defrag question

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.

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

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.

 

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

 

uh, yea...small files too


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

 

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.

 

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