Defrag in Vista

Hi...

I am using Vista Home Premium having moved from XP. When I used to use the dfrag on XP, I had some graphics which showed the defrag process. In Vista I don't see this. Is it this way, or am I missing something?

Thanks

 

Nope, there is no graphical display for Vista's defrag utility.

 

Oh...OK....that's odd...quite disconcerting actually...but thanks for clarifying.

 

That's one of my biggest pet peeves with Vista! The solution is to use a third-party Disk Defragmenting program/utility. I use this one from Auslogics- LINK (it's FREE and works great)!

 

Yup....that's what I was thinking...using auslogic! Thanks for the link.

 

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_ff_auto_defrag.asp (about Vista Defragmentation)

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/01/25/disk-defragmentation-background-and-engineering-the-windows-7-improvements.aspx about Windows 7 defragmentation (but about Vista, too)

 

Thanks for the links. This defrag does take a long time! Best I guess if I leave it on overnight...don't recollect that it used to take this long when I was using XP (which is about 2 weeks ago)...

 

yeah, the idea is to leave it just going, it isn't a "now defrag, now it's done" but a "now a bit, tomorrow a bit.. just always a bit to be at high performance" thing.

 

i recc puran defrag EXCELLENT program and does a awesome job at boot time with the mft and pagfile and is super cheap. not free but imo its a better program all the way around

 

Windows default defraggers tend to take a long time. 3rd party utilities - Auslogics, IOBit, jkDefrag etc - are much faster.

cheers ...

 

You can perform a full defragmentation which will defragment bigger chunks
of files from the command prompt. To do this run command prompt as
administrator and type " defrag.exe c:-w " without quotes and press Enter,
for the C: drive. Or type " defrag.exe-c-w " for all drives.

 

This defrag.exe that one executes from the command prompt is the same defrag engine as the windows one - the one that I would normally activate via Control Panel...? If yes, then how is it different? And, if it is not, then is there any particular reason as to why it is not commonly or widely known? I mean, most of the people I know do know about the defrag app from within Control Panel, but I'll bet most of them don't know about this command prompt option.

Thanks for letting me know. I must try it.

 

I use Vista Defrag it takes a while but i does a great job, I do miss the time renaming though!

 

That's a great defragmenter, probably the best I've used on windows.
High recommend!

 

Auslogics disk defrag doesn't do a good job...it's just fast. For a more thorough defrag, jkdefrag is the way to go.

 

defraggler ftw

 

I was just about to post that

 

Meh, I just use Windows Defragmenter, it's automatic so I just set it and forget it, I haven't actively started a scan myself yet

 

I let Windows Defrag' do its own thing, also! Works just fine!


Cin

 

i hated the changes between xp to vista for the defrag utility. i went ahead and started using auslogics and it works awesome. im impressed with it.


ev

 

This is the second time that I have interrupted the Windows defrag process. It just TAKES TOO LONG. The last time I let it run for about 3 hours...it was still defragging the C drive! How long does it take...realistically?

Related to this, let me ask you folks another question:

It has been about 2 weeks since I changed the HDD on my machine. I also installed Vista HP on it. Clean install with SP 1 slipstreamed etc...No bloatwares of any kind. I have been using the machine for about 18 hours a day - everyday. Machine has not been put off. I have around 4 applications open all the time. Music playing. I have also been downloading quite a bit of stuff - large papers/ texts etc.

Do I really need to do a defrag? How does one know when to do a defrag?

Thanks

 

If vista automatically runs a background defrag what's the point in wasting time doing it manually?

 

Does this mean that I can continue with what I am doing while the defrag is on? If yes, then its all good! If not...well!!!!

 

Yeah, it runs in the background.

 

By default, the Vista defrag utility runs once a week in the middle of the night and ONLY if you're computer has been idle and is on AC power. Since many users here are notebook users, I would imagine that either the notebook is in use or "asleep", in which case the scheduled defrag wouldn't run.

It will run at the next chance it gets, but again, only when your computer is idle. Once you start doing something, it'll stop. You can change the settings in the Task Scheduler to fit your needs better. Honestly, running manual defrags every now and then is better than trying to figure out a schedule for it to run automatically unless you keep your computer on all the time.

 

Thanks. Having read the posts on this thread, I also think it is best to run a manual scan. However, the time it takes (the Vista native defrag) is mindboggling. I also noted that pre-scheduled scan by Vista. What is interesting is that it is scheduled on a wekly basis. Is this the norm? Should HDDs be defragged every week especially when the process takes so long? And, as a net assessment, to cut down on the time to defrag is a 3rd party degrag app the way to go? Some excellent sugestions have been made in previous posts. OTOH, posts have also been made which show that users are satisfied with the native defrag app in Vista.

Thanks

 

Actually, It still defrags while the computer is in use, albeit a bit more slowly.

Source-Microsoft's Storage Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/pages/disk-defragmenter-faq.aspx

 

If you run defragmentation from command prompt, you can perform full
defragmentation that consolidate all files fragments, regardless of their size.
The automatic defragmentation ...the default one will perform this task partially, because will consolidate files smaller than 64MB, only. I guess, better is to do that from command prompt. Anyway you have more options
to do the defragmentation this way, you can even do it when free space on the disk is very low, in such situation task can't be done with auto defrag...

Cheers.....

 

I think you are both correct. Crash is right it will not start until the machine is idle (but wrong about the next bit). Booboo12 is correct that once it starts it will run to completion or until Vista is shut down, albiet slower if there are foreground tasks running.

Gary

 

Hmm...did not know that...maybe that will be the way to go then. Do it once a fortnight or so...btw, does thiis take as much or lesser time than the dfrag that is on Vista by default?

 

It depends, how big is your drive and how much files you have on it as well as how much they are chopped.
My C partition is about 65GB big and there are 34GB files on it, so it takes about 20 minutes to perform full defragmentation. First time it took much more, can't remember exact time, guess, it was two or three hours. Really, can't remember now.

 

Using O&O at the moment, since i cant get diskeeper to work. Seems to be a fairly good job.

Doesnt take too long either, depending on what kind of defragment method you choose of course.

 

Oh ok, that makes sense. I was just going by the settings in the Task Scheduler. Thanks for the link Booboo12.

 

telling you if you have not tried puran you really should..