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XP Disk Defrag

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by sbrager

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I've recently installed XP and have been exploring its features. One concern was disk management and especially defraging a drive. I'm puzzled about why all files are not defragged although there's plenty of free space (20 to 25%)on the drive.

Under Win98, a disk with sufficient free space could always be totally defragged with no free space gaps.

Is there a way to use XP's defrag program to accomplish a complete defrag with no or few free space gaps?

thanks;

Stan

6 replies

by lyon_bleu

XP seems to require many more "anchored" files than 98. The defragmenting utility also seems to make allowances for files to grow in size, leaving space around them to reduce further fragmentation as they are edited.
Norton's "Speed Disk"--from Norton's System Works 2003--seems to be doing the same thing.
Just to clarify, are you seeing that files remain fragmented, or that the free space is not completely consolidated?

by sbrager

I'm seeing both files which are not being defragged although there is plenty of free space available and gaps in the free space.

This is according to the "map" which defrag presents. Also according to the disk file map, at least one block seems to be large enough to hold the entire undefragged file.

Rerunning the defrag utility seems to improve things somewhat although the file remains fragmented.

Stan

by guruofdos

One of my most common used for a PC is video capture and editing, and all the sage words written on the subject all say defrag the hard disk before and after capturing. A 2 hour capture in a typical format using a decent capture card can result in files several tens of gigabytes long in umcompressed format. Windows 98 can shuffle all the files up one end of a drive, leaving contiguous free space at the end of the drive, perfect for video capture. XP doesn't seem to be able to do this and the impact on the quality of video capture under this OS is noticeable. Dropped frames increase as the drive has to jump between blocks of free space.

Is the ability to consolidate free space a hidden feature or has it been dropped by M$ without them telling us?!!

by djent

Get a copy of Diskeeper and do a "boot time defrag. It will defrag page files, MTF files, consolidate directories. It will also consolidate freespace on FAT32 partitions, this is less of an issue on NTFS partitions. XP defrag is a subset of an old version of Diskeeper and is slow.

by ghayes

"this is less of an issue on NTFS partitions"

This is incorrect. Free space fragmentation is an issue regardless of the file system in use. If there isn't a large enough piece of contiguous free space to create a file - then fragmentation happens.

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows Storage Management/File System

Disclaimer: I work for Raxco Software, the maker of PerfectDisk - a commercial defrag utility, as a systems engineer in the support department.

by ghayes

All of the defragmenters use Microsoft's Defrag APIs. These APIs fully support consolidation of free space - it is just up to the defragmenter to have the "smarts" to know how to do it. The built-in defragmenter doesn't have the "smarts". That isbecause it is based on a commercial defragmenter that doesn't have the "smarts".

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows Storage Management/File System

Disclaimer: I work for Raxco Software, the maker of PerfectDisk - a commercial defrag utility, as a systems engineer in the support department.

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