How To Defrag My Hard Drive Windows Vista
How to Perform a Full Manual Defragmentation of Your Hard Disk Under Windows Vista If you have tried doing a defragmentation of your hard disk under Windows Vista, you would have noticed that the defrag utility does not really give you any detailed information about your hard disk fragmentation level, show you the defragmentation progress while defragging, and in certain situations even defragment when you ask it to. This guide shows you how you can perform a full defrag of your hard disk under Vista and get at least a basic report on your hard disk fragmentation before and after defragmentation. What's Happening Here There are a number of changes between Windows Vista's defragmenter and XP's defrag tool. In general, Vista's defragger is designed for the average user and is thus tuned for automatic behind-the-scenes work: by default, the defrag utility is scheduled to run weekly. It defragments all the partitions on all your hard disks automatically.
Unlike the Windows XP defragmentation tool however, it will only defragment files with fragments smaller than 64 MB on NTFS file systems. The lack of any useful user interface in the Vista defrag utility is consistent with this design decision of having an automated defragger running behind the scenes without user intervention.
Before you get too upset, let me say that this is a generally useful setting for the average user. Let's face it, if you are reading this, you are not an average user.
How to Perform a Full Manual Defragmentation of Your Hard Disk. To use the command line defrag tool in Windows Vista. To defragment a particular drive. Windows Vista; Windows. How to defrag my Vista computer? Smart Defrag is an automatic disk defragmenter that keeps your hard drive space from becoming overly.
Many users I know don't defragment their hard disks. They don't even know the concept, let alone how to get it done or what use it may serve. The default Vista setting is sensible for such users —a weekly schedule is more than adequate: too frequent and the constant defragmentation causes additional wear and tear on the hard disk for very little additional gain. And for most people, not moving file fragments if they are more than 64 MB is a good compromise —it speeds up the whole defragging process, and the fragments are large enough so that in most cases they don't cause significant slowdowns in the system. Manual Defragmentation There are of course reasons why you might want to override this default mechanism.
For example, a full defragmentation of the hard disk may speed up certain operations. If you're doing it on a large scale with many computers, the time savings when backing up a properly defragged hard disk compared to one where the files are broken into many fragments may be significant. Another possible reason might be if you are capturing video on your computer and don't want any frames to be skipped; if the disk is fragmented without a contiguous free space for the entire video file, the hard disk head may have to skip over occupied sectors in the middle of recording, causing your recording software to skip frames. To get Vista's defragger to give you some information about your hard disk, and to control which hard disk or partition it defragments, you will need to use the command line defragmentation utility. It will still not give you any feedback while defragmenting, just as the GUI version of the defragmenter will not, but at least you can get information on the fragmentation level of your hard disk, control whether to defragment even if the file fragments are larger than 64 MB, and control which partition or hard disk to defragment. To use the command line defrag tool in Windows Vista, you have to run the Command Prompt as an administrator. In Vista, this is not automatic even if you are logged in as the administrator.
Click the Windows button (previously the Start button in earlier versions of Windows), the All Programs menu item and the Accessories menu item. Right click the 'Command Prompt' button and select 'Run as administrator'. A command prompt window will appear. Everything you run in this Window will be run with administrator rights. To view a file fragmentation analysis of (say) your C: drive, type: defrag c: -a -v The '-a' parameter tells the defragger to perform a fragmentation analysis.
Windows Vista Defragmenter
The '-v' option tells it to be verbose in its report. If you want a report on drive D: or some other drive, substitute that drive letter in place of c. Be aware that defrag may tell you that you have no fragmented files even if you have some.
On NTFS partitions, the reporting function of defrag does not consider fragmented files with fragments greater than 64 MB as fragmented. If you need truly detailed information, you may have to consider getting a third party defragmenter such as those listed on the page on thefreecountry.com. To defragment a particular drive, say C:, type: defrag c: -v -r The '-r' option tells the defragmentation utility to treat files that are fragmented with 64 MB fragments or larger as though they are not fragmented. This partial defragmentation is the default for 'defrag', and it's the only way the GUI defragmenter in Vista works. You can also force the defragmenter to defragment everything. That is, even if the file fragments are larger than 64MB, the Vista defragmenter will still attempt to put the file into contiguous sectors. To do this, run the defragger with the following options: defrag c: -v -w As you have probably have guessed, '-w' tells the Vista defrag tool to do a full defragmentation.
All file fragments will be consolidated where possible. You will still not get any feedback as to the progress of the defragmentation with the command line tool, just as you did not with the GUI version. However, at the beginning and the end of the defragmentation, 'defrag' with the '-v' option will give a report, much like the old Windows XP GUI defragmentation utility. Again, though, it will not report fragmented files with 64 MB fragments (or larger) as being fragmented. Conclusion With the command line version of the Windows Vista defragmentation utility, you have at least a modicum of control over the defragger, and some information about your hard disk file fragmentation. If you need any further details or fine control over the defragmentation of your hard disk, you may have to consider a. Copyright © 2006-2015 by Christopher Heng.
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In the long list of odious chores, defragmenting your hard drive is right up there with flossing your teeth and washing your dog-or flossing your dog's teeth, for that matter. There is little agreement on how much-or even whether-defragmenting improves your PC's performance, but having files closer together on the disk reduces the amount of movement required by the drive's mechanical parts. This should make it last longer, though such factors as operating environment and the quality of its components probably have a greater impact on its life span.
Regardless of whether it will actually improve your system's performance and reliability, I do know that there's a better way to defragment your drive than using the utility built into Windows: you'll get the job done in less time by using Auslogics' free utility. Windows' own Disk Defragmenter is a slug compared to Auslogics' alternative.
At least in XP, you got some feedback while the Windows defragger was working; Vista doesn't give you a clue what's happening after you click the Defragment Now button, other than to let you know that the process could take from a few minutes to a few hours (my bet's on the latter). I know many people scoff at the dancing colored blocks on the map as pointless, but I kinda like 'em. By default, Vista defragments your drive once a week. You can set the defragmenter to run on a different schedule, though you don't want to defrag when you've got lots of applications open because of it's guaranteed to slow everything down. The greatest benefit of third-party defraggers such as Disk Defrag is their speed: The program did its work in less than 5 minutes on my Vista machine, while Vista's own defragmenter took more than 20 minutes to finish.
And on a tremendously fragmented XP machine, Disk Defrag got the job done in about 40 minutes, which was a third the time required by Windows' own tool. Before you begin, open the Control Panel's Add or Remove Programs (XP) or Programs and Features (Vista), and uninstall any applications you no longer use.
Then use a program such as to empty your Recycle Bin, Temporary Internet Files folder, and other locations where clutter tends to accumulate on your PC. Once you've taken out the digital trash, you're ready to tighten up your hard disk's sectors. Open Disk Defrag, and select your disk or partition to see a pie chart showing its used and free space. Click Next to begin the defragmentation. View a pie chart showing your used and free disk space prior to beginning to defragment using Auslogics' free Disk Defrag utility.
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If you're really bored, you can watch the program work. While the drive's fragmented sectors are cleared out, the process is represented by colored blocks on a disk map.
Below this is a progress bar and a list of the names of the files currently being shuffled. You also get a count of the total files processed, as well as the number of fragmented and defragmented files. XP's built-in defragmenter provides a similar show, but Vista's equivalent doesn't indicate what it's doing, or how much progress it has made. Track your defrag progress on a map of rectangles representing your drive's sectors. When the defragmenting is done, you're shown the results, including the percentage of drive or partition space that was recovered. You can see more information in a browser window when you click Display Report, but don't bother clicking the Optimize PC link at the top of the window.
How To Defrag My Hard Drive
That simply leads to a page where you can download the company's $30 BoostSpeed performance-boosting utility. Hey, you can't fault the company for trying to make a buck. The amount of drive or partition space recovered by the defragmentation is shown when the Disk Defrag utility finishes.