Vista & Defragmenting?

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Ever since I've had this new PC with Vista Home Premium I have been defragging, but not in the SAFE MODE.

You just can't do it in Safe Mode with Vista.

So I'm doing it the only other way, and that is, guess what? In the non-safe mode.

I'm just double-checking here to see what all you other Vista users are doing when it comes to DEFRAG.
I guess my PC is defragging. But I'm not all that sure. It's a sloppy setup. It doesn't show any graphs or diminishing bars, time left etc. - so you never really know what's going on.

Previous Windows OS defrag programs were a lot better, visually and understanding-wise.

Let me know. Thanks all. Oh Well

Jon Moen · From: Canada

I found these sites:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/134986/vista_defrag_problems.html

http://itsfood.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/tech-how-to-defrag-in-windows-vista/

http://www.howtohaven.com/system/vistadefragmentation.shtml

There are also 3rd party defrag tools.

Mitch Drumm · From: Frostbite Falls, hard by Veronica Lake

Chip:

Defragmentation in Vista shouldn’t be an issue for you. You should automatically be on a defragmentation schedule.

You can defrag or check or change your schedule at: Start/programs/accessories/system tools/disk defragmenter. By default, it will defrag all drives on your PC.

I installed Vista a couple of days ago, and it set my schedule for 1 AM Wednesday. If my machine isn’t running at that time, Vista will recheck defrag status the next time I start up.

I think defragging under Vista goes on as a low priority task intermittently whenever your PC is not otherwise occupied and Vista thinks it is worthwhile. So, I would pretty much forget about it. Let Vista worry about it.

You can also run defrag from the command prompt with administrator privileges. You shouldn’t have to do that either, but here is how:

Start/programs/accessories and right click command prompt; choose run as administrator.

In the command window, type defrag c: to defrag the C drive

You can also type defrag –a c: to just analyze the drive to see if it needs defragging.

Two of my drives are currently at least 10% fragmented, but Vista says they don’t yet need defragging.

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Thanks Jon & Mitch for your input.

I do not like auto checks.

I like doing things when I'm ready to do them.
The reason is, especially with AVG (when I had it), is that it interferes and slows things up when you're doing something; especially recording or burning.

So I'm not on a defrag schedule as we speak.
But Mitch, if you think it's the way to go, and you didn't mention any slow-down/interfere problems, then maybe I'll start doing it on a scheduled run.

Jon, I will be checking out your links, too; just haven't had the time to give them my full attention, yet.

Thanks once again, mates. Smile

Jack Stoner · From: Kansas City, MO

My system does it on a regular schedule, but it's always at an "idle" time (when I'm not using the PC). If you are defragmenting the hard drive, you don't want to be writing data to the drive while you are trying to do the defrag, it can confuse the issue or you will wind up with more fragments.

Same way, I don't do anything else (or have other programs open) when I'm recording or burning CD's. There are too many potentials for interferring with the audio or burning process and causing glitches, dropout's, clicks, etc.

I have an Intel Quad CPU processor (Q6600) and if you believe what they show you on HSN or QVC about multiple parallel processing, where one CPU is handling one program while another CPU is doing another task, I haven't seen that happen yet. Very few programs (none that I have) including Vista 64 bit are set up to fully utilize the multiple processors. When any program runs in my system, the CPU monitor shows all the processors are being used, not just one processor.

The computer is doing "multi-tasking" (more than one job at a time) which PC's have been doing for many years - even back in the old 286/386 CPU days - but that is different from multi-cpu's handling different tasks. The multi-tasking is where the potential for interrupts or glitches can happen. There are priorities within the PC/Operating System. Audio, for example is a low priority and is usually on a shared Interrupt with some other device (which usually has a higher priority) and thus can be interrupted and potentially can cause problems with the audio such as clicks, dropouts, static, etc.

John Cipriano · From: San Francisco

I've been using Defraggler lately. I think there's others out there that are more thorough, but honestly it's not that important that your defrag program is super neat. You just need to do it when things get really bad. But Defraggler graphs out the blocks and gives you a percentage indicator.

Also, JkDefrag is supposed to be very good. We use Diskkeper on the servers since one of them came with it.

In Vista, if you run defrag from the command line with the -v switch, it will give you a report before it goes to work (but still no progress indicator). See here:
http://www.howtohaven.com/system/vistadefragmentation.shtml

Edit...oops, Jon beat me to that link. In any case it's worth reading.

Earnest Bovine · From: Los Angeles CA USA

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Yeah Jack,

As Earnest's post points out about many things going on, all the time, just what things should you disable before recording or burning?

Like I now have the full Micro Trend paid version which is running all the time. What about Secunia?

Just to mention a few...

I forgot all about this post...but I just re-read it.
Confused

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