david.c Posted October 22, 2003 Posted October 22, 2003 Hi Guys How long should a hard disk deffrag take? I know it's a bit of a 'How long is a piece of string?' question, but are we talking a couple of hours or 24? 8.4 Gig disk on a P2 400 machine that was last defraged about 6 months ago. Cheers David Quote
S8ight Posted October 22, 2003 Posted October 22, 2003 ...... 'How long is a piece of string?' twice as long from the middle to one end Quote
david.c Posted October 22, 2003 Author Posted October 22, 2003 Yes very clever. I know how long my string is David Quote
gregh Posted October 22, 2003 Posted October 22, 2003 Depends on the OS and what else you are running. On older versions of windows I've seen the defrag restart every time something else tries to access the disk. on XP it just seems to carry on. Quote
david.c Posted October 22, 2003 Author Posted October 22, 2003 I'm running 98 and it is restarting constantly. I have no other other programs running and have disabled the virus scan. It does seem to get a bit further each time, but christ it is slow. Nearly 24 hours now and it's up to about 80% Soon I am going to have son whingeing because he can't use his Roller Coaster Tycoon for the 2nd night on the trot David Quote
gregh Posted October 22, 2003 Posted October 22, 2003 if it's 98 you probably have something running in the background, hit CTRL ALT DEL and select task manager and see what process' are running. Quote
david.c Posted October 22, 2003 Author Posted October 22, 2003 came up with message 'system has become unstable' blah blah Got the Close Program box 2nd time I tried. There is about a dozen things in the list. David Quote
gregh Posted October 22, 2003 Posted October 22, 2003 this is from memory, but you need to get those process down to the bare minimum that allows the system to defrag! Close/kill all running applications and other programs that run in the background, except for "Explorer and Systray". Also make sure your screensaver is turned off, and don't use your computer for anything while it's defragging, that makes it restart. Quote
DavidR Posted October 22, 2003 Posted October 22, 2003 As the guys said eliminate every possible task especially antivirus (Norton etc) and it should return to normal speed defrag. Leave explorer running as it is your desktop David. Quote
david.c Posted October 22, 2003 Author Posted October 22, 2003 Thanks Greg and David This sparked enough in my brain to remember having to do this last time..............well it was six months ago Cheers David P.S. Seight does your formula apply to a plank of wood Quote
moomin Posted October 22, 2003 Posted October 22, 2003 It is usually worth re-starting in safe mode to defrag - helps to minimise the hassle mentioned above of other processes making disk accesses and the defrag re-starting, i.e. it will only be running bare minimum system necessary, so no need to kill stuff off. Depends on the extent of the fragmentation as to how long it will take... moom Quote
Blatman Posted October 22, 2003 Posted October 22, 2003 To start Win98 in safe mode, hold the shift key down during boot up........ Quote
S8ight Posted October 23, 2003 Posted October 23, 2003 P.S. Seight does your formula apply to a plank of wood only if its metric, not imperial. Quote
david.c Posted October 23, 2003 Author Posted October 23, 2003 quote] only if its metric, not imperial. How do you know until you have measured it? David Quote
david.c Posted October 24, 2003 Author Posted October 24, 2003 I think I might just give up on this I shut down all the systems that load on start up, and still keeps restarting It seems to go through a cycle of restarting before it reaches 10% on 3 or 4 occasions then on the next attempt it seems to scroll through to where it has reached and then restarts again I started it running last night and it has only hit 62% complete It has got to the point where I know which squares will are empty and how they will be filled David P.S. when I tried doing the hold down shift key while booting up, it came up with a sticky key message Quote
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