Vista defrag times?

With no progress bar, I have no idea what Vista defrag is actually doing. I ran it for 4 hours last night and have had it running for 4 hours this morning and it's still going - will it actually ever stop or just keep defraging my computer forever?

The laptop is just over a month old so I can't imagine it being this horribly fragmented (110Gb of 160Gb used, 5400 rpm)

 

I never defrag Vista from the GUI/Local disk properties interface. I open a command window with admin privileges - then run defrag c: -w -v. The command line version, I understand, does a more thorough job and never runs any more than 10 - 15 minutes (I have Vista on three laptops and one desktop) AFTER the initial defrag on a new build. The initial defrag on a clean build tends to run around 30 minutes though. I just rebuilt a couple of H-P laptops in the last two weeks - and I did set up the weekly defrag-on-schedule on those systems since neither of the owners are Windows savvy. And, unfortunately, the factory Vista images on at least H-P laptops and desktops that I have seen are horribly fragmented.

 

I agree, you may want to try to put the pagefile on its own partition, this will lower fragmentation greatly.

 

Thanks for the advice. From now on I'll defrag from command line. However I'm committed to letting it finish from GUI - 9 hours and counting. And by the way, I am not defraging an HP image - it's a clean install + programs/files.

As for having the pagefile on it's own partition, I thought this was only beneficial if the partition was also on its own HDD - I have this set up on my desktop. While it may not improve performance, I can see it reducing fragmentation though.

 

what are the switches for? ( -w -v )

 

http://www.download.com/Auslogics-Disk-Defrag/3000-2094_4-10730418.html?tag=lst-0-2

I use this. It's free, it shows progress and it works quickly.

 

for the command line, my hp says i need to open a command line w/ administrative permissions??

 

I use AusLogics as well and it works quickly...within 15 minutes it defragments my hard drives.

 

If you're willing to spend money, I'd suggest Diskeeper ProPremir.

 

hawkman-1 - the -w switch performs full defragmentation and attempts to consolidate all file fragments, regardless of their size. The -v switch specifies verbose mode, the defragmentation and analysis output is more detailed. By the way, I cheated and copied this data from a Vista command prompt using defrag /help...

 

for me defraging takes forever the first 2 times, then gets fast after that. i did hear microsoft is releasing a new defragmenter in sp1 which will allow more options. i know for certain it will allow you to select which drives to defragment, but im not sure about the eta timer. Anyone know anything about this?

 

how do i open a command prompt "with administrative privelages"?

 

harpreet1988 - Right click on the Windows command prompt and pick "Run with administrative privileges". That may not be the exact verbage and I only have access to an XP machine right now - but its something pretty close to that. After you run with admin, then you'll get the usual User Account Control prompt to make sure that you really want to run it with Admin privileges. I have turned UAC off on my systems but that decision comes with some risks as you probably know.