[Home] Fragmented Files

[hmmm]

I use Diskeeper Lite.
My PC seem to be accumulating so many fragmented files recently. So I am trying to defragment it almost everyday to up the performance. I tried to Defragment it in Safe Mode but "Diskeeper Lite" would not work.
Am I doing something wrong?
What is your opinion of Diskeeper Lite?
Comments would be appreciated.
Thank you.

[Steve R Jones]

Only way to avoid fragmented files is to leave the pc turned off....

Odds are you see very little difference in performance with a daily defrag. Just do it once every week or so...

[fink]

Many (possibly most) third party defraggers won't work in safe mode because they load extra services to run. Usually to keep track of ongoing defragmentation. You can look in admin tools/services to turn it on manually. It may be obvious which one it is or you may have to look at the various services descriptions to suss it out.

(Diskeeper is considered one of the best ones)

[Ridgerunr]

Raxco Perfect Disk beats the socks off most others and it 'will' defrag your system and page files offline. No, it's not free,but imho,well worth the $. Been using it for a couple years and very satisfied...
http://www.raxco.com/products/perfectdisk2k/

[LindaHewitt]

I also use Raxco's PerfectDisk and I consider it the best defrag tool. In fact, so does Microsoft because it is the only one that they have certified.

If you go to the Raxco website, http://www.raxco.com/, you can find a comparison between Diskeeper and PerfectDisk but I believe that this comparison is between the full version of Diskeeper and NOT Diskeeper Lite.

You can also do a search here at VDR on PerfectDisk and you will get a lot of valuable information from other users, etc.

Linda

[hmmm]

Thank you for all the advice.

[Starman99]

I further recommend Perfect Disk. Some of my partitions see 120,000 file ops a day so I defrag every few days but that is highly unusual for the average pc.

One reason you are having so many fragmented files could be that you do not have much spare hdd space. Files have to be put where they can, even if that means splitting them up. If you have a big chunk of continuous free space, files will be less fragmented. Free space can also make defragging faster.

If you use the recommended SmartPlacement in PerfectDisk it squishes all the files to the start of the drive with no spaces, leaving the largest possible empty space at the end.

Starman*

[hmmm]

Thank you for your reply Starman,
I have 12.4 GB used and 43.4 GB Free space.
To be honest Starman it all started couple of months ago by my CPU usage going very high. Every time I open a program it takes ages and CPU goes sky high. As always, lots of you guys tried to help me many ways but I JUST could not solve the problem. Thinking back it may have been caused by one of the security updates but I just can not point my finger to it.
So I keep defragmenting with a desperate hope that my PC runs better.
May be I ought to try this "PerfectDisk"????
Regards.

[fink]

I suspect the problem isn't defragmentation. diskeeper is a perfectly respectable defrag utility (even Windows own does a reasonable job). Do you use many different a/v and spyware programs? Sometimes too many can cause programs to open slowly. Try disabling some of them temporarily and see if it makes a difference. I found Microsoft antispy (now Windows defender) caused that problem on one of my computers.

[Starman99]

PerfectDisk nor any other defrag is not going to solve that sort of problem. Slow opening is one thing, causing file fragmentation is something else. Could be many things and I'm sure you were advised on them. You could try reposting as a new thread summarizing what you did back then to investigate the problem.

Starman*

[hmmm]

Hi Fink,
I use Windows Defender (Turned it on and off but made no differance), SpyBot Search and Destroy, Spyware Blaster, Ad-Aware SE Personal and CC Cleaner. I have AVG Free and Zone Alarm Free version too.

Starman, I suppose I have to find the courage to re-post my problem again. I just feel a bit embarrassed.

Thank you guys.

[Starman99]

After commenting on this thread, I took a look at fragmentation on my own c: drive. I only use it for the OS, programs and the Documents and Settings folder. I don't use My Documents at all. I noticed that the fragmentation is quite high. I have a lot of file operations on my pc but on other drives. The majority of ops on the c: drive are only concerned with temp files from various applications.

It may be useful to move the Documents and Settings folder to a separate partition so that the fragmentation can be limited to that area (which can be defragged separately to the c: drive). It looks like moving the folder after XP is installed is an arduous task from the info I can find, but sounds a good idea in principle. Anyone got experience with this?

Starman*