Defragment

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There should be no effect from using XP defrag on a Vista volume... but I
use Vista for Vista and Vista for XP back home.

Then again, I don't enjoy watching the colored bars, and I do enjoy having
defrag as a background task.

Try defrag.exe from an administrator command prompt. If you are doing
defrag /a c: it might take a while. Likewise defrag c: will take a while to
actually show anything, since it needs to complete a current system analysis
before it can tell you how you're doing.

Hope this helps.

-Victoria



(this is what I get from a non-admin cmd prompt):
C:\Users\me>defrag.exe

This program needs to run with administrative permissions. Use an
administrator
command prompt and then run the program again.


(admin cmd prompt):
C:\Users\me>defrag.exe
Windows Disk Defragmenter
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corp.
Description: Locates and consolidates fragmented files on local volumes to
improve system performance.

Syntax: defrag <volume> -a [-v]
defrag <volume> [{-r | -w}] [-f] [-v]
defrag -c [{-r | -w}] [-f] [-v]

Parameters:

Value Description

<volume> Specifies the drive letter or mount point path of the volume
to
be defragmented or analyzed.

-c Defragments all volumes on this computer.

-a Performs fragmentation analysis only.

-r Performs partial defragmentation (default). Attempts to
consolidate only fragments smaller than 64 megabytes (MB).

-w Performs full defragmentation. Attempts to consolidate all
file
fragments, regardless of their size.

-f Forces defragmentation of the volume when free space is low.

-v Specifies verbose mode. The defragmentation and analysis
output
is more detailed.

-? Displays this help information.

Examples:

defrag d:
defrag d:\vol\mountpoint -w -f
defrag d: -a -v
defrag -c -v


WTan said:
WOW, I am impressed and shocked that actually I already got 20 response. I
did not see my post from browsing the discussion, until I use search.

Thanks a lot for all of you, especially victoria.
So, it is best to defrag vista with vista, xp with xp?
BTW, defrag in win9x is the best. It is very detailed. Second best is XP.
I
need an estimate on how long the defrag will take, and what is happening.

I tried defrag.exe command (without anything after it), and it did not
work.

Ken Gardner said:
Victoria House said:
The defragmentation program in Vista is mostly an improvement on XP
(low
priority IO, etc) with the inaccurate GUI taken out.
Click to expand...

For these very reasons, I love the new defragmentation program in Vista.
I
love Vista's new memory management system even more.

I continue to be amazed at how so many people obsess about
defragmentation
and almost never consider how they are using RAM or the CPU. These
people
have their priorities exactly backwards. :)

[...]

Ken
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
I guess I'm stupid and crazy. But, I've got a 160GB eSATA drive with about
100GB used in an external enclosure that I use for backups. I don't leave
it on the system. I wanted to defrag it. So, two nights ago, I turned it
on and started defrag. After over two hours, I had to do a CTRL-C to escape
from the process since I was ready to quit and I don't want that drive
spinning all night long unattended. I have no idea what the status of that
drive was when I stopped defrag. So, last night, in an attempt to finish
things up, I started defrag on it again. After 6 more hours, it was still
churning. Again, I had no idea whether it was in the last few seconds of
the process or if it would take another couple of days to complete. Heck, I
have no idea if it was in some kind of loop and just moving the same thing
back and forth continuously. Again, CTRL-C. To us crazy, stupid people,
this is just flat-out unacceptable.
 
There should be no effect from using XP defrag on a Vista volume... but I
use Vista for Vista and Vista for XP back home.

Victoria:

Thanks for the info.
That agrees with my testing.
 
Victoria House said:
Point taken.
That bit of info is already "pasted" to
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/ar...s-cover-why-windows-vista-defrag-is-cool.aspx
Click to expand...

The reasoning is not completely compelling. With XP one could look at the
fragmentation display and get a pretty good sense of whether defragmentation
was going to take 10 minutes or 40 minutes. One could also get a sense of
whether there was enough fragmentation to be a cause of a sluggish system or
whether that was not a likely factor.

I appreciate that most users don't know anything about defragmentation and
will be well served by defragmentation that occurs while they are at lunch.
But what is the harm of giving the rest of us an option to turn on a simple
display to give us an indication of how well the system is running? That is
not the sort of thing for which one needs the bother, risk and expense of a
third party tool.

Having a defragmenter that runs for many hours on an undisturbed computer
gives rise to worries that something is wrong and the system is never
getting defragmented properly. Without some measure of fragmentation one
has no way of dismissing such a possibility. If the defragmenter is
implementing some new strategy such as moving all files every few weeks to
guard against bit rot we'd be glad to know that the folks at Microsoft were
thinking outside the old paradigm, but with the way things are set up we
have no sense of whether a defragmenter is running for hours because of
innovation or because of chaos.
 
right... thanks to you both.... I just found it weird that my Beta 2/RC1
(can't remember which) stopped working after using XP defrag. maybe it's just
my computer
 
I, for one, enjoyed watching the colour change and the progress, and prefer
not to do anything when computer is defragmenting. So, the point is different
people, different hobbies, different preferennce.

btw, well said
 
It is really weird that some posters get in a snit because other people
expect more from software than they do and even resort to telling those
people they don't need what they want. How dare you want something that
the self important have decided you don't need?
Click to expand...

It's perfectly simple. Microsoft have provided a tool that does the job.
There is no actual *need* to have a colourful UI to it, because the great
majority of users don't know or care about defragging. (And the coloured
bars are a sham anyway, for reasons explained previously) They just want
their Vista to work.

For those of us who want more, we can buy O&O or Diskeeper. I repeat,
though: you might *want* a sexy-looking defragger, but you don't *need* one
because the Vista one works perfectly well.

Every single program ever written has a set of features which the vendor
believes to be the most appropriate for their target market. Vista's defrag
is just the same. If one product doesn't suit, buy another!

Are you going to moan about the absence of traditional menus in Office 2007
next? If so, please don't. Just get OpenOffice instead.

Thack
 
First off, I'd like to say that the dancing bars in the old defrag UI was a
model. By definition, ALL models are inaccurate. The only question is how
much time and effort you're willing to put into the model and how useful it
needs to be. If you could get a 100% accurate model, it wouldn't be a model
any more: it would be reality (and we'd be gods :) ). Anyway, suddenly
realizing your model is inaccurate doesn't mean the best answer is to delete
to model and tell everyone they really don't need it. That model gave
information on disk health and process status. What we have now gives
nothing. Unless the accuracy become so bad that the model was always
exactly and precisely wrong, we'd still be better off with the old UI
(something is better than nothing).

Secondly, in your description, you talk about why the inaccuracy exists in
terms of the old UI (1 bar represents X, and four colors). If you've come
to the conclusion that the reality has moved beyond the model's abilities,
it's time to change how you think about the model. Vista has this great new
3D graphical interface. Why not use it? The old UI used 2-bit color
(white, red, blue, green). Why not use the whole 24-bit color space? What
I know about defragging can dance on the head of a pin without jostling the
angels. But, how about a model where each "bar" represents one file and the
24-bit color of that bar represents the percentage of fragmentation in that
file? If I remember the numbers from some of my old Norton virus scans,
I've got something on the order of 800K files on this system. That would be
a whole lot easier to represent than the 26M you mentioned. Plus, who says
the UI has to show the whole model all the time? In the old Windows 95
model (I think), you could scroll for page after page to see in excruciating
detail what was going on. What about showing some level of abstraction in
the background and then having a zoom window in the foreground (assuming
it's even needed)?

My point is, there are other ways to give health and process status
information to the user than by using the old models and paradigms. To say
the old way was too inaccurate and justified ripping it out entirely is like
saying that the atlas on the desk doesn't show the local Starbucks,
therefore it's of no use and should be burned (I'd like to point out that
Google Maps (and I assume MS's equivalent) got around that problem by using
a zoom function). Just like it's unlikely that anyone capable of finding
and opening an atlas would be confused by the "inaccuracy" of the model, I
doubt there are many people capable of finding and starting the defragger
who would be confused by its "inaccuracy." Telling people they don't really
need that atlas anymore since the airlines will get them to their
destination without their "obsessing" with nits like geography also doesn't
cut the mustard.
 
Another thought: if we ignore a physical representation of the drive
entirely (clusters or files) and let color-space represent drive-space,
then, taken to the extreme, we could almost get by with the 24-bit color of
one pixel representing the fragmentation state of the entire drive.
Certainly, that's scalable to show bigger drives or give more information.
 
Still trying to tell people what they need I see.

--
Leo

When I was young and adventurous, I wanted to join a violent,
armed group with no regard for the law, but the IRS wasn't hiring.
 
Very well said.

--
Leo

When I was young and adventurous, I wanted to join a violent,
armed group with no regard for the law, but the IRS wasn't hiring.
 
Steve Thackery said:
It's perfectly simple. Microsoft have provided a tool that does the job.
There is no actual *need* to have a colourful UI to it, because the great
majority of users don't know or care about defragging. (And the coloured
bars are a sham anyway, for reasons explained previously) They just want
their Vista to work.
Click to expand...

I missed this one. I thought that people would be most obsessed about Vista
hogging up all of their "free" RAM -- not losing the GUI version of Disk
Defragmenter. Go figure. If they understand what's wrong with the premise
that Vista is using free RAM, that same knowledge will tell them why
defragmentation is much less important than in the dark days of Windows 9x.

Ken
 
I missed this one. I thought that people would be most obsessed about
Vista hogging up all of their "free" RAM -- not losing the GUI version of
Disk Defragmenter.
Click to expand...

Don't worry, Ken, some of them still are!

Still, some people like to hang on to their little foibles, don't they?

Thack
 
Defrag /a /v will tell you the current state of things without having to
start another defrag.
I realize that this is not a progress indicator. But it will give you
information.
 
Points about models are well said and I'm aware that no model is accurate.
I still chose to post about the inaccuracy as a main reason for taking it
out. The quality of the picture defrag gives is degrading over time as
volumes grow. For a 10GB volume, the picture was pretty good. For a 100GB
volume, the picture is pretty fuzzy. For a 1TB volume, the picture is close
to terrible.

So, I should have said "too inaccurate for us to continue using/supporting
it." Although since it is not in Vista, it was probably apparent to
everyone in this forum that we thought it was "too" something to continue to
use.

The word "too" is highly subjective. Your tolerance may vary.

-Victoria
 
"If you've come
to the conclusion that the reality has moved beyond the model's abilities,
it's time to change how you think about the model."

I re-read this. Best point in the whole thing. Nothing will be done for
Vista on this front, but I have been re-considering the value-added
(value-returned :) ) and model.
 
Using Diskeeper here. Works perfectly with Vista. Seems to have no negative
impact on performance while running in background.

Dan
Sudbury, Canada
 
I also read in the help and support that there is a defag.exe that can be
used. I would like this becasue the current program is not very informative,
so I wanted another one. However, when I typed 'defrag.exe' in the command
prompt, a new window appeared and then disappeared half a second later. Could
I have help in this matter? Thanks.
 
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