How long to defrag

I have a 143GB HD on a Vista desktop. It has 75GB free space. The Windows Defrag program does not have an analyzer step to choose so I do not know what percentage of defrag exists. There is no graph either to determine what the disk looks like in regards to how the files are set out. The program shows a scheduler and a statement as to when the HD was last defraged. Mine says 'never'.

I started the program at noon yesterday on C: and it is still running (7am now). When I open the Resource Manager it shows the PID for the defrag in both CPU and DISC. There is definitely activity and the light on the unit is flashing regularly. It shows it running in the background. Other windows stuff is starting and ending and I can open and close programs (was checking incase the system was just looping). Is it normal for it to take this long?

 

You could check out Auslogic free defragger and get better results. It has a nice analyzer, and is pretty quick. A 143GB HD should defrag in less than an hour.

 

the windows defrag program does have an analysis function as ive used it several times.if its below 10% then i generally dont bother defragging.

 

Not on Vista.

 

ok sorry.Longtime since i used vista..thought the option were there.
Im using auslogics defrag now but there is a multitude to choose from and maybe its abetter idea to let windows do these sort of things but i like auslogics as it has a optimization part too.

 

I would say 19 hours is much longer than normal. After defrag finished analyzing your drive, what was the fragmentation percentage?

 

I can't say if it's normal, but I would also suggest using a different defragger that gives you more information and features, such as a data map, analysis information and boot time defrag (for the pagefile and other files that can't be moved when Windows is running). I don't see any reason to put up with the very limited built-in app. I like PerfectDisk, but there are free apps that others will recommend too.

 

You have a lot of data to defrag, but it seems like it's taking way too long to me. I'd get a third-party defragger. The native defragger in Vista is as worthless as they come.

 

I believe it's the same Diskeeper engine with the map removed - apparently someone decided we were all wasting too much time watching the data blocks being relocated Unfortunately there's no way to tell in Vista what it's doing (if anything).

 

I agree with you all, in that a 3rd party defragger would be the best option. I would still be curious as to what percent his hd is fragmented, because of the length of time involved. I know the OP says there is no analyzer, and it has been a while since I've used Vista, but didn't Vista show an analysis result after first hitting defrag? I may be wrong, but that's how I thought it was.

 

you can analyse a volume for defrag in vista but you need to do it from the commandline.

Open cmd as administrator

the command is as follows:
defrag c: -a
change c to whichever drive letter you wish to analyse.

 

It's also been awhile for me since I've used the native Vista defragger, but from what I remember it analyzes in the background when you start it, and 99% of the time it comes back with "defrag not necessary at this time" or some such thing. There's no way to see the progress of the analysis, so if you don't know what it's doing you're left to stare at the screen and wonder what the heck's goin' on.

EDIT: I decided to try it out of curiosity. It says "Analyzing, this may take a few minutes or several hours."

 

I have been using the defragger by Piriform.
It has been giving me problems but it works.

I went to the AusLogic site to look in this defragger and
my virus checker (ESET Smart Security) stopped the download.
Evidently it found bad goodies in the download.

 

I have just tryed downloading it here to check .Eset is just informing you that the installer has the option to install ask toolbar during installation of the product which you should be able to deselect during installation.

 

Thank you for responding Lodore.
Went to another site and everything is fine now.

It ran so fast that I wonder what I did wrong.
Will keep on trying over the next week or so to
see how things go.

I think Piriform is dropping the ball on defraggler.
But that's just my opinion.

 

Why don't you show Auslogic as an exception so Eset won't stop it. I use Auslogic and can verify it's OK.

 

JKDefrag 3.36, the old one, no that newest crap works great on windows vista, used for several years even on win7 without a single issue.

 

Thank you all. After this experience I will check out your suggestions for a replacement product and get one.

Just to get back to you on what finally happened with the defrag. It ended at 9am (about 21 hours in total) and there was no statistics offered. It just stated that it completed successfully. I checked 'My Computer' after the defrag and though I started with a 143GB HD that had 75GB free space, I ended up with 69.2GB free space. Vista must have ate 5.8GB as a snack !!!

Edit: I did run an incremental backup after the defrag, but it only used 2MB of disk space. This may account for some of the newly used space.

 

years ago when a screensaver would run windows defrag would say a change happened and start from the begining

 

Newest crap? how so?

 

Thank you for this lodore. I missed it the first time around. I ran it this morning and got a lot of analysis information: File Defrag, Free Space Defrag, Folder Defrag and Master File Table Defrag. Wish I had have had this before I started that marathon defrag as I would have known what the % was. I assume it must have been high. The % file defrag is now 0%.

Because the free space number went down by 5.8GB, I was concerned that there had to be something else wrong, so I ran a scan from the command prompt. Some corrupt files were found and repaired. After I rebooted I opened the Resource Manager and the DISK was going crazy. Windows Host Services was moving 50MB, 20MB, 30MB chucks of data for a good 15 minutes. I am beginning to think that the marathon defrag did not actually finish properly. I think I will run it from the command prompt if I need to run it again. I see that defrag c -w runs a FULL defrag. So does that mean running from the GUI is a 'not FULL' defrag on Vista?

 

Its their own engine written from scratch. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942092

Cheers, Nick