Disk Defragmenter

  • Thread starter Thread starter James
  • Start date Start date
James

Because Defragmenter does not recover free space.. it organises used space..
deleting unnecessary and unwanted files frees up space..
 
Okay, this makes sense, however when I delete a boatload of files and
defrag, something ought to happen!
PDSterling
Dallas
 
Sorry, I never use the trashbasket; I figure if I say {delete} and you say,
{are you sure}, and I say, {yes}, I mean it. As a matter of fact, I would
love to get rid of the recycle folder on each drive. Any advice would be
gratefully appreciated.
 
I am unfamiliar with the application, but after the nonsense I went through
with Norton Anti Virus and firewall etc., I would never buy anything from
Norton, although I miss the Disk Organizer from days of old, which put the
program files first ahead of data and temp files.
 
The default allocation for the Recycle Bin is 10 % of drive.
In Windows Explorer place the cursor on your Recycle Bin,
right click and select Properties, Global and move the slider
from 10% to ?%,

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
The amount of free space is very important when
running Disk Defragmenter. A minimum of 15%
is required but sometimes 20% is desirable if the
drive / partition contains one or more large files.
You can run Disk Defragmenter a second and
third time if files are still fragmented after the
first run. You can put files more prone to fragment
in their own partitions.

If you use Outlook Express regularly compacting
Outlook Express before running Disk Defragmenter
is helpful.

Disk Defragmenter provides a "Most fragmented
files" list. When a fragmented file is
larger than the largest pocket of free space available
then the files is not fragmented. Running Disk
Defragmenter a second or third time does move files
around and can reduce / eliminate the contents of the
"Most fragmented files" list. The more free space on
the drive / partition, the more likely it is that all
fragments will be eliminated.

Free space cannot be defragmented with the Windows
XP Disk Defragmenter. Neither can your pagefile
cannot be defragmented because the file is in use whilst
Disk Defragmenter is running. You can purchase other
Defragmenting Utilities e.g. Perfect Disk, which will
defragment your pagefile and free space. Another
option is to place your pagefile in it's own partition.
A pagefile partition is best located as the first partition
on a second hard drive. You should leave a small page
file at the original location.
http://www.raxco.com/

~~~~~~


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FCA

Stourport, Worcs, England
Enquire, plan and execute.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Thanks for the reminder; I think I have already done it, but it doesn't hurt
to check. TTFN
 
James said:
I run Disk Defragmenter, but my free space stays the same-why?
Click to expand...



You are misunderstanding what disk defragmenter does. It does not recover
any space, and there's no reason to expect free space to go up.

Here's how it works. Files are written to the drive in units called
clusters. To make it simple, let's assume you have only two files on your
drive. They are written in order like this.

File 1 Cluster 1
File 1 Cluster 1
File 1 Cluster 1
 
Sorry, accidentally pressed send before finishing the message below:

I run Disk Defragmenter, but my free space stays the same-why?
Click to expand...



You are misunderstanding what disk defragmenter does. It does not recover
any space, and there's no reason to expect free space to go up.

Here's how it works. Files are written to the drive in units called
clusters. To make it simple, let's assume you have only two small files on
your drive. They are written in order like this.

File 1 Cluster 1
File 1 Cluster 2
File 1 Cluster 3
File 1 Cluster 4 (last)
File 2 Cluster 1
File 2 Cluster 2
File 2 Cluster 3 (last)

Then you open file 1 in your word processor and add some more text to it.
Your drive now looks like this :

File 1 Cluster 1
File 1 Cluster 2
File 1 Cluster 3
File 1 Cluster 4
File 2 Cluster 1
File 2 Cluster 2
File 2 Cluster 3 (last)
File 1 Cluster 5
File 1 Cluster 6 (last)

The two new clusters are written at the end, where's room for them. File one
is now in a state that's called "fragmented" It consists of six clusters,
but those clusters are not contiguous, and are separated by pieces of
another file. That means that every time you read or write the file, it
takes extra time for the read/write heads to pass over file 2 while going to
the last two clusters of file 1.

Defragmenting is the process of rearranging those various clusters so that
the files are contiguous again, into an order like this:

File 1 Cluster 1
File 1 Cluster 2
File 1 Cluster 3
File 1 Cluster 4
File 1 Cluster 5
File 1 Cluster 6 (last)
File 2 Cluster 1
File 2 Cluster 2
File 2 Cluster 3 (last)

As you can see, it doesn't make any space free. Its purpose is to make
access to the drive faster.
 
Ken

Logically after Disk Defragmenter has finished you would
expect to see blue blocks with green ( immovable blocks )
and some tiny red blocks interspersed within the blue and
white ( free space ) then continuously to the end of the
drive. In practice this often does not occur.

James is saying that after running Disk Defragmenter the
position of the free space does not change.

From my observations you only get no change if no
defragmentation occurs. This can be if Disk Defragmenter
has been run and it is unable to defragment the remaining
fragmented files or move files. It would also occur if there
is insufficient free disk space to run Disk Defragmenter.

However, I cannot rationally explain why some files do not
get moved to fill in free space. Greg Hayes may be able to.

--

Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Gerry said:
Ken

Logically after Disk Defragmenter has finished you would
expect to see blue blocks with green ( immovable blocks )
and some tiny red blocks interspersed within the blue and
white ( free space ) then continuously to the end of the
drive. In practice this often does not occur.

James is saying that after running Disk Defragmenter the
position of the free space does not change.
Click to expand...


I don't think so, Gerry. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I interpret his mesaage to
mean that the *amount* of free space doesn't change, and I think he simply
misunderstood what defragging does.

If he's still around, perhaps he'll explain what he meant.
 
Do you have system restore enabled???



P D Sterling said:
I am unfamiliar with the application, but after the nonsense I went through
with Norton Anti Virus and firewall etc., I would never buy anything from
Norton, although I miss the Disk Organizer from days of old, which put the
program files first ahead of data and temp files.
--
Regards,

P D Sterling
www.pdsterling.com
Click to expand...
 
So what if he does?.. system restore is no better at recovering space than
'Age of Empires III'..
 
Back
Top