Why won't C defragment!?

[dreIU]

Hello everyone,

I have some problems with my harddrive. It's a Maxtor IDE harddrive, 80gig, and I have it partitioned into two different parts: C:\ which is 10gig, and d:\ which is 70 gig. D:\ part defragments fine, but when I try the C one, it tells me that some files on this volume could not be defragmented. So I hit view report, and it shows only one file that could not be defragmented )file name \System Volume Information\_restore....A0033467.exe). I searched for this file all over the computer, but it would not come up. I also checked for errors on both partitions and none were found. Could anyone help on this matter? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, and system specs are in the sig.

 

[eaglescouter]

Which operating system?

 

[JigPu]

The reason the file won't defragment is because it is currently in use. Since it's a system restore file, you won't be able to find it either unless you specifically tell XP to search in hidden files and folders.

If it's really bothering you that the file won't defragment (it dosen't matter since it's only used if you screw up settings and have to restore), turn off system restore Control Panel -> System -> System Restore and see if it will defragment then.

JigPu

 

[dreIU]

Thanks for the reply's. The OS s WinXP pro.

Well, it's not really bothering me that much, it's just that, after it says its defragmented, it still looks a mess, with a bunch of white spaces in between the blue and red and green. How exactly does XP use this system restore file? Say if my cmputer crashes for some reason, and I was in the middle of a Word document, would it bring me back to it even if I forgot to save? I think that is pretty useful... is there any way to make this file smaller? It says it's 650 megs. Thanks again guys.

 

[johan851]

The file is a Windows XP restore point...I personally just turned off Windows Restore, and I'm quite happy.

You can't really make the file smaller, although you can delete old restore points if you right click your C:\ drive in my computer, hit properties, and then do disk cleanup.

 

[JigPu]

Sounds like you're using the built in XP Defragger if there's a lot white slivers between everything. Switching defraggers won't defrag the restore file, but it will compact (as well as it can) everything into one solid mass. Try Diskkeeper or PerfectDisk if you haven't already

JigPu

 

[K1ll1nT1m3]

Try moving some files from C: to D: then defrag C:. I have had that change the progress of my defrag many times. If you dont want to move files to D:, try copying a cd to C: or something ( you can delete it afterwards if you want ). Anything to change the location of some files.

How much free space is on C:? I have had poor defrags when I was running out of space on the drive too. It would be best if you can add that HDD to a PC that already has a functioning OS on another HDD. Then you can defrag that drive from the other OS and usually the SYSTEM files on it arent in use so they can be moved ( it will defrag the whole drive, no unmovable files ) Good luck

 

[dreIU]

Thanks for the helo guys. I have a little under 6 gig left on the C drive. I disabled that restore feature, then it defragged fine. I reenabled it after it defragged just in case it will end up saving me some trouble in the future if anything crashes.

Thanks for the advice JigPu, I will try one of those two programs. Are they significantly better?

I have another question; say I wanted to add another drive to this computer, say maybe a SATA instead of a IDE one. Do I need to reinstall win xp on it? I am really not familiar with this, I'v only had one hdd per system in the past. Since my mobo supports SATA, I wanted to give it a try sometime soon. Thanks again.

 

[DayUSeX]

DrelU, if you install a new hard drive you wont need to reinstall XP unless you want the new hard drive to have your boot partition. Otherwise leave it as is, and just make the other hard drive a slave, and you will be fine.

as for defragging programs disk keeper is the best by far in my opinion. Try out the demo of 8.0, beats the pants of what XP comes with

 

[Ravsitar]

My once a month defrag usually follows this routine:

1. Turn off xp system restore (it's set for 300 mb of restore data)
2. Disable the swap file (I've got 1gb ram anyway)
3. Empty the recycling bin.
4. Hunt down as man temp files as possible (look into ALL the user documents and settings folders)
5. Clear Internet explorer and mozilla caches
6. Reboot into administrator (that user has the least amount of things starting up at login for me)
7. Close all programs that are running
8. Close any processes in the task manager that you know are not needed
9. Run drfrag at least twice on each drive (the second time it often moves the files together and eliminates those white spaces mentioned above)
10. Turn system restore back on
11. Every other month I do a ghost backup of my data with Norton. I do this before I turn the swap file on so I can keep the image as small as possible.
12. Enable the swap file
13. Restart


This seems to work well for me.

 

[dreIU]

Excellent, thanks for the help guys. I tried diskkeeper demo and it defragged it fine and told me how much performance I gained from it. It is definitely better than the defragger that came with XP.

 

[Deathknight]

Actually I think that XP uses some scaled down version of diskpeeper for its defrag. Regardless I agree the full version of diskeeper is fantastic.