Desktop (NTFS) vs Laptop (FAT32) Defragment

Hi I have a desktop with a 160GB 7200RPM hard drive formatted in NTFS. My laptop has a 120GB 5400RPM hard drive in FAT32. Desktop has a 2.8Ghz P4 and laptop has a 2.0Ghz CoreDuo.

How come it take 10 minutes to defragment my desktop hard drive, but over 1.5 hours to defragment the laptop hard drive? Is it because of the NTFS vs FAT32 or simply the rotation speed?
I am reluctant to change my laptop to NTFS since I havent noticed a single drawback from FAT32 and I dont want anything to mess up.

 

what is the GBs used/free on each?

do you have a/v running during defrag?

what defrag are you using?

are you on battery when you defrag on the notebook?

 

I am on AC when defragging the notebook. The used to free GB on the laptop is 18 to 36 and about 50 to110 on the desktop ad I am using windows defrag. I have nothing running.

I have been running it for over 2 hours and it is 14% compacting files. It's horribly slow.

 

have you ever defragged the notebook before or is this the first time?

(oh, and to answer your original question, it shouldn't make that much of time difference between ntfs and fat32; i suspect the issue is elsewhere; but if it's the 1st time, i'm not surprised it's taking a long time)

 

1. you could have a severly fragmented hdd
2. the sectors in fat tables are huge when compared to ntfs
3. ntfs is more effiecent the fat

solution reinstall windows and format with ntfs and make the sotrage more usable.

edit also the slower laptop hdd does make a very slight difference but not that much.

 

Yes it is the first time defragmenting. I dont have to reinstall windows just to reformat I can just right click on C:\ and tell it to format to NTFS, right?

 

sure you can....and then half way through windows discovers that you have formatted and deleted most system files and will therefore be useless. you cant formatt a drive without wiping all information clean, including apps, data and OS. Id recomend doing a reformat and reinstall of windows and use ntfs...but thats just me.

 

you don't format, you convert.

don't worry, windows won't allow you to format an active partition anyways.

 

I think everyone also forgot to mention that it is a 5400rpm drive vs a 7200rpm drive.

 

I currently use PerfectDisk 7. It is much more effective at defraging, and it is quicker. I used the Windows defragmentor, and it was still 14% fragmented after it was finished. I used PerfectDisk and it is now at 0% fragmented (analyzed it on both PD and Win Defrag).

 

I have read in an aticle on NTFS and FAT32 drives that fat32 are much more succeptible to become fragmented than NTFS....

that's why fat32 being replaces by the way...

 

been so long since I have been on a fat32 file system. I know that a fat32 file allocation table is faster than the more secure ntfs, new technology file system. ntfs is a better file system and I cant beleive that someone would use fat32 as an os file system. I dont know if one or the other is more prone to defrag. Just defrag regularly. GL