Defraggling

[Heather Positive Thinker]

I have downloaded and am running Piriforms defraggler which is supposed to defragment much quicker than the MS one. Its been going for an hour now and only 17% defragmented

Can someone explain to me in words of one syllable please what are fragments? How do they happen? How come I have over 5000 of them?

[TrevorFranklin]

Think a library full of empty shelves.
When you first start putting books on them, they will all fit, but at one point a book will be wider than the space left on the shelf, so cannot fit in that space.
To make it fit, you tear the book into sections, with one going into the available space and the balance into the next available space.

This is exactly what your PC does.
On the hard drive are sections that files can fit in, but soon you get spaces that large files cannot fit into, so the Operating system will split up the file into smaller sections to allow it to fit in.

Keep this going and you could have a file split up into many pieces, so it can fit into the available slots.
This is known as fragmentation.
The result is, just like you having to run around the library, collecting all the pieces of the 'book' before you can then put it together and read it, your PC has to do the same, thus reducing the speed that the file can be retrieved and opened for you to use.

Defragging will scan the drive, then, just like one of those puzzles where you slide parts of the image around until they all line up, you PC will repeatedly shuffle the fragments between availame spare slots, until they are all re-aligned.

Drives do not need to be defragmented unless they are more than 15% fragmented, but the longer you leave this process, the more the PC will need to do this 'shuffle' action until it has all pieces together.

Hope that is simple enough (I normally have my students 'experience' this with me getting them to find 'fragmented' books I have planted in the college library).

Trev

PS, if you are using Windows 7, as part of the operating system, it will do this process automatically as a weekly task.

[Heather Positive Thinker]

Many thanks Trevor, that does help a lot more. Mind you, why dont MS make bigger shelves? I think I have Windows 7 but the defraggler found 55% needed defraggling.

[TrevorFranklin]

Many thanks Trevor, that does help a lot more. Mind you, why dont MS make bigger shelves? I think I have Windows 7 but the defraggler found 55% needed defraggling.

If you are using Windows 7, it should not get that badly fragmented.
I would assume that the scheduling for Defragmenter has been deactivated, as my PC has it set for weekly and, even with the 'thrashing' it gets from downloading then deleating student files for marking etc, it has never been more than 3% fragmented.

Go here for info on how to open Defrafmenter, then check that you have a weekly defragnmentation scheduled via the scheduling button

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/improve-performance-by-defragmenting-your-hard-disk

[Heather Positive Thinker]

Well thats very odd. Looked at the Dsk Defrag and it says enabled every Thursday at 1 p.m. and says last defrag today (at this very time!!). So cant work that out at all.

[TrevorFranklin]

get it to analyse the drive and see what % it says is fragmented

[Britec]

Piriforms defraggler is a great tool and love the way Trevor explained how it works, nice and easy to understand.
Auslogics Registry Defrag is also a great tool not many free Registry Defragers about.

[Heather Positive Thinker]

I have piriform defraggler running at the moment Trevor, so I dont want to fiddle with the other disk defrag til its finished - only 29% so far :(

[Heather Positive Thinker]

My gawd, Ive been away, had dinenr, come back and its still saying only 30%

[TrevorFranklin]

I have defragmented drives of about 60GB in size with fragmentation at a level like yours and found I had it running all night before it was completed.
Don't forget, the process is repeatedly moving fragments from one place to another by combining fragments and putting in a space that will take them, then, seeing if that file is now complete, if not, repeating again until all files have been 'gathered' and combined., so it WILL take a long time.

[Heather Positive Thinker]

Gawd Trevor, its still on 30%. Thing is does it go into slumber mode if I just leave it and walk away? I mean when I come back the screen is black and I have to jiggle the mouse to have it come back. Do I need to do something so it doesnt go on slumber please?

[Britec]

I think you need to change your power settings, because it dont run when it goes on slumber

[Heather Positive Thinker]

Oh brit, how do I do that please?

[Heather Positive Thinker]

Oh, I think I have found it. Control Panel, Power options? It says put the computer to sleep after an hour at the mo. So Ive changed that to "never". I do hope that works as this is like watching paint dry.

[Heather Positive Thinker]

I dont believe it - its been left on all night and this morning its saying 31% has been defragged. This cant be right.

[Elaine ..Spain]

Heather, which operating system are you running - Vista or Windows7?

[Elaine ..Spain]

Forget that last question because I'm not an expert and was only going to give you some links to a reply on the Tech Guy forum - but I see you are using Piriform.

Why not try their online forum ..... http://forum.piriform.com/
There might be a similar query on there which will be of help, if not leave a message - it seems a relatively active forum.

[Christine in Portugal]

We had some problems with it taking a really long time on a computer running Vista.

We now use

http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html

This is very quick.

[Heather Positive Thinker]

Well, its not moved at all since I got up - Ive turned it off now, its driivng me loopy. Ill have a go at yours chris, thanks.

[Heather Positive Thinker]

Well thats not made any sense, that Smart defrag says no files need defragging?