Vista and Defrag

[Kerioak]

I have had Defrag running for about 22 hours now (reasonably fast laptop, about 300 Gb) after I deleted around 100 Gb of images from it. There is no indication as to how long it should take - is this a reasonable length of time or should I assume it has stalled?

I used to like watching those little boxes moving around in previous incarnations but Vista just has a little button going around that I assume means it is still doing something ?

 

[Gofer]

Doesn't it just drive you mad! I hate the defrag on Vista.

As regards time, all I can say is that my laptop (500Gb HD) can take an hour to defrag even when I've deleted nothing!

 

[xendistar]

If you are running it on a laptop make sure the laptop is not going into suspend or sleep mode, also worth killing the screen saver and any anti virus scan that you also have running or will kick in when defrag is running

Tim

 

[neil_g]

i use defraggler, much quicker

 

[nigpd]

and it does a better job

and it's free

 

[chrisuk]

Another vote for Defraggler, it's the first thing that popped into my head.

The Vista defrag tool is atrocious.

 

[Pentaxprism]

I vote for Diskeeper 2009 Pro. Back when i had Vista, that's what I ran on it. Fast and efficient background auto operation that doesn't disturb other apps. Unfortunately, it's not free, but has a host of useful features such as system files defrag, multiple drive simultaneous defrag etc, so well worth it for long term use.

 

[Janice]

Yes, make sure your screensaver is off and all power plans are disabled or it will keep starting again and again!! check in the bottom right bar that nothing is running that can be turned off too. and dont touch it!!

 

[Kerioak]

I gave up and turned the machine off - will take a look for defraggler - does it have pretty boxes jumping up and down

 

[Kerioak]

Not impressed with Defraggler so far - downloaded, installed and clicked on it to start - all that happens is a flashing "Defraggler is reques......" flashing bar in the programme bar at the bottom and nothing else, had to use Ctrl+alt+Del to close it

 

[Gofer]

Sounds like you have Vista's UAC enabled and as a result Windows is asking for confirmation that you want to run the program.

 

[Gofer]

also.... I have to say, I used Defraggler on my Vista laptop last night and I didn't find it any quicker than Vista's own defrag facility. The only difference is at least with Defraggler you can see something is happening.

 

[Kerioak]

Sounds like you have Vista's UAC enabled and as a result Windows is asking for confirmation that you want to run the program.

Usually you get a pop up of some kind but there was nothing except the flashing thingy in the task bar - I will just let defrag run in the background for a few days and hopefully it will tidy up my hard drive