ok, lets start some questions.
The questions are:
A> How did you mangle your hard drive when you set it up.
B> How often do you defrag and how long does it take?
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My answers:
A> 40 gig hard drive partitioned into 5 parts:
7.43g for C (Main)
5.84g for D (Second, contains all installation programs.
5.84g for E (Maker, build stuff there.)
5.84g for F (Begger, it's actually 'My Documents')
12.2g for G (Music, duhh, mp3's)
B> two or three a month, takes about 5 minutes.
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5 minutes?
Here's some speedup to defragging tips from this old hat.
First, there's a program DEFRAG calls before is starts defragging, called: CVTAPLOG.EXE
This program reads the information contained in the C:\WINDOWS\APPLOG and produces a file DEFRAG uses to rearrange your programs so that they start faster.
Never mind if you told DEFRAG NOT to do it, it calls this program anyway.
Rename the sucker, say like WINPRGLOG, and DEFRAG never complains.
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Other tips:
If you stop and think how DEFRAG works, you'll see that making you hard drive into one, large drive will waste time when defragging.
When DEFRAG works on a file, it moves clusters in its way to the WAY end of the drive, swinging you heads clean across the platter, eats microseconds, and adds wear and tear to the drive.
Large drive, large swing, small drive, small swing.
Sometimes DEFRAG will HANG when operating on a drive which the PHYSICAL size is greater than 32gigs, therefore don't use DEFRAG on ALL drives.
Instead, write a batch file which does each drive separately;
(From my batch file (resets writes a date/time stamp with what was done to a logfile (I've turned off the task scheduler because I no longer need it)))
:defragstepper
\resets /track Defragging
start /w C:\Windows\DEFRAG.EXE c: /noprompt /f
start /w C:\Windows\DEFRAG.EXE d: /noprompt /f
start /w C:\Windows\DEFRAG.EXE e: /noprompt /f
start C:\Windows\DEFRAG.EXE f: /noprompt /f
goto quit
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5 minutes, about two or three times a month.

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