GameBanshee Forums

Hi, I for many reasons have forgotten to defrag in a realy long time. I tried it today and three hours later it was still at 0%, although the graphics were still moving. Is this stuck? or is it because I havn't done it in a while, its gonna take a long time?

What size is your hard drive? Yes, a badly fragmented drive could take forever - did you run a scandisk first? If I was you, I would run a thorough scandisk (if it has been so long) prepare for this to take for ever too - possibly overnight, then set your defrag going and leave it running over another night. I defrag my drive at least once a month, and it has still be known to take four or five hours sometimes...be sure to switch off any programs that are running in the background, because this will cause your scan disk and/or your defrag to keep restarting each time something new is written to the drive.

I would have to agree with Ysh on this one. Check to see what programs you have running in the background, stop all that will write to the hard disk in the background (like virus checkers)

What do you mean you will 'have to'?

Originally posted by Yshania
What do you mean you will 'have to'?

I will have to consult my documentation:

Re: Threatening Letter

Sleep, i implore you to agree with me, if you don't i will have to construct evil ways for the DF to torment you.

Yours,

yshania

(Actual truth may vary, consult parties involved to find out the truth)

See?

@Morlock, i imagine it was screensaver kicking in after about 5 minutes, also makes sure that you have turned your powersaving to always on. Powersaving will turn off your hard disk and put your machine on standby, which will complicate the process. You should turn your monitor off once you are sure it is okay and not restarting.

Don't forget about screen savers, most people tend to forget about this one.

You can find a nice shareware defrag tool named OO Defrag 2000 here. It's somewhat fast and served me well so far.

If defrag lasts forever you may lack the space needed to swap files btw.

I used to (before I got XP) control/alt/delete and then end all programs except Explorer and Sys.... (forgot the rest)

This worked just fine.

Before defragmenting, I would suggest the following:

1) Do a warm reboot. Clear's out the computer's memory sinuses, so to speak. Also prevents a number of unsightly crashes.

2) Use whatever tool you've got to scan the disk for crosslinked files, etc, and repair 'em.

3) Remove as many programs as possible that you've got running in the background. Hit CTRL+ALT+DEL *once* to see what those are.

4) Make sure your screensaver, if any, is turned off. Make sure your system isn't set to enter standby mode anytime before an hour elapses.

5) Go for it.