years, and they miss
it..


Jill Zoeller said:
I have a laptop at home running Vista. When I get home I turn it on and I
use it intermittently until bed, when I turn it off. Last night I think I
heard it defragging while I was watching The Office (a very good episode).
This took me zero effort. And you know what? Even if I turned the computer
off before defrag completed, defrag would've picked up again the next day
while I was in the bathroom, or cooking dinner, or doing laundry. I've
never seen my fragmentation level go above 5% when I've bothered to check
it, which is rare.

Give Vista a chance to do this task while you're doing better things with
your time. Give it a month, see how you like it.

--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.

Want to learn more about Windows file and storage technologies? Visit our
team blog at http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/default.aspx.


I prefer to defrag at the end of the day, and would like to know when, or
approximately when, I can turn the computer off and go to bed.

I was hypnotized by the moving multicolored boxes, but, yes indeed, it
would be nice to know just how badly fragmented the drive is before I
proceeded with defragmenting, and a report of how successful the process
was after completion.

One Care (free with purchase of Vista) gives you a percentage, but it
doesn't
tell you which drive, and only after it completes it's whole optimizing
routine, can
you see which drives completed. C: ALWAYS fails (too defragmented, will
try again the next time One Care optimization runs).
Click to expand...

--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/
 
I would like to second the notion that people like to watch little squares or
bars move around the screen. I am one of them. I understand that a
percentage indicating progress is never going to be accurate with Vista's
optimisations but surely the visual representation was pretty close? It
would at least indicate potential length of time, a lot of red and you know
it's going to take a while.

David.
 
but surely the visual representation was pretty close?
Click to expand...

OK, imagine this: You've opened defrag and resized the screen to 640x480,
which on a 22" monitor like mine is a tiny tiny square in the corner. You
own one of those new 750GB hard disks. Got that? Good. Now...

What is the correct scale to draw out the visual representation of that disk
onto that defrag window and still provide meaningful, useful information?

I can see why people would *want* some kind of indicator, I've asked for one
myself even though as I've said repeatedly I'd much rather go watch a film
(or go for a hike as I will when I finish this reply) than watch a disk
defrag. But given the scenario I present above, OK it's a little contrived
but it does illustrate at least one of the problems with trying to 'show'
defrag data.
 
David

It isn't even in the same ball park really.. :) there would need to be many
more squares and a bar the length of the Golden Gate bridge to get even
close to accuracy, but it was an indicator..

Vista defrag works well actually, and the idea of watching an indicator is a
little arcane.. unfortunately, many have gotten used to seeing something,
and the concept of defrag in the background is alien to them.. there is no
doubt that having no indicator should improve productivity, but the worry
that nothing is happening seems to trash productivity anyway.. :)


David said:
I would like to second the notion that people like to watch little squares
or
bars move around the screen. I am one of them. I understand that a
percentage indicating progress is never going to be accurate with Vista's
optimisations but surely the visual representation was pretty close? It
would at least indicate potential length of time, a lot of red and you
know
it's going to take a while.

David.
Click to expand...

--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/
 
Ghost said:
if you do need another prog, may i suggest,
Auslogics Disk Defrag,
http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/

its free
Click to expand...

Most modern defragmentation tools, including this I believe, use a
built-in Windows API provided specifically for this task(?) Or they
claim so, anyway. But that doesn't mean they're all the same.

I agree that users like to see something happening, although I'm happy
with statistics. I do like them to be real statistics.

Could a separate utility just show how Windows' own defrag is
proceeding in Vista? Can you use Performance Monitor for that?

Currently I'm partway through the following exercise:

1. Not Vista but Windows XP Tablet - back up the entire system volume
(used sectors) to a compressed image file. Done for free with Knoppix
5.1.1 download bootable Linux CD and the partimage tool included.

This part was annoying because the estimated time kept jumping around
by + - five minutes!

2. Defragment and compact the system volume, so that all files are at
one end of the volume.

This is also annoying. The computer is a Samsung Q1 UMPC handheld
tablet with an 800x480 screen and a low-power processor, and the tool
that I think I used before - since as far as I know XP's own Defrag
doesn't do compact, anyway it /didn't/ - is "DefragNT", apparently not
touched for a few years - and it seems to like to crash. It promises
my data are safe because it uses the Windows defrag API - it looks
okay - I'm crossing my fingers. I did /make/ a backup -

And I think the defrag tool market is overpriced for occasional users.
I'd like to pay, I dunno, $5 when I want to use a professional tool
once. There are short-term trials but of course they expire.

So it looks like Auslogics is worth trying.

This prepares for the next step -

3. Resize the system partition to 10 GBytes.

4. Format the now-unused disk space as a second volume on the same
physical disk.

Windows XP doesn't make it easy to back up the system partition for a
simple restore, as far as I can tell. It's a dark art, and most
people say that when you lose data, you should format the disk and
reinstall. And then load all of the patches and service packs.

My goal is to resize Windows itself and format the rest of the disk as
a separate volume, which can include the /next/ Knoppix backup of the
Windows system partition as well as data files conveniently arranged.

At the same time, I can set Windows to make the second partition
appear as a sub-folder of the system partition in one or more places.
 
So it looks like Auslogics is worth trying.
Click to expand...

But on reading further I find allegations, unproved, that I don't
like:
- Its wbsite was or is associated with software in the "spyware"
category, specifically "ThemeXP".
- It heavily promotes the company's retail products. Okay, so does
Windows...
- When you attempt to uninstall it, it contacts its home server
online. If this is blocked then the program does not uninstall.

That's what has been said.

Well, here's another alternative to look at:

http://www.kessels.com/JKDefrag/

Ah, it has a mode specifically for people who intend to resize the
partition!
 
It isn't free, but take a look at PerfectDisk at www.raxco.com. It is
what Norton's Speed Disk would have become if Symantec hadn't gotten
their money-grubbing hands on it.

PerfectDisk allows you to do a boot-time defrag of system files and lets
you defrag your disk via schedule. It will also analyze the disk for
you and make a recommendation of whether the disk needs defragging
and/or boot-time defrag.

Regards,

Turner
 
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