Hard drive wont defragment properly

vinylmusic

I inheritesd a computer and found the hard drive has never been defragmented. Its around 5 years old, possibly older.
The computer runs so slow its like watching paint dry

Defrag was so slow that I had to leave it running all night
In my experience, normally after a defrag most of the illustration is blue and green.
Although most of it has all moved making it all look much tidier theres about as much red fragmented files as there were before (a lot) with a message saying not all files could be defragmented.
The computer is still extremely slow
I'm running defrag again as i write this without much hope.
Could anyone please explain what all this means and tell me what I can do about it?
Thanks

Note. second defrag attempt.(ran through faster than previous attempt) All green area has gone leaving only red and blue. Most of the red has remained exactly where it was while the blue is much tidier

imho

Try this to defrag. http://www.iobit.com/ scroll down the page for the defrag program,its free and very good

imho

Found this
as well http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/win98/t1039462178

This is a great program for finding out what is the biggest program on your computer . http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml I didnt realise i had a video on mine taking up a huge amount of hard disc space.

thomas01155

Sometimes it can be spyware messing up the defrag
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=133269

j_davies

Get a free defrag programme http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/

Also O & O Defrag Vs 4 is on the front of a PC mag this month.

albertross_2

try a cleanup first.. https://www.ccleaner.com

If it is XP, then slowness may be due to insufficent ram, if the machine has less than 256Meg. https://www.crucial.com

If it isn't XP, try the defrag in safe mode.

John_Gray

I presume you have XP on the PC.

First try an Analyze, and look at the Report. This should list the files which are fragmented. Now do the Defrag but don't bother looking at the Report when the Defrag finishes - I have never found anything in it! Repeat the Analyze/Defragment process until there aren't any files left to defragment, and the Defrag finishes 'almost' immediately. Half a dozen repeats to get to this point would not surprise me, especially if it's been ages since the PC was defragmented.

If you find files which stubbornly stay in the Analyze report, then there's not much you can do about it, as far as I am aware. (I have this on a Windows Server 2003 machine where the 'bright spark' who set it up allocated a 10 GB system partition to hold Server 2003 and Exchange 2003, and even after heavy pruning and the transferring of moveable stuff to another partition so that the system partition is just less than 50% full, there are still files which won't defragment...)

For the Real Enthusiast, you can get rid of the green "system" files by turning off hibernation (if it's on) and setting "No paging file", then doing a few Defrags. Probably best to turn the paging file on again afterwards, together with hibernation, if that was on originally. (Do this only if you know what you're doing, and have a good amount of memory on the PC).

John

Mado

Interesting thread!

My old PC won't even attempt to defragment :it stays stuck at 3%....
Would any of these programms help?

It is extremely slow!!!!

John_Gray

In a Command Prompt window, have you tried first doing a CHKDSK C: /R, and replying Y to the message which asks if you want to do the CHKDSK next time you reboot? Beware that it can take literally hours to complete -- longer the bigger the disk you have.

Having done that, let the Defrag run overnight, and see where you are in the morning...

John

imho

Mado try Iobit defrag.But i would run disc clean up first , http://www.stevengould.org/software/cleanup/ gets rid of all the junk on your computer

imho

Or do what albertross says on message 6 on this thread .Then defrag