Defragmenting problems.

Hello there chaps.
I've browsed the various defragmenting topics here on the forum but haven't come across anything like my problem.

I'll first mention that I'm running Vista, with 222gb HD with 80gb of free space.

Basically, My windows defragmenter has stopped working, it appears to just freeze for hours on end, so I got myself UltimateDefrag 2008.

So I started it up, Told me thatthe degree of fragmentation was 52%. So I started it up and went to work, coming home I can see it's finished it's job, yet the degree of fragmentation is still 42%. I tried starting it again and it zipped through with no result.

Does anyone happen to know what I might be doing wrong or what the problem might be?

Many thanks in advance.

 

I have seen drives that are so fragmented, that they are almost impossible to defrag to an acceptable level. However, I have found one defragger "QuickSys Disk Defrag" (it's free) that does a great job on hopelessly fragmented hard drives, you can download it from their hompage, here. This was available here at MajorGeeks before the recent server crash, and the MG link is dead, but I'll contact the admins and see if I can get it resurrected. It won't be fast, but if you start it before work, it should be done when you get home. QuickSys is the ONLY defragger I've found that really works on seriously fragmented drives. I had an 8 year old PC last week that had NEVER been defragged, and had the original install of XP Home on it, no service pack, just XP Home. Old. I tried 4 defraggers here at MG plus the Windows defrag and none made much of a dent on the quantity of red that showed in the analysis graph, then I ran QuickSys. It took about 4-5 hours, but when it finished, the graph showed two solid blue blocks with a small green strip and white space in between. This was on an 80gb hard drive with maybe 20gb free. Your drive may take longer. You might want to run a full diagnostic first just to be sure that the drive won't fail in mid defrag. You can download the free diagnostic from the HD maker's web site; all the main drive makers have 'em (Seagate, Western Digital, etc) except for Toshiba.
Good luck!

[dlb]

 

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll give them a go over night and come back here with the results!

 

Quicksys defrag did the trick, all sorted now and the laptops running much better.
Thanks very much for the help guys