Disc Defragmenting

[blinc]

{toothy} It's me again! The person with 8,000 questions about computers. hee hee

This is for anyone who might happen to have some info. or experience right off hand, on this question.

How often should a person defragment?

And... (you knew there was going to be an "and", didn't you?)

I was defragmenting our disc drive this morning and the strangest thing was happening. It kept starting over. It would go for awhile and well, here's what happend. I started the disk defragmenting program. Went about doing some household chores... the defragmenting usually only takes about 20 minutes, the computer had been on for about 45 minutes so I came back in to close out the defragmenting program, but it was still running.

It had evidently been restarting over and over. Because it had only done about 76% when I saw it. When it would restart, first it would say: "reading drive information"... that message would be up until the defrag hit 10%. Then a "deframenting file system" message would come up. THEN it would stop in the middle of what it was doing, and this message would come up: "Drives contents changed: Restarting". Ok, that's freaking me out a little... what does that mean?

It took another half hour or so to finish. It was continuallly restarting and defraging a little, then restarting, defrag, restart, defrag... you get the picture.

Then out of curiosity I shut the computer down and restarted it. I went into the defrag program again and started to run it. It should have just zipped right through it right? Well, it didn't, it started doing the same thing of stopping, message came up of "Drives contents changed: restarting" again. So I shut it down and zipped on over here.

I had deactivated the virus programs as the book said. I wasn't online... I can't think of any other programs that would have been running that would have interfered with it. I went to the download test file, at our virus shield place... it's to make sure your virus scan is picking up stuff... the test file downloaded fine and showed a "virus" (the test file), like it should have had it been a real virus, so I know my virus program is running like it should. That makes me think it's not a virus...

At a total loss over here as to what the problem could be. Any ideas? Anyone else ever have this happen?

[Nudnik]

I defragment every 6-10 hours, usually before it gets to 2%. I use a $40 gizmo called Vopt99 (on W98 and WMe). With practically daily use, it takes 5-10 minutes for both HDs. The PC is running OK. I do not want to do a scientific research of the kind: how long the average period should be between defragmenting before my PC will crash? :).

[kezzer]

Mine has always done that. I thought it was normal. Eek!

[Nudnik]

Do you imply that I am abnormal?:)
Better abnormal than sorry.

[blinc]

Oh, we've gone waaaay past implying. {toothy}
Couldn't help it, ya just left yourself wide open for that shot. hee hee!

I try to defragment once a week. Hmmm... I'm gathering maybe I should try it once a day.

Still can't figure out why it's doing the restarting thing though, after it's been defragged. It should zip right on through it.

[Nudnik]

If it helps:
several times I tried defragging with Win defrag, it restarted, till I stopped all programs. Still, it could not do one of my HD (with only Explorer running!). I was able to do it only in the Safe Mode.
I do it every day not because of outright concerns for the PC health, but becase I noticed that it takes longer (with Windows defrag or Vopt99) if I did it when the frag rate goes to several percentage points (although they say that the rate below 10% does not slow the PC significanly).

[jamesglewisf]

You really don't need to defrag more than once a month.

[kezzer]

I did mine yesterday and it only took 3 hours as opposed to the last time I defragmented it took 9! What a pain it can be to keep up these darn comps sometimes. Betweening scanning for viruses and scan disk and cleanup and defragmenting. Geez, it's a wonder we ever have time to surf the net!

[Nudnik]

Vopt99 is $40, a daily routine for ~15ghz takes ~5’. Virus scan is not necessary – AFAIK, all AV SW will notify you (if you activated the option) about an ‘infection’.
I was told that a cleanup is not needed, if no new programs were ininstalled, but I might be wrong.

[TTP]

*Whistling innocently*
We don't do that...it takes too long! {toothy}
Run em til they die and then reformat...lol. Sorry couldn't resist.
I'm not sure why they would be starting over. I do know that the only reason they would start over is if there is a program accessing the harddrive and interupting the defrag...
I too have worked on computers that the only way it would run is if you would run it in safe mode. Just one of those things I guess...probably a virus we just ignored. Now don't get all worried that you have a virus because you probably don't. If you run it in safemode it will come up with a warning about ruining your display drivers or something to that effect...just bypass it, It only says may and it has yet to on any of mine...even if it does you can just reinstall them.
That's my $.02 on the deal...hope it helped a little.

[blinc]

I found it!! I found out what the problem was. TTP do you remember when I had questions about why we were having problems with our game CD's and you showed me how to do the "windows key and pause break" to see what programs were currently running? Well, I tried to run scandisk this evening and IT kept restarting. Sooo, I did that windows/pause break and guess what? The Winamp program was somehow set to automatically start up. Bill thinks he must have done it the other night when he made that cd, because he said it asked him if it wanted to use Winamp as the default player. Anyways, I unclicked the program like you said to do, to get more available free space (if ya remember that) and Viola! It ran the Scandisk AND the disk defrag without starting over one time!

Wooooo hooo!! Thank you TTP!! If you hadn't taught me how to do that, I was going to be seriously considering panic as the next option. {toothy}

[TTP]

I remember blinc!
I assumed you had already tried that...*nudge*
I guess that is what I get for assuming...{rolleyes}
{toothy}
I'm glad it worked out for you! :)

[blinc]

Well, I had just assumed that by closing everything out that I normally do, it would run. When it didn't, that piece of info you gave me really saved the day! :)

[TTP]

If anybody is wondering, on Windows computers if you hold down the 'ctrl' 'alt' and 'delete' keys at the same time, it will bring up a window listing everything that is running at that time.
If you are having problems with programs running...games, cd burning software, disc defrag, etc...you can try hitting 'end task' on everything in that list except for:
Explorer
and
Systray
By doing that you
1) Free up resources for your computer to run on and
2) Stop any programs from trying to access the hard drive and interupting the defrag process...that is when it will start over.
When you restart your computer all those programs will start back up if you have them in your startup. To see what exactly is running on your computer at all time:

Go to (start)
Click on (Run)
Type in msconfig
Click on (Enter)

In the upper-right hand side of the screen you should see a 'tab' that is labeled "Startup" Click on that.
Everything listed underneath is now starting and running on your computer at all times if it has a checkmark to the left of it in a box. You can uncheck any of them except the explorer and systray...you have to be careful though, because some printer and scanner...etc, software will not work unless it is in your startup.
If you find you get rid of something you want back then just go through the whole thing and put the check back in there.
Basically what is in there are all the little 'quick-launch' icons and stuff like that, most of them will be located on the same bar as your (start) and the (clock).
If you find that your computer is running slow and you have 50 little icons down there...you might want to remove some of them as they are not necessary and it should help your computer run quicker.
I hope that helps.