pattricia Posted February 27, 2008 Share Posted February 27, 2008 Your disk drive is formatted into clusters - think of them like pigeon holes in an old fashion mail room - and each cluster has an address and a set size. When the OS writes a file to disk the disk hardware slots it into these clusters. If the file is small, then the whole cluster is taken up with that file (why disk usage does not always match the size of the data stored - lots of wastage!). If the file is larger than the cluster size it gets split up and stored in multiple clusters. Ideally these are all adjacent to each other so they can be read back from disk most efficiently. However, the disk may only have free clusters that are spread all over the place. Thus, when the file is being read off the disk the drive head has to leap all over the place to retrieve it. Which is slower and less efficient. Defragging simply identifies these files and moves them to somewhere on the disk where all the parts of a file are in adjacent clusters. Theres probably more to it than that, but thats the basic idea. If you hear your disk making more disk noise than usual, or it seems sluggish, then it's one thing that might make it better. Must Bookmark this post. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savannah2 Posted February 27, 2008 Share Posted February 27, 2008 Isn't there one on windows xp that i can use? There is one built into XP, it is a scaled down version of Diskeeper. It isn't the best, download Auslogics Disk Defrag Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savannah2 Posted February 27, 2008 Share Posted February 27, 2008 great ceasers ghost! It was an ill-treated laptop from a friend of mine. The laptop hadn't had no tender loving care for nearly three years!! If I had known it was going to take more than a day to defrag I would have reinstalled XP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesBlacks Posted February 27, 2008 Share Posted February 27, 2008 How long should a full 80gb hard drive take? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alkatraz Posted February 27, 2008 Share Posted February 27, 2008 A FULL drive cannot be defragmented. The time needed for any defrag process depends on a large number of factors, primarily being the level of fragmentation and the read/write access speeds for the drive. The only real way to answer your question is - find out for yourself - but you shouldn't really be looking at more than 12 hours, and typically I would expect about an hour - but all experiences differ. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Longcol Posted February 28, 2008 Share Posted February 28, 2008 Try Ashampoo magical defrag - runs in the background when your HDD isn't busy (like when posting on the forum). Keeps your HDD defragmented all the time. http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/downloads/2171394/ashampoo-magical-defrag Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jezzyjj Posted February 28, 2008 Share Posted February 28, 2008 Your disk drive is formatted into clusters - think of them like pigeon holes in an old fashion mail room - and each cluster has an address and a set size. When the OS writes a file to disk the disk hardware slots it into these clusters. If the file is small, then the whole cluster is taken up with that file (why disk usage does not always match the size of the data stored - lots of wastage!). If the file is larger than the cluster size it gets split up and stored in multiple clusters. Ideally these are all adjacent to each other so they can be read back from disk most efficiently. However, the disk may only have free clusters that are spread all over the place. Thus, when the file is being read off the disk the drive head has to leap all over the place to retrieve it. Which is slower and less efficient. Defragging simply identifies these files and moves them to somewhere on the disk where all the parts of a file are in adjacent clusters. Theres probably more to it than that, but thats the basic idea. If you hear your disk making more disk noise than usual, or it seems sluggish, then it's one thing that might make it better. Nicely explained for those not clued up on Hard Drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jezzyjj Posted February 28, 2008 Share Posted February 28, 2008 A FULL drive cannot be defragmented. Copy some of the Data off and then you'll be able to Defrag. The more space available the quicker it is to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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