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defrag Vista -- how to see what's in progress?

18 years ago

Trying to defrag Vista.

While it's in progress, all I get is the message "may take a few minutes to a few hours" plus the annoying, continuously rotating blue ring.

Is it possible to see the graphics which were on XP? I'd feel more comfortable that the defrag was working if I saw how far things have progressed.

This is a relatively new HP Pavillion Media Center 8100, but with little to no "media" -- neither songs nor games. My main focus is word processing and PowerPoint presentations. So far, defrag been running for 3 hours.

Previously defrags have never taken that long.

I'm just trying to tidy things up because the HP seems to be running a tad slower than previously. And yes, I did the disk clean first.

Have AVG and Zone Alarm, both up-to-date and active. No obvious evidence of trojans or virus.

What say you? Is defrag working? Or is it faking me out?

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Comments (9)

mikie_gw
18 years ago
I put Vista into a 50gb partition and total used space on that partition is around 15Gb.
Takes an hour to defrag it here if I haven't done it in a week or so. I usually close most things in the tray and all windows then open a cmd window, start it & walk away and let it rip...
defrag -c -w

If I defrag a couple times per week its maybe a 25 to 35 minutes, sometimes less.

I too miss a graphical defrag display.

Vista defrag pauses whenever you have something else actively doing something, on the same CPU anyhow.
If you don't have ample free hard drive space it slows it down too. Also if you have minimal memory, that would tend to slow it a bit.

3hrs.. sounds like you either have a bunch of saved files... or you have some other program running doing stuff. Windows indexing service can slow some computers too.
jean001
Original Author
18 years ago
Thanks, mikie. I did continue using the computer because I was annoyed at how long the process was taking. (In fact, I wasn't certain the defrag *was* working.)

It finally finished.

Next time, I'll use your system -- set it up, then leave. (I had previously done it that way.)
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zep516
18 years ago
I would think there is a third party defrag tool I know another tool to download, but not sure about Vista.
grandms
18 years ago
I use Auslogics Disk Defrag on my XP machines. It is faster than Windows defrag and I like the graphical display. The requirements for using it list Vista, so I'm sure it works on that OS also.

Here is a link that might be useful: Auslogics Disk Defrag
DA_Mccoy
18 years ago
As members who know me are aware I am not normally a fan of a scheduled task. However, when it comes to defragmenting a large H/D I personally do it as a scheduled task over night and recommend users do so.

To create the desired task in Vista a user only has to activate the defrag utility, in the appearing window check Run at a Scheduled Time (Recommended)>select Modify Schedule and set as desired>OK out.

DA
cat_ky
18 years ago
Thanks Grandms, going to give that a try. The defrag is just one more thing, I dont like about Vista, along with the search/files and folders, and the location of add and removes. LOL Cat
grandms
18 years ago
Since using Auslogics, I'd never go back to the Windows defrag. One nice feature is that it gives you a report when it is finished, and you know by what percent it has helped your HDD's efficiency. I still do the disk check before running it.
jean001
Original Author
18 years ago
Thanks all.

grandms,
I wasn't able to download Auslogics the same day you posted, but I have it now. Will try it the next time I defrag.
grandms
18 years ago
Good luck. I think you'll like it.

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