Disk defragmenter has been running for 24 hours!!!! (1 Viewer)

[Troy LaMont]

I think it's probably resetting itself, but is it actually possible for my other computer to take that dang long to finish defragmenting?

It's a laptop running Win 98SE, 8 Gb hard drive.

I've tried searches under Google and Excite and Microsoft but I can't seem to find any answers.

I'm content to let it run it's course if it needs to, but this seems like hella long time!

Troy
(I also posted this on the computer forum)

 

[Ryan Wright]

It's fine. Leave it be. It will finish eventually. If you get tired of it, stop it, use your laptop, and re-start it later. It will pick up (mostly) where it left off.

 

[JasenP]

I used to have problems running defrag in Win 98SE. Boot into safe mode and defrag. You shouldn't have any problems.

 

[Filipe Almeida Paz]

Hi!
Usually this happens when you do not defragment your disk for a very long time. Once I had my computer running for almost three days but it eventually ended up.
Just a "little" patience.
Filipe

 

[Cam S]

it is prolly doing this because everytime something is changed or accessed on your computer the defrag restarts. I never defrag because of this.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Disable Find Fast and any other program which reguarly accesses the HD. Unplug it from the network too

 

[ryan_x]

the problem is you have problems running in the background...so it just keeps restarting without actually defragging....press ctrl-alt-delete and shutdown all prgrams except systray and explorer

 

[Troy LaMont]

Usually this happens when you do not defragment your disk for a very long time. Once I had my computer running for almost three days but it eventually ended up.
Just a "little" patience.

Holy hand grenade Batman!!!

Whew, that really takes a load off.
I am running it in Safe Mode so there's nothing else running in the background. I thought it may be doing something because each time it restarted, it began defragmenting more from the last starting point.
Oh, it hasn't been defragmented since I had it! I bought it new in 1998!
Thanks millions!
Troy

 

[CharlesD]

I wish Microsoft would get on the ball and adopt a "journaling" file-system that essentialy defrags it-self automaticaly during normal useage.
For instance with BeOS, which had such a fs, you could do a physical file copy of a large file (e.g. between disc drives) and literaly pull the plug out of the wall and not only would it subsequently re-boot with no problems it, would also resume the file copy where it left off!
Surley Micro$oft could buy this technology off someone

 

[Dave F]

Diskeeper, accept no substitutes.
-Dave

 

[Glenn Overholt]

It might help to run scandisk first, as it will eliminate most of defrag's restarts.

Glenn

 

[Joseph S]

For instance with BeOS

supports practically any FS on the planet and used to fly on my crumby 6100/60 PPC.
If only...
Well maybe there is hope in that Apple somewhat recently hired their FS dev.
It's pretty sad when the only way to format my 120GB firewire drive properly for Mac OS X and PC sharing in FAT32 is
1)df (get disk path)
2)sudo newfs_msdos -F 32 -v fwone /dev/diskXsX (to format)
3)(enter password)
all done in OS X's terminal.app, because Win 2k and XP refuse to format FAT32 drives >32GB with one partition.
What good is a consumer FS if only one system can read it??
Another thing that bugs me is that the defrag is so worthless that I end up reformatting instead and tools like Partion Magic can't even see the Firewire bus.
Friends don't let friends use the Win98 defrag tool.

 

[Bill Slack]

NTFS /is/ a journaling file system. That doesn't mean that deframenting isn't neccesary though (despite some claims to the contrary!)

There isn't any magic way to make things not fragment; though a better file system can deal with it in a better way. The physical location of the data on the platter is rather built in problem you can't avoid (with a winchester drive.)

Why on earth the MS defragger doesn't insist on closing all your programs (and why it doesn't suspend findfast, especially) is beyond me.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

I don't think even Microsoft continues to deny that NTFS doesn't need defragging. Win 2K/XP includes a defragger which is a lightweight version of Diskeeper.

One thing about Windows 9x defrag: don't view the disk map. That slows it down. If your hard disk makes enough noise to hear the activity, you can hear an obvious speed increase when you close the disk map.

Better yet, get Norton. Speed Disk can defrag the swap file and directories, plus it has a strategy for moving frequently accessed files to the front of the disk, frequently modified files to the middle adjacent to free space, and infrequently accessed files at the very end.

But speaking of denial, the company that makes Diskeeper continues to insist that there's nothing to gain from strategically locating files on the disk.

What good is a consumer FS if only one system can read it??

99.999% of the consumers don't need to do that and therefore don't give a damn. That kind of interoperability goes beyond the consumer level.

 

[Joseph S]

99.999% of the consumers don't need to do that and therefore don't give a damn. That kind of interoperability goes beyond the consumer level.

I must be confused, but less than 1 in 100,000 don't still use Win98 and Win2K/XP due to incompatibilities or otherwise??

There's also at least 7+% of the general public and probably 90+% of business consumers running any combo of Linux, UNIX, Mac, Win2k, etc. simultaneously.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

I'm talking about consumer need for your specific example: a portable 1394 hard drive to move data between Windows and Macs and Linux.

Yeah businesses are running a mix of operating systems but they're not shuffling hard drives between them. Networking eliminated sneakernet a long time ago.

 

[Dave F]

But speaking of denial, the company that makes Diskeeper continues to insist that there's nothing to gain from strategically locating files on the disk.

Hopefully they will wise up in future. Still, the ability to defrag in the background while working is a _major_ plus. Norton Speed Disk and Diskeeper are very similar in other regards (swap file defrag and directory consolidation), but vary on these two features.

-Dave

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

I've just learned that the latest version of Diskeeper adheres to Windows XP's Fastboot optimization (the prefetchlayout.ini file). It adheres by not moving the Fastboot files. Not only that, but Execsoft helped Microsoft develop the "defrag" portion of Fastboot that consolidates all the Fastboot files to a contiguous location.

That's almost a strategy, so it seems that Execsoft does recognize a glimmer of benefit to having one. But the next logical step is to put those Fastboot files at the "front" of the disk, which Diskeeper does not. Execsoft doesn't believe the front of the disk is faster. And Execsoft still doesn't see the advantage of keeping frequently modified files near freespace and infrequently modified files away from both frequently modified files and freespace.

 

[Bill Kane]

Once you are defragmented, you may consider configuring your computer to automatically run the program, say monthly.

I run Win98SE and found this thru Programs-Accessories-System Tools-Maintenance. Dont know how this applies to a laptop, however.

Still, it takes ~20 minutes.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

A couple of things that may be causing problems are the amount of RAM and the amount of free space on the disk. If you have very little RAM, then the virtual memory could still be used a lot, causing excess drive activity, and if the drive is full, then defrag has a hard time juggling stuff to do its job. How is your system with regards to these issues?