6 replies to this topic

[Daniel Arbib]

I have Vista Ultimate SP1 64 bit. My experience with another defragmenter is that the System Restore Files are not defragmented and are left as a mess all over the drive

Can I be assured that the latest version of defraggler is OK in this respect, please?

[TrueVanDal]

It looks like it's all right with the program (that is, the behavior is normal though not something we would like to see ).
I was wondering some other thing. Yesterday I was defragging my sisters Laptop with Defraggler on Vista 32 bit with SP1 (SP1 was installed on RTM wersion), while I was doing full defrag, I noticed that the space on HDD is being consumed little by little. After the defragmentation I also had the problem with System Restore Files. Not only they were not defragged, it appeard that one file in System Volume Information increased in size to 8GB of data (it consumed more than 5 GB while the program was working, just before defrag I cleaned up the disk from old System restore points)! And it is only one file... I was wondering, is it possible that during this defragmentation process, Vista was doing it's own System Restore backup? The System Restore is enabled so this is reasonable answer. But did it happen because the drive was being deffraged (moving files, including system ones) or just normal Vista behavior. The drive was containing almost 29 GB of data, there were 2288 files fragged in more than 12000 fragments. All process took more than 1 hour. And afterwards, it reached 34 and a half GB. The file I was talking about is named something like "{1435afc lot of HEX 1523fbc}{12hefa another HEX cv123}" (sorry i don't remember now but i guess you know the idea).

So my question is rather simple, is this normal Vista behavior.

See you.

[davey]

TrueVanDal, on Dec 23 2008, 05:02 AM, said:

It looks like it's all right with the program (that is, the behavior is normal though not something we would like to see ).

So my question is rather simple, is this normal Vista behavior.

See you.

Hello guys,
@ TrueVanDal, you are correct in your statements. Vista does create System Restore points when it sees certain things happening, that are being caused by Defraggler doing it's thing. This is why after defragging you will still find System Restore files fragmented. Otherwise there would be a never ending cycle of "defrag" then Vista System Restore point ad infinitum. Vista will release the used space when it decides.

@ Daniel This explains it.

Best wishes, davey

[thm]

Daniel Arbib, on Dec 22 2008, 06:19 PM, said:

I have Vista Ultimate SP1 64 bit. My experience with another defragmenter is that the System Restore Files are not defragmented and are left as a mess all over the drive

Can I be assured that the latest version of defraggler is OK in this respect, please?

...I could be mistaken, but I think that the "problem" with the System Restore Files not being defragmented in Windows Vista is fundamentally a Vista issue, not an application issue. As I understand it, the access permissions on these files preclude them from being altered by defraggers.

I don't know why Microsoft have done this, but I can hazard a guess at at least one of the reasons.... Their own Vista defragger will not normally defrag chunks of files bigger than 64MB, whereas System Restore files will typically be very much larger than this.

I suppose in theory that one could change the access permissions on such files to explicitly grant yourself full control over them before running a defragging tool [presuming that said tool has not itself been deliberately coded to ignore these files], but I wouldn't recommend it ( ): there may be another reason that MS have protected these files of which I am unaware [e.g. some potential interaction with the Shadow Copy Service, which is used to create these files], and for all I know this could potentially trash your system or at least destroy the integrity of the restore points.

See also the following pages for more background information...
http://kessels.nl/JkDefrag/index.html
https://blogs.techne...les/440717.aspx
http://en.wikipedia....enter_(Windows)
http://en.wikipedia....iki/Shadow_Copy
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinte...s/bb897427.aspx

[TrueVanDal]

davey, on Dec 23 2008, 12:15 PM, said:

(...)
@ TrueVanDal, you are correct in your statements. Vista does create System Restore points when it sees certain things happening, that are being caused by Defraggler doing it's thing. This is why after defragging you will still find System Restore files fragmented. Otherwise there would be a never ending cycle of "defrag" then Vista System Restore point ad infinitum. Vista will release the used space when it decides.
(...)

Thank for your quick answer. So theoretically, if I turn off System Restore completely and reboot there would not be any System Restore point. If i start the defrag process in that state i could be able to fully defragment the drive. Of course i am aware that this is some kind of risky procedure (on my Win XP i never used System Restore and hopefully i never had to use anything like that, but as I mentioned earlier, this is not my laptop ). There still may by problem with indexing service running in the background but Vista should not have problems with that, after all the amount of data and it folder structures are intact in the defragment process so the indexing file (if there is something like that, I am not sure to be frank) should remain the same in size, am I right?

Anyway, thanks. Best wishes to You and others as well .

[davey]

TrueVanDal, on Dec 23 2008, 06:11 AM, said:

Anyway, thanks. Best wishes to You and others as well .

There was another user who did just that, turned off System Restore. Vista System Restore is much more useful to the user than WinXP. If you turn it off then you are taking an extreme risk on a machine that is not yours.
I would not let you touch my machine just to get a pretty Defrag map.
A soon as you run something then it is going to fragment all over again.
Go home and turn off your System Restore and leave the other users Vista as it is.
With Vista size goes up and down all the time. Let it do it's thing.
Shame on you.
davey

[Gerry]

davey, on Dec 23 2008, 11:25 AM, said:

There was another user who did just that, turned off System Restore. Vista System Restore is much more useful to the user than WinXP. If you turn it off then you are taking an extreme risk on a machine that is not yours.
I would not let you touch my machine just to get a pretty Defrag map.
A soon as you run something then it is going to fragment all over again.
Go home and turn off your System Restore and leave the other users Vista as it is.
With Vista size goes up and down all the time. Let it do it's thing.
Shame on you.
davey

I ran Defraggler and found it left a fragmented restore point. Having used the Microsoft Disk Defragmenter in Windows XP a lot I was a little surprised. I decided to create a System Restore point and then ran Disk CleanUp to remove all but the latest restore point. Ran Defraggler and there were no files listed as fragmented.

I am not sure that the fragmented files list is 100% correct. It does not list the MFT, which is normally in 2 or 3 fragments. Notwithstanding Defraggler impresses. One feature in Vista I find unhelpful is that the Disk Defragmenter provides little information and the user interface is not user friendly. Defraggler satisfies most of my requirements in this respect.