World's longest defrag session?

D

Dinorius_Redundicus

kuid 68213
I'm currently defragging my 350GB hard drive partition containing 185GB of TRS2004 and TS2010 files. It's been processing continuously now for 84 hours. Still has another 44,000 fragmented files (3.3GB) to go. I'm estimating the total time required will be about 100 hours.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone else had to do a longer (continuous) defrag than that?
:sleep:
 
First what defrag are you using. Built in will be slow. There are some good ones available. At work we install IObit defrag.It is free, and works good.http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html I use Diskeeper Defrag on my computers at home. It is not free. http://www.diskeeper.com/
I have not used Auslogic's Disc Defrag yet.

One other thing to think about. Since it is taking so long you may want to check your hard drive to make sure it does not have errors.
Kenny
 
Just to clarify, this wasn't really a complaint about the defrag program as such, more of a note just for interest. I don't think the drive has errors. The defragger isn't stalled, it's just plowing away at a massive backlog of fragmented files.

I happen to be using Pirisoft Defraggler at the moment, but have used Diskeeper in the past. Frankly, I think they're all good and all about the same. This is more about the huge number of files and the state of fragmentation I had allowed to build up over the last 6 months while fixing errors in legacy content on this drive (ie. it's my own fault).

Still, I'd like to know if anyone can beat my dubious defragging record!
 
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Check to be sure it is running in a DMA mode and hasn't dropped into PIO. I've dealt with my share of severely fragmented drives and never even come close to what you're experiencing.
 
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http://www.raxco.com/products/home-perfectdisk11-home-premium/compare
 
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I've had situations where drives were really fragmented. The process never took this long. So it looks like you take home the prize for the longest defragmenting session in the world!

Seriously though, I would check the drive for errors as well as the system settings. Be careful too that the drive doesn't burn out from all the activity as the head as to keep moving over the past 84, now 84-plus hours.

I agree with Kenny. I use Smart Defrag at work and Diskeeper at home. Smart Defrag is actually very easy to use and runs as quickly as Diskeeper.

John
 
RRSignal said:
Check to be sure it is running in a DMA mode and hasn't dropped into PIO. I've dealt with my share of severely fragmented drives and never even come close to what you're experiencing.
Click to expand...

If I knew what DMA and PIO were and how to check them, I would. Likewise for the "system settings" - which ones and what should they be?
 
It's under Device Manager. (Start-Control Panel->Performance and Maintenance->System-Hardware tab->Device Manager button under XP.) Click the + on IDE/ATAPI controllers to reveal each drive attached, and right-click each one called Primary IDE Channel or Secondary IDE Channel or similar. There should be a tab called Advanced Settings. Each device should have a Transfer Mode field and a Current Transfer Mode field. The Transfer Mode field should always say "DMA if Available". The Current Transfer Mode field should always say some level of UDMA (or Not Applicable, if nothing is installed in that position.) If it says PIO then it means your system has reverted to an older (and much less efficient) method of communicating with hardware. If this is the case, the fix is to go to the Driver tab (make sure nothing is running as you will have to reboot) and select Uninstall. You actually may have to reboot twice.

A drive slipping into PIO, however, is often a sign of a problem as reversion to PIO instead of using the far more efficient DMA is the hardware's method of self-repair, to a degree. This, along with new bad sectors forming (detectable via chkdsk), often are the earliest signs of a failing drive.
 
A thought would be - is there anything running in the background that would change the file structure whilst it's defragging. My late father had exactly the same thing happen to him once, it turned out he had some bonzo buddy software that occasionally popped up onto the screen. To him it was a bit of harmless fun, but to the defrag process it would go back over the changed structure and carry on until this bonzo thing started again, then it would go back over the changed structure again and again etc...

Just a thought.

Regards Barryg
 
Something running in the background changing things and relaying data on the Internet constantly does sound like a possible culprit.

Cheers

AJ
 
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@ barryg - no programs other than TRS2004 and TS2010 are on this (D) drive, and I don't see any pop-ups. All other programs are on my other drive partition (C).

@AJFox - maybe I'll try disconnecting my modem and see if defragging is faster?

@ rrsignal - transfer mode being used by the primary IDE is UltraDMA Mode 4. The secondary IDE is set to 'DMA if available'. No PIO's anywhere. Chkdsk found no errors.

.
 
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barryg said:
A thought would be - is there anything running in the background that would change the file structure whilst it's defragging. My late father had exactly the same thing happen to him once, it turned out he had some bonzo buddy software that occasionally popped up onto the screen. To him it was a bit of harmless fun, but to the defrag process it would go back over the changed structure and carry on until this bonzo thing started again, then it would go back over the changed structure again and again etc...

Just a thought.

Regards Barryg
Click to expand...

Bonzi Buddy - yeah, that was an early advertising spyware. Not nearly as bad as most of the others out there back then or now, but still not something you want if you know what it really does.
 
Finally it's done. 185GB of files, in 104 hours..

I've now set it to defrag whenever the disk is idle for 5 minutes or more so as not to let it get so fragmented in future. That was drive D, I don't think I wanna touch drive C for the moment!
 
Dinorius_Redundicus said:
I'm currently defragging my 350GB hard drive partition containing 185GB of TRS2004 and TS2010 files. It's been processing continuously now for 84 hours. Still has another 44,000 fragmented files (3.3GB) to go. I'm estimating the total time required will be about 100 hours.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone else had to do a longer (continuous) defrag than that?
:sleep:
Click to expand...

The longest it took me on my Vista is only 14 hours:D No longer have such defrag woes. I switched to Diskeeper (which is not free:eek: ) but has taken care of the defrag without bothering me. I've set it on fully auto and only check occasionally.
 
Dinorius_Redundicus said:
Just to clarify, this wasn't really a complaint about the defrag program as such, more of a note just for interest. I don't think the drive has errors. The defragger isn't stalled, it's just plowing away at a massive backlog of fragmented files.

I happen to be using Pirisoft Defraggler at the moment, but have used Diskeeper in the past. Frankly, I think they're all good and all about the same. This is more about the huge number of files and the state of fragmentation I had allowed to build up over the last 6 months while fixing errors in legacy content on this drive (ie. it's my own fault).

Still, I'd like to know if anyone can beat my dubious defragging record!
Click to expand...

At 104 hours, you should definitely contact Guiness Book of World Records!

Seriously though, I think the reason it took so long is the size of the disk (I have seen where volumes above 250 GB are best handled by a large volume defrag algorithm).

Still, a buddy of mine tackled his 1 TB drive with the built-in and it only took 4 days....

Just as a test, you should get a trial of the latest version of Diskeeper and see how long it takes to defrag your C drive or any other large drives you may have, but get the Pro Premier version as it has a "Terabyte Volume Engine" which is designed for large disks.

Would be interesting to see the difference (you didn't happen to make a clone image of the undefragged disk, did you?)

This would be an interesting experiment!
..
 
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