quicker defrag?

[catfishjoe_1]

This is frustrating. I don't know xp very well at all and I am trying to defrag a hard drive. I have been on drive c: for about 6 hrs now and it is still not done. c is only 27 gigs. I don't know if this is the first time it has been defragged but if it is it has only been 6 mos. at the most that this op sys has been on here. Lots of spyware was found and removed so that may be part of the prob and I don't know (yet) how the drive is set, you know - dma and the swap. It is on a compaq 5000 with 192mb ram. 633 celeron I think. Maxtor drive. 60 gig i believe.

Is there a better defrag utility available? Faster, please!
cat

[newme]

I have heard a few people have good things to say aboutDiskkeeper Maybe someone can comment that has used it

[Corky]

Recommend you run Error Check first, then try defrag again. If no apparent luck, try defrag in safemode. I use VoptXP for defrag. It's fast, simple, and thorough. Whatever defrag program you decide to use, stick with it. Programs work differently, and are only really effective when you stick to the same one.

[bailey]

defrag in xp should not take more than 20 min
works best in safe mode.
I do it with 160 gig drive

[mc2phat]

Diskeeper (Executive Software) is IMO the best defrag utility out there. It is well worth the money.

[catfishjoe_1]

I was in safe mode. I got it done, but it took forever!
cat

[crjdriver]

Diskeeper is the standard for nt based defrag utilities. The newest ver [8] is a big improvment of the older one.

As to safe mode, there is no need to defrag in safe mode for nt based os. They are not like win9x where everytime something wrote to the drive it would start over.

[HAL9000]

I schedule my defrags to happen in the middle of the nite.. then who cares how long it takes and its always done.

[Evanin]

Make sure no programs are writting to disk when you run it. I wondered why mine kept resarting and it was because I was downloading somehting on kazza. Silly me. I do mine once a month and it takes alittle over a hour. 80 gigs.

[suitcase]

I tried VoptXP but didn't care for it. The new ms xp disc I just got came with a trial of diskeeper and it defrags fast. I think I'll buy the whole thing for my pc.

[Blakhart]

Tell us how to do that, HAL???

[HAL9000]

The easiest way to initialize it is at the command prompt with the AT command

AT Defrag c:

Then from there you can go into scheduled tasks and modify it as necessary... take note, if you have any kinda password, you have to set the password in the properties or else it will fail to run.

[rshea57]

I think XP uses a version of Diskeeper as its defrag tool, just not the Professional version.

I would recommend that you upgrade the Task Priority while defragging to speed things up. Close all windows, start the defragger, hit Cntl + Alt + Delete to bring up Task Manager, click the Applications tab, select Disk Defragmenter, right click on it and select 'go to process', now right click on the process itself (probably mmc.exe) and select 'set priority' and select 'real time' or 'high'. Don't worry about the warning box, if you're not running any other apps the system should be stable. This should speed up your defrag session.