Scan disk, Defrag problems

[Byte 2.0]

My System never liked to Defrag, so i never used it. I set my system up, installed my programs and don't make many changes after that. I save my date to my other hard drives/network.

One day i notice my hard drive reporting i was useing 25 GB of 30 GB. I knew that couldn't be right. try to scan disk. couldn't. Exit to dos prompt scandisk said the drive was mis reporting the used space. fixed it.

loaded windows, 2.5 gb used. could scan disk. could not defrag.

ever couple of days scan disk in dos showed the drive being mis reported.

could not find any viruses or anything that could be causing it.


quick system stats.

800 t Bird not over clocked
384 meg of Ram
30 GB hard drive
8 gb back up hard drive
5x DVD creative and coder card
6x2x2 RW drive
32 meg radeon DDR video
10/100 Net Gear
56k Lucent Win Modem (sucks)
512 Sound Blaster PCI
Asus MB with onboard IDE and promise controler

Win 98 FE it didn't like to defrag or scan disk. It would keep startin over and over.

exit to Dos promt, Scan disk Hard drive size is Mis reported. corrected.
would then Scan disk inside windows. Would not Defrag. Only 2GB used on it.

After some PC problems i decided just for testing to try win ME (VIA upgrade). Me stil could not defrag.

Formatted hard drive.

clean ME install. Same thing, can't defrag or scan disk.

format , Fdisk 30 GB drive to 10GB active 20 GB second. Installed clean ME on 10 GB, still can't defrag scan disk but the 20 GB section can.

ME sucked totally, formated

Installed Win 98 back on the 10 GB section. can't scan or defrag the 10 GB section in windows but can scan in dos. 20 GB will scan defrag in windows.

Anyone ever have anything like this.

I have tried the hard drive on both the Promise controller and the IDE controller, I can't notice no real speed difference or preformance between the IDE or promise control. I have the promise drivers loaded too.



since my reinstall of win98, i have not noticed the hard drive size being mis reported by scan disk in dos, but it has only been a few days.

All drivers currently installed, win98 running good, not crashing.

Just wondering why Defrag is so screwed.

[HAL9000]

Try the WinME defrag loaded onto the Win98 installation, it "usually" cures plenty of defrag problems.

Do you have Office 97 installed, if so, trash the fast find. Every time a file moves in defrage, fast find feels the need to update which means a write to the disk which causes defrag to restart... you can see where that's going... nowhere.

If you ever want to visually see the difference with a promise controller, ghost a drive on a UDMA33 controller and watch the Mb/min transfer, you will probably top out anywhere between 100-200Mb/min depending on the data. Now do the transfer on the promise controller (assuming ATA66 drives of course). On my system, the low end is 400Mb/min and pushing just under 800Mb/min on the high end.

[Byte 2.0]

It won't defrag with a clean in stall of WIn98 or ME. Before i add any programs.

[mike breck]

Hi byte,

Back when I was using, Win95 defrag used to take forever because it kept on restarting. Tried everything - couldn't fix it. Then I moved the Swap File from C: to D: and I was able to complete the defrag on C:. When I was finished, I would just moved the swapfile back to C:. No more problems.

Since then I tend to use Norton Utilities >Speedisk. That gets the job done in a fraction of the time. But I still move the Swapfile before I defrag. In that way the whole drive get defraged.

glc, smoke and a few others have said a program called Disk Keeper (correct me if that's not the right name guys) is even better for hard drive maintenance. I haven't had the chance to try it yet.

Anyway try moving the Swap to another drive.

HTH

P.S. I was just reminded in another post of the old trick of defragging in Safe Mode. Worth a try as well.