Defrag oddity

  • Thread starter Thread starter William B. Lurie
  • Start date Start date
W

William B. Lurie

When I go for Defrag, for all time I've been
accustomed to the various partitions on my
three hard drives being listed in order, with the
C-drive first in the list.

For some reason, they are now showing in a pretty
much random order. It ain't broke and I can live
with it this way, as I have every partition
labeled in identifiable manner. Any clues as to
why it changed, or how to make them sort by
drive letter?
 
Maybe the user account is getting corrupted.Try going to run,type:cmd
In cmd type:Defrag C: Defrag D: etc,maybe it'll get back to usual settings.
 
Thanks, Andrew, but no help.
It does a quick defrag (15 seconds) and gives a
report.....11% fragmented, which somehow might be the
reason. But how do I get it to do a complete defrag?
I have plenty of spare space.......drive has 25% free.
 
William

Open Disk Defragmenter and click on Analyse. Select View Report and
click on Save As and Save. Now find VolumeC.txt in your My Documents
Folder and post a copy.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
William

Your problem is you have a virtual drive within your C drive which Disk
Defragmenter is not touching. Are you sure that this virtal drive does
not appear as a separate drive in Disk Defragmenter?

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Gerry, the Virtual PC is indeed completely under and within
the C-drive, and never appears outside it. Not in Windows Explorer,
not with Partition Magic and not in the Defrag listing.

I don't mind that Defrag doesn't touch
the Virtual Drive....but it seems to be what is forcing
the listing of drives when Drefragging to be a more or less
random ordering.
 
William

An enqury in another direction on this point has produced a quick
result.

XP built-in defragmenter will require contiguous free space the size of
that file in order to defragment - not total free space - contiguous
free space. Source: Greg Hayes

You may be able to achieve a result by following this procedure.

It is likely that an allocation of 12% has been made to System Restore
on your C partition which is over generous. I would reduce it to 700 mb.
Right click your My Computer icon on the Desktop and select System
Restore. Place the cursor on your C drive select Settings but this time
find the slider and drag it to the left until it reads 700 mb and exit.
When you get to the Settings screen click on Apply and OK and exit.

Select Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp to
Empty your Recycle Bin and Remove Temporary Internet Files. Also select
Start, All Programs, accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp, More
Options, System Restore and remove all but the latest System Restore
point. Run Disk Defragmenter, twice if necessary.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

..
 
In
William B. Lurie said:
When I go for Defrag, for all time I've been
accustomed to the various partitions on my
three hard drives being listed in order, with the
C-drive first in the list.

For some reason, they are now showing in a pretty
much random order. It ain't broke and I can live
with it this way, as I have every partition
labeled in identifiable manner. Any clues as to
why it changed, or how to make them sort by
drive letter?
Click to expand...

What happens when you click on Volume above where the drives
are listed? This should result in the drives being listed in
order of drive letter. If it results in a reverse order, click
on it again.

Good luck

Nepatsfan
 
Good try this time, Gerry and Greg, but System Restore is
turned off and never runs, and does not appear at all when
I right click on My Computer. There are no System Restore points
to remove. But thank you anyway.
Bill
 
See bottom post.
In

What happens when you click on Volume above where the drives
are listed? This should result in the drives being listed in
order of drive letter. If it results in a reverse order, click
on it again.

Good luck

Nepatsfan

What happens when I click on Volume is.......
Click to expand...
They are suddenly sorted in correct order by drive letter!!!!

Thank you so much!! End of problem!!

Bill Lurie
 
William said:
See bottom post.

They are suddenly sorted in correct order by drive letter!!!!

Thank you so much!! End of problem!!

Bill Lurie
Click to expand...
Post Scriptum:
It sorts perfectly every time........but I have to
click there every time. 'Twould be nice if it could
make it permanent, but one doesn't Defrag all that
frequently.
Bill
 
William said:
Post Scriptum:
It sorts perfectly every time........but I have to
click there every time. 'Twould be nice if it could
make it permanent, but one doesn't Defrag all that
frequently.
Bill
Click to expand...
And one more comment:
On my clone system, I removed the Virtual PC and cleaned everything up
and got rid of the deleted files.......and when I went to Defrag......
it still acted the same.......drives not sorted, but did sort when
I clicked on Volume. So the academic question remains unanswerd...
Why are they shown in random order?
Bill L.
 
In
William B. Lurie said:
And one more comment:
On my clone system, I removed the Virtual PC and cleaned
everything up
and got rid of the deleted files.......and when I went to
Defrag......
it still acted the same.......drives not sorted, but did sort
when
I clicked on Volume. So the academic question remains
unanswerd...
Why are they shown in random order?
Bill L.
Click to expand...

First off, the Virtual PC file that couldn't be defragmented
has nothing to do with the issue you're having with the sort
order.

Open and close Disk Defragmenter several times. If the drives
are listed in the same order each time, it is not random. I
have no idea why they wouldn't be listed in the default sort
order, sorted by drive letter. If you've used some sort of
tweaking tool to modify any XP settings, that would be the
first place I'd look for a solution. Another option would be to
remove the drive labels and see if they sort properly with only
the drive letters.

Sorry, but the workaround I gave you is the best I can offer in
terms of a solution.

Good luck

Nepatsfan
 
Nepatsfan said:
In

First off, the Virtual PC file that couldn't be defragmented
has nothing to do with the issue you're having with the sort
order.

Open and close Disk Defragmenter several times. If the drives
are listed in the same order each time, it is not random. I
have no idea why they wouldn't be listed in the default sort
order, sorted by drive letter. If you've used some sort of
tweaking tool to modify any XP settings, that would be the
first place I'd look for a solution. Another option would be to
remove the drive labels and see if they sort properly with only
the drive letters.

Sorry, but the workaround I gave you is the best I can offer in
terms of a solution.

Good luck

Nepatsfan
Click to expand...
Thank you for the correction and further suggestions.
You're right, the listing order was not random, it is consistent
but always comes up with Master Drive first, but order inverted,
then slave drive with order correct.

I know of no tweaking, and I've taken enough of everyone's
valuable time on something not dangerous, not a problem, but
just a curiosity. Probably it will go away and return to
normal, just as it became an aberration all by itself.

Thanks again.

bill L.
 
William said:
Thank you for the correction and further suggestions.
You're right, the listing order was not random, it is consistent
but always comes up with Master Drive first, but order inverted,
then slave drive with order correct.

I know of no tweaking, and I've taken enough of everyone's
valuable time on something not dangerous, not a problem, but
just a curiosity. Probably it will go away and return to
normal, just as it became an aberration all by itself.

Thanks again.

bill L.
Click to expand...
Dear Nep:

I had another thought. I copied several of the partitions from
my Master Hard Drive to other drives for storing. Then I deleted
them from their original location on the Master Drive.

Now in Defrag, the partitions list in alphabetic order as
before. So I just won't have as many partitions on my Master
Drive any more.

Just a fact of life. Store it away in your memory bank, and
thanks for trying.

Bill
 
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