defrag question

[reb]

I do a through scan disk and defrag every three weeks. All of the sudden when my defrag gets to 86% it just sits there like it hit a wall. Diagonistics say I have no problems.

 

[Y2Buddy]

don't run defrag


seriously, unless your adding and deleting large files a lot, defrag serves no purpose other than extra wear on your drive

 

[mathmajors]

I'll have to disagree on a couple of levels, Y2:

We keep servers defragged constantly with Diskeeper, but maybe that's less wear overall than what you're saying.

A high volume of file transactions, not just large files, can cause fragmentation, too. It could be the block size on the drive is larger than the files being written/deleted.

Usually, though, I'll go with whatever Windows 9x thinks is best, but I've got Diskeeper for any NT4.0 and 2000 boxes. Must have.

 

[mathmajors]

Oh, Reb. Sorry dude.

I always have to disable screensavers and junk when I'm defragging. It could be that you're getting to 86% about the time a screensaver kicks in. Or you may have a bad spot on the drive that scandisk didn't pick up. Make sure you scandisk before defrag.

 

[reb]

I still need to get it to finish. It's been working perfect for two years up until last week.

 

[Puttingood]

Mine done that about a month ago Reb and I ran ScanDisk over and over and then all the sudden it cleared up. Don't know what caused it.

 

[reb]

I'll try that. reminds me of a story my Dad told me about WW2. The French were always amazed at how the Americans could get a stalled rig to go. If a ride broke down the Frenchman would walk away from it and go find a mechanic. The Americans would get out, go around and kick the tires, beat on the engine with a hammer and get in and drive off

 

[Y2Buddy]

uh, yea...small files too


Screen saver kicking in is a good thought, or the drive goes into sleep mode.

 

[mathmajors]

Sleep mode could definitely be it, but Reb, you might need to look at what's changed on your PC since the last time it ran successfully. There's always a reason.

 

[Y2Buddy]

Or it just takes longer than it did, more files than before....