Fragmented

  • Thread starter Thread starter Loui
  • Start date Start date
L

Loui

When I was a win (*SE user, I had a program named "Crackup". This program
would tell me what percentage of my hard drive was fragmented.
This was a big help in determining whether or not to defragment.
Crackup does not work with XP.
Does anyone know of a program that would do this with XP?
 
Loui said:
When I was a win (*SE user, I had a program named "Crackup". This
program would tell me what percentage of my hard drive was fragmented.
This was a big help in determining whether or not to defragment.
Crackup does not work with XP.
Does anyone know of a program that would do this with XP?
Click to expand...

You don't need a third-party program to do this. Start the XP
defragmenter and click on "Analyze".

Malke
 
Malke said:
You don't need a third-party program to do this. Start the XP
defragmenter and click on "Analyze".
Click to expand...



Moreover, I don't think percentage of fragmentation is a useful number. I
find it much more convenient to defrag on a schedule. I think you should
defragment your drive when doing so results in a perceptible speedup. Here's
what I recommend. Pick some arbitrary interval--for example once a month.
Defragment on that interval a few times, and assess whether the computer
generally feels faster after doing so. If the answer is yes, defrag more
frequently. If the answer is no, defrag less frequently.

Repeat a few times, and you'll soon settle into a frequency that works well
for you.
 
Moreover, I don't think percentage of fragmentation is a useful number. I
find it much more convenient to defrag on a schedule. I think you should
defragment your drive when doing so results in a perceptible speedup. Here's
what I recommend. Pick some arbitrary interval--for example once a month.
Defragment on that interval a few times, and assess whether the computer
generally feels faster after doing so. If the answer is yes, defrag more
frequently. If the answer is no, defrag less frequently.

Repeat a few times, and you'll soon settle into a frequency that works well
for you.
Click to expand...

Good advice!
 
I would agree... scheduling it so you don't have to do it yourself is very
useful as well. Here's a large clip from a post I sent to another threat
just a while ago...

________________________________
about scheduling the cleanup or defrag.

-- Step 1: Don't use the Add Scheduled Task Wizard.
I know this seems dumb, but -- trust me. (Short reason, that will launch
the defrag GUI, which can't be scripted, so it'll only open the program, then
do nothing until the time alloted for the task expires, then XP will force it
to exit.)

-- Step 2: Right-click in the Scheduled Tasks folder, point to New >, then
click Scheduled Task. Name the task "cleanup c" or "defrag" or something.
Then double-click it to open it.

-- Step 3: For defrag, type "defrag c: /f /v" in the first feild, where c:
is the drive, obviously. The /f flag forces XP to defrag the disk even if it
doesn't "think" it's needed. Note that it must be quite bad before XP
decides it's needed. The /v flag enabled verbose output. You can remove it
if you prefer, then when the task is running, you'll only see a CMD window
with the defrag program copyright information, but no true information about
the process or status of your disk.

In the "Run As:" box, it should be pre-loaded with your Windows user name.
Click "Set Password..." and type your Windows password twice.

Set the Schedule tab however you want. I have mine defrag once a week early
Monday morning at 4:00am.

On the Settings tab, again set the options you want. I have mine set to
allow defrag to run for up to 4 hours. It usually finished in about 8
minutes though, and exits long before time runs out. The only other option I
have turned on is to "Wake the computer to run this task." This way I can
enable Power Saving sleep settings, without causing the computer to miss this
task.

-- Step 4: If you chose to schedule clean up, here's how:
First, put this in the Start Menu, Run box: "cleanmgr /sageset:10" (replace
ten with any digit you want up to (65000 or something, I can't remember... I
use 777, just because that's my favorite three-digit number, ha ha). Anyway,
when you "run" that command, you'll get a familar disk-cleanup screen. Check
the sections you want to have cleaned up automatically. Remember this will
happen automatically -- you may not want the Recycle Bint to be emptied
without your explicit consent, but then, it wont' hurt anything to clear temp
files automatically. So set them how you want, then click OK. Nothing
actually gets cleaned up right now. This saves those settings to the
registry. You can do ths more than once using another digit in the command,
and set each sets own settings. I don't, but you can.

Next, make a new task the same way as you did above. In the run box, put
"cleanmgr /sagerun:10" (or whatever number you chose last time.) This will
make it use the stored settings. Again, set a password so it has the
authority to run this task as if you did it manually, then set a schedule and
settings. I use a weekly settings for this as well, and have it run at
2:45am, so it can run and finish before defrag runs a few hours later.


Good luck and happy... defragmenting. Ha ha.

___________________
Shawn
 
PerfectDisk from Raxco is a good product. The Analyze option will give you a
good run down on % of fragmentation and more.
 
Loui said:
When I was a win (*SE user, I had a program named "Crackup". This program
would tell me what percentage of my hard drive was fragmented.
This was a big help in determining whether or not to defragment.
Crackup does not work with XP.
Does anyone know of a program that would do this with XP?
--
Lou

"Of All the Things I Have Lost
I Miss My Mind the Most"
Click to expand...

Windows defragmenter under system tools, as part of XP, will tell you the
information you desire using the analyze selection. This program is a
slimmed down version of Executive Software's Diskeeper 2001 time period.

I manually defrag the XP partition every 2 weeks to a month at the longest
interval. User data partitions, hardly ever. Depends on my feel of the PC,
whether windows update installed anything, whether I added or removed
programs, added/removed or replaced files on the user data partitions and so
forth. The ratio (percentage) between fragmented and unfragment files seems
to be of little consequence.
 
Loui said:
When I was a win (*SE user, I had a program named "Crackup". This program
would tell me what percentage of my hard drive was fragmented.
This was a big help in determining whether or not to defragment.
Crackup does not work with XP.
Does anyone know of a program that would do this with XP?
Click to expand...


What is the basis of calculating the % of fragmentation? You need to
know that before you can make any meaningful decisions based on that
value.

If, for example, the % of fragmentation is based on the number of
files that are in two or more fragments as a percentage of the total
number of files on the drive then that can be a misleading number. It
might be, for example, that only 100 out of 10,000 files on the drive
are fragmented. On this basis that would be 1% fragemention and not
very serious. But those 100 fragmented files could include the 10
files that are in constant use by the Point-of-Sale software installed
on the computer, and each of those 10 files could well be in several
hundred or even several thousand different fragments. That would
really have an adverse effect on the performance of the Point-of-Sale
software even though the drive was reported only 1% fragmented.

A more complex algorithm, one that takes into account not only the
number of files that are fragmented but also the total number of
fragments that those files are split into would be a more realistic
measurement but might still fall far short of assessing the impact of
fragmentation on the performance of a "mission critical" application
program.

In other words, forget about % fragmentation as any sort of a guide.
Defragment regularly, such as when you are away from the computer for
a meal break or similar, or schedule it to run overnight if you think
it might take a long time.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."
 
Back
Top