Comments for Why would the defragger tell me I still need to defrag after it's done?

Comment from Paul Jones on 2008-10-21

2008-10-21T18:57:53Z

There are 2 gotchas with the windows XP defrag:
1) Doesn't deal with pagefiles or MFT
2) requires multiple passes to completely defrag what can be defragged.

Both of these gotchas come from the fact that XP's defragger is actually a very scaled down version of DiskKeeper. If it was a full scale version, there would be no reason for you to buy the full version. Help, About Disk Defragmenter will show:
Disk Defragmenter
Microsoft Corp, Executive Software Int'l
Version: 1.0

Executive Software produces DiskKeeper.

If you have enough memory, you can set the page file to No Paging File, reboot, defrag, then set it to a custom size and reboot one more time. I use 2047 for both numbers, anything at 2GB or above seems to slow things down a tiny bit. By forcing a single size, the page file won't grow, and therefore won't fragment. If you have more than one hard drive, multiple page files can speed things up. Put a 1024 on C and a 1024 on D, and XP will try to use the pagefile on the least used drive, thus speeding things up a bit.

]]>

A comment on: Why would the defragger tell me I still need to defrag after it's done?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Richard on 2008-10-15

2008-10-16T01:27:48Z

The new defragmenting programs aren't like the one that came with DOS 6.x which only needed a single free cluster to completely defrag a disk and it would do it ever so slowly and the only thing it couldn't defrag was the windows permanent swapfile;

there's a free utility for defragmenting the pagefile & registry etc. files called PageDefrag from sysinternals on the MS website
it's a stand alone program that doesn't install but just sets the "run once" flag and just defrags the pagefile and registry files @ boot

PageDefrag works on Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Server 2003

PageDefrag isn't for general drive defragmenting but is an additional companion tool for a regular defrag program.

PageDefrag is mentioned (and linked to) in the article you're commenting on.

- Leo
16-Oct-2008

]]>

A comment on: Why would the defragger tell me I still need to defrag after it's done?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Packrat1947 on 2008-10-15

2008-10-15T12:33:11Z

PerfectDisk will do the same things as Disk Keeper. Diskkeeper seemes a bit too complicated to use. Some people us the "set and forget" option and sleep well.

]]>

A comment on: Why would the defragger tell me I still need to defrag after it's done?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Dave Ellis on 2008-10-14

2008-10-14T15:57:11Z

I've been curious about this defragging problem on one of my computers for a long time - turns out it was a fragmented pagefile. Thanks for the solution, the little program worked perfectly.

]]>

A comment on: Why would the defragger tell me I still need to defrag after it's done?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from DarkKnight on 2008-10-13

2008-10-13T11:22:21Z

Regarding third party utilities; here's my experience from a few weeks ago:
I used to get the 'Some files on this volume could not defragmented' message on my XP gaming rig. Turns out the MFT and pagefile were heavily fragmented and the drive was about 80% full.

Tried most of the free defraggers like auslogics, jkdefragger, defraggler etc, and end result: none of them could do anything about the MFT which is a critical system file. Downloaded Diskeeper 2008's free trial version (ended up buying it later because it was so good) and it was able to defrag the whole drive and then the MFT and pagefile via a boot-time defrag without breaking into a sweat. It was also the only one that allowed me to multitask without a hitch while running in the background. So, if system files are fragmented, it's better to go directly to the trial version of Diskeeper and fix the problem rather than wasting time with the 'free' utilities. Atleast you can use Diskeeper for 30 days for free legally.

]]>

A comment on: Why would the defragger tell me I still need to defrag after it's done?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.