Extreme hard drive fragmentation....

Occasionally I come across a PC that simply cannot be satisfactorily defragged. The screen shot below shows the final result of all attempts at defragging a drive. I used IOBit first, then checked the level of fragmentation and it was still really bad. So I then ran Auslogics, checked again, and it was still really fragged, but a tiny bit better than before running IObit. So I ran QuickSys Defrag which I only run on the most fragged drives, mainly because it takes the longest to complete but this is because it really defrags well. However, not this time. After running QuickSys, the frag analysis was much better, but that isn't saying much, it was stil about 35-45% red blocks in the Windows defrag analyzer. As a last resort, I ran Vopt which is another EXCELLENT defragger that I also save for the worst of the worst. It helped a tiny bit. I also ran the WinXP built-in defragger twice during this quest for optimization. So I have now determined that this drive CANNOT be defragged completely or even satisfactorily. I'm assuming the owner of the PC has NEVER run a defrag of any type. Never. So, I guess the question is: what's the deal with extreme fragmentation? Can any deafrgger handle these types of situations?

Attached below is a screen shot of the hard drive I described above. This is the final state of fragmentation after running 4 defraggers and the XP defragger twice....

 

Don't keep switching between defrag tools, they use different algorithms to defrag and read levels of defragmentation - each different defrag tool will undo part of the work the other has done. Use one defragger and stick with it, you're wasting time and energy if you don't.

 

Looks like your page file is split in 4 different sections, but I digress. Before defrag of a drive like that I would run chkdsk from command line, in my case usually chkdsk c:/r, guess it may be a little late for that though. Perfect Disk works well and has a 30 day trial @ no cost.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/PerfectDisk_d268.html
jkdefrag is a good freeware tool and also has a GUI version available
http://www.majorgeeks.com/JkDefrag_d5542.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/JkDefrag_GUI_d5620.html
Windows XP should be defragging c: when idle also. tweakui makes it easy to turn that option on and off.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Got Root ?

 

If you still get a high percentage rate after defragging, may be your System Restore points that are not being touched.
Turn System Restore off completely or turn it down to only 3% od disk space instead of the 12% that Windows sets as default. Will give a more thorough defrag.
Also, any programs that are running( AV, antispyware, etc. ) will not be defragged either, so turn those off. Don't forget to turn back on before going online.

 

I always purge System Restore and turn it off before defragging; I turn it back on and set a restore point after the defrag is done and I'm finalizing the system. The only reason I use more than one defragger is in cases of extreme fragmentation. I'll run a 3rd party tool (usually IObit) first. I then check the level of fragmentation. If it's still fairly bad, or looks like nothing has changed, I'll either run the same defragger again and see what happens, or I'll try a different one. 94% of the time, the first defrag works fine. But I deal with dozens of PCs, and 1 in 25 or 30 looks like it has never been defragged (coincidentally, these same PCs usually have SP1 or SP0 LOL ). It's situations like this that I'm referring to. On my home PC, I use one defragger, and one defragger only: Auslogics. It's fast when used regularly and keeps my PC hummin'.