Why it takes so long to defrag with Vista?

I have been waiting for about 3 hours now and Windows Vista is still defragging without telling me when is it going to finish. There is no feedback at all other than the little icon that says that it is still defragging.

I don't recall having to wait this long with XP. I have 2.6GHz C2D with 2GB RAM and 5400 RPM HD. And I have 22GB occupied out of 150GB hard disk. So, there is plenty of free space. There is no other program running. Disk Defragmenter is the only program running.

Why does Vista take so long to defrag and what can I do to speed it up other than using a 3rd party defragmenter?

 

The Vista defragger is different from the XP one. The Vista defragger runs in the background at very low priority and is constantly defragging your machine. You never have to manually run it. If you want a more traditional defragger, try out Auslogic's Defragger.

 

If you are defragmenting for the first time it will take a while to complete (1-2hrs) depending on the size of your HD. Vista defragger is a bit slow.

 

there's no way

 

You could try running it from the command line.

"defrag /?" (without the quotes) gives you the command-line options.

C:\Windows\system32>defrag /?
Description: Locates and consolidates fragmented files on local volumes to
improve system performance.

Syntax: defrag <volume> -a [-v]
defrag <volume> [{-r | -w}] [-f] [-v]
defrag -c [{-r | -w}] [-f] [-v]

Parameters:

Value Description

<volume> Specifies the drive letter or mount point path of the volume to
be defragmented or analyzed.

-c Defragments all volumes on this computer.

-a Performs fragmentation analysis only.

-r Performs partial defragmentation (default). Attempts to
consolidate only fragments smaller than 64 megabytes (MB).

-w Performs full defragmentation. Attempts to consolidate all file
fragments, regardless of their size.

-f Forces defragmentation of the volume when free space is low.

-v Specifies verbose mode. The defragmentation and analysis output
is more detailed.

-? Displays this help information.

Examples:

defrag d:
defrag d:\vol\mountpoint -w -f
defrag d: -a -v
defrag -c -v


You should get some progress feedback this way.
It might make it run at a higher priority than when launched from the GUI... but I'm not sure about that.

EDIT: Actually, the process priority shouldn't really matter if you're not doing anything else on the computer.

 

Thanks for the tip. I run defrag from the command line
defrag c: -v -w

There is no progress bar. I need to now when defrag is going to finish.

 

Meh... sorry... guess I was wrong about that part.

Prints out some nice info when it's done though.

C:\Windows\system32>defrag c: -a
Windows Disk Defragmenter
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corp.

Analysis report for volume C: OS

Volume size = 75.26 GB
Free space = 19.89 GB
Largest free space extent = 5.85 GB
Percent file fragmentation = 0 %

Note: On NTFS volumes, file fragments larger than 64MB are not included in t
he fragmentation statistics

You do not need to defragment this volume.

I guess you'd better download another defrag program. Check the free software sticky thread in this forum for some links to recommended defrag programs.

 

I prefer 3rd Party apps for Utility based softwares.

I never use Vista in-built stuff.

For Surf: Firefox.
For Defragging: JKdefrag or Auslogics
For music & movies : VLC player.


Basically, i am telling you to stop using Softwares which you are not happy with.

 

The Vista defragger is actually pretty good. For a better one, look at PerfectDisk 2008, although it is a bit pricey.