Brian61

Does excluding a file type (e.g. *.vhd or *.iso) prevent those files from being moved at all or only from being defragmented? I am seeing that files that are excluded are being moved and being fragmented in the process. I manually defrag vhd and iso files and no longer want defraggler to defrag them (or fragment them as well). When I defrag the whole drive, I see some of those files being moved and fragmented in the process. Not exactly why I would expect from this feature. Brian

Not sure how checking the drive for errors fixes the problem of file fragmentation. My drives have no errors. I would assume that if defraggler detects a drive error it would stop defragging immediately. Usually a basic 'chkdsk' is done while analyzing a drive before defragging is done. My problem here is that defraggler fragments previously unfragmented files in the process of defragmenting a drive or defragging free space. This still happens with v2.04. These are not system drives - very little dynamic file changes are going on. I can't bee the only person that this happens to. This happens on all PCs I have used defraggler with. It's not any specific PC or OS. Brian

As I said, this is a non-system drive being defragmented - there are no locked, system, opened files on it. No files are changing during the defrag except defraggler. I start with a defragged drive (ie 0% fragmentation) but it has lots of free space all over the drive. I would expect defraggler to compact the free spaces into fewer blocks and it appears that it does this - like every other defrag utility does. To compact free spaces, it has to move files from the end of the drive into the free spaces up front. For some reason, at some point, it starts moving files to the end of the drive. I'm fine with that except when it moves them to the end they are now fragmented. There is no reason for defraggler to do this - it can move the files to the end and keep them in one fragment. This is the most obvious problem I have. There are other times when the drive was fragmented, it doesn't move files to the end but still ends up with fragmented files after doing a complete defrag on the drive. I would think that any file moved would be in the same or fewer fragments otherwise why move it and make it worse? It should not assume that eventually (it may take several days) the drive will be defragged if you let it run to completion. If that's the case then it's a bad assumption on their part Brian

Defraggler, when performing a drive defrag, will move unfragmented files to the end of the drive and store them in a fragmented fashion. This happens even with drives that are not the system partition, have plenty of free space (>30%) and no files being modified/opened except by defraggler. With plenty of free disk space, why would defraggler ever move a unfragmented file (except to fill in/compact free spaces) and, if it decides to move it, why would it fragment the file when moving it? Shouldn't the number of fragmented files on a drive always go down and never increase? I have noticed problem this in every version of defraggler (1.12 thru 2.01) and on many PCs (running XP, 2003, 2008, 7) so I'm pretty sure it has to be the program and not my hardware/drives/OS/disk format. Brian

I am seeing that when defraggler moves files to the end of the drive it fragments them - it appears to be copying the front of the files to the end and then copies the files backwards. That is, the next part of the file goes before the previous location at the end of the drive thereby fragmenting the files greatly. Not sure why it shouldn't just keep the file defragmented when it moves to the end of the drive or defrag it while moving it to the end. It's really weird logic. If I defrag the files individually, I can get the drive into a state with no fragmented files but will be left with fragmented free space. If I then defrag the drive again it will start to fragment the files as described above as it tries to fill in the free spaces and move things around. I am running v1.21 on Windows 2003 Server and defragging non-system partitioned drives (e.g. D, E etc - i.e. not OS protected) but I have seen this behaviour in other windows OS (XP, VIsta & Win 7) Brian