NTFS slow?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Vlad
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Vlad

I have no statistics, but I used to use Disk Cleanup before and it worked
very fast. About 1 month ago I switched from FAT32 to NTFS and today tried
to run Disk Cleanup for the first time since that. It took about 30 minutes.
Is this because of NTFS or there is something wrong with my PC? I also
noticed that some operations are very slow. For instance I want to save some
file on drive D, and Save as dialog bring me the previous path, let's say
"E:\MyDocs". In order to switch to drive D I click on the button to go up,
and when it should come to Desktop it takes 5-7 seconds. And only after such
a big delay it displays the contents of Desktop. Sometimes in Windows
Explorer to open the contents of the drive or folder it takes several
seconds.
I don't remember that I had such delays before. I think it started to happen
after I began to use NTFS. But I cannot be sure for 100%.
I'm using the same configuration of PC as I used before - Pentium IV 2GHZ, 2
GB RAM, 2 120GB hard drives (6 logical ones), Windows XP Pro with SP1, NTFS
on all drives.
I ran check disk utility for all drives, I did defragmentation. Nothing
helps. Although 5-7 seconds delays is not a big deal, sometimes it's
annoying.
Any explanation?
Thank you
Vlad
 
marty said:
it's no big deal....
Click to expand...

Do you work for CNET? com.com is registered to CNET Networks, so if you
don't please re-munge your email addy.
I don't think they will appreciate getting all your spam.
 
I have no statistics, but I used to use Disk Cleanup before and it worked
very fast. About 1 month ago I switched from FAT32 to NTFS and today tried
to run Disk Cleanup for the first time since that. It took about 30 minutes.
Click to expand...

When using NTFS, Disk Cleanup will check for old files that you haven't
used in a while and compress them. Since you haven't used Disk Cleanup in a
long time, it probably had to spend a bit of time building an index of
files for this feature.

You can disable the compression feature by going into the properties of
each drive and uncheck the box that allows files to be compressed. XP will
still compress dllcache, hotfix uninstall info and a few other system items
but all other files will be left alone.

There is also a registry key that can corrupt and cause Disk Cleanup to
hang at the compress file stages. The article describing how to fix this
can be found here:

Disk Cleanup Tool Stops Responding While Compressing Old Files
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=812248

While NTFS has a bit more overhead than FAT32, the slight difference in
performance should be negligible. Have you used Disk Defragmenter since
converting the file system? If no, may want to give that a try.
 
Gordon said:
Do you work for CNET? com.com is registered to CNET Networks, so if
you don't please re-munge your email addy.
I don't think they will appreciate getting all your spam.
Click to expand...

'Marty' aka 'Bruce' aka 'Gator' aka 'Nick' aka 'Jack' doesn't give a sh*t.
In fact, I think he knew that and did it purposely.
 
Have opposite observation. When using XP (NTFS), I notice when booting up
that all the devices are enumerated for Windows explorer by scanning each
media during the process. This is prior to logging in. In this case,
opening any media is almost instantaneous for reading or saving.
When using 98SE (FAT32), notice that when booting up that all the media are
not scanned. As a consequence, Windows explorer may take 10-20 seconds to
display when intially opening. No such problems after this initial delay.
I use a network password on 98SE.

My frame of reference are the LEDs I've installed on my PC for monitoring
onboard IDE, add-on IDE, SCSI, built-in leds for a DVD burner and a cdrom.
 
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