defragmentation how do you do it

[cwills]

the 17% free space could be part of your original problem, you need enough free space for the defragger to move things around the way it wants to. I can't remember how much the Windows XP defragmenter needs to be efficient. I believe Diskeeper recommends 20% as a bare minimum. Luckily, PerfectDisk needs only 5%. The problem is worse when they are large files, like the mpg's you wanted defraged. Even if you have 17% free, and let's say 17% on your drive is 20GB, the amount of contiguous free space before a defrag on a badly fragmented drive might be under 1GB, which is why it takes so long to defrag if you do it irregularily, and why some defraggers have limited returns.

[jasjol]

I guess I had 39GB free on a 233GB disk but it might have been that there were not contigous space as you say - although the defrag analyze text said free space was not fragmented.

One file recording of 1,8 GB had 38000 fragments.

I tried the defrag c: -v -f in command windows and it worked fine - even though I had only 14% free space now it took away 5% fragmentation.

I have added it into my fetchXML.bat - to run daily.

I would say it is good advice for all to defrag often.

[Darx-starz]

The -f means force. Do it even if you dont have the space for it. I like the look of PerfectDisk. I would use it if it was free

[Darx-starz]

cwills, I like PerfectDisk. You have changed my mind about these tools. I had a look and downloaded the demo first and was impressed.

I purchased it on-line and want to run it on my PVR. I would like to run it as part of my usual daily defrag routine. What command line switches do you use?

I would like to do it this way becuase windows schedular will wake my machine.

[cwills]

Darx-starz, you could use

pdcmd.exe /SP C:

If the C: is the drive you want defragmented. This will defrag with the smart placement technology. The smart spacement works with last modified file time. I wasn't sure originally when I used it, if it used with last modified or accessed so I emailed Raxco and they confirmed it's last modified. I wanted to be sure because I turned off the NTFS last access update feature of Windows to save a little disk writing.

[jacoup]

yee perfect disk didn't work for mee yee find it slow at times, but mee likes disk keeper instead

[Darx-starz]

Cheers for that cwills. I will give it a shot.