Defrag problems

I got a WD 30 gig hd that I've had for a few years. Due to some recent projects I've been working on (archiving photos/videos/apps, video editing, converting sound libraries, etc) and my general lack of paying attention, the drive is extremely fragmented. The trouble is, I can't seem to make it through a defrag. I have tried the built in Windows thing, O&O defrag, and Diskeeper, and none of them make it past 20%. They either hang and lockup Windows, or else they just sit with no activity for 10+ hrs at a time. I know it takes a while, but sitting at 19% complete all night with no appearant HD activity doesn't seem right to me. Any ideas (other than the blindingly obvious "your drive's dying")?

You might be running out of system resources...

What are your system specs? Have you killed all unneeded programs before running defrag? Is you HDD almost full?

More info please

Foxy

What OS are you using? Back when I still ran Win98, the exact same thing would happen to me

I'd try clearing up some diskspace if you can (most defraggers have a horrible time if they've got 20% or less space free), and moving large (100MB+) files to another drive to try speeding it up.

JigPu

I'm running XP with sp2, I have about 7 gb free on a 30gb drive. I didn't do any special boot, so all sorts of crap is running in the background. Maybe that is the problem? I'll try to do a bootup-defrag and see how that goes.

try running a program like O&O in safe mode, that was the only way to get my 250gb hdd past about 30% when it only had about 1gb left on it......

From command prompt,type chkdsk C: /v /x /r and answer y to run at startup.If it also hangs at a specific spot or keeps dropping to a lower percentage then you will need to start a repair install but chose the command console instead of the repair function and type chkdsk /? for the switches.I beleive it is chkdsk /c from the console but the /? will tell you for sure.Sometimes it must be done twice,and it will take a while to complete but inconsistancies will be repaired and the defrag should then complete.