What does "defrag Disk" do?

[yamakawa]

First, I would like to thank the admin for your excellent product.

 

I have used since 1.01.044 and now use 1.01.073, the latest.

Up until 1.01.068, I had no trouble with "defrag Disk" feature.

In my understanding, it eliminates the gaps between fragmented files and defragments the files at the same time, making huge empty area at the end of the drive (bottom right area). I was totally satified with its function and its amazing speed compared with other similar products.

 

The latest version with introduction of "new Defrag algorithm", however, seems to do different thing to me.

When I "defrag disk" on certain drives, the results are total mess sometimes.

Defraggler tries to make the last area to "cache" temporary files, it seems.

The area becomes larger and larger on some drives, one of which turned into fragmented more than half of it in a worst case. I just wanted it to eliminate the gaps on some drives without any fragmentation after "defragment" using Defraggler. That was all.

 

With such numerous defragmentation on the way, I had to stop the function before it completed.

I guess such case happens when a drive contains number of large files. I can tell this, because on a 500GB drive which contains many movie-size files around 700MB or over, the problem mentioned happens. Whereas another drive of the same size with number of rather small files from a few MB to 1GB at most, mostly around some 10MB does not experience this problem. The speed of this feature has significantly reduced compared with other versions in every case.

 

I do not know if this problem appears in other versions since I deleted all the previous versions.

Maybe you could provide us those too.

 

Any suggestion on this issue would be appreciated.

 

Thank you.

[YoKenny]

yamakawa, welcome.

 

Please review the following topic as it may answer some of your questions:

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=15836

[fogster]

In my understanding, it eliminates the gaps between fragmented files and defragments the files at the same time, making huge empty area at the end of the drive (bottom right area)... When I "defrag disk" on certain drives, the results are total mess sometimes.

 

Do you mean "Defrag Freespace" (in the Advanced menu)?

 

If so, I'm noticing the same thing! I have a relatively fresh Vista install and downloaded Defraggler yesterday. For some reason (even before Defraggler), files were pretty much evenly distributed across my hard drive. Since there is no one, big block of free space, any large files are guaranteed to be badly fragmented. It makes no difference whether I do the "Allow Fragmentation" one or not. (Though I'm not quite sure what 'defragging free space, allowing fragmentation' means? Is the alternative to abort if it can't do it 100%?)

 

Based on yamakawa's comments, it sounds as if this may have been broken in the latest releases? (Though I see that a build was released today; I'll try that one.) The ability to try to free up a lot of contiguous disk space would be very helpful for people like me. (And yes, I know that cramming every file right next to the next would leave no room for files to be expanded... But leaving them spread all over the disk is no good, either!)

 

Please review the following topic as it may answer some of your questions

 

It sounds more like yamakawa was reporting a bug/problem, to be honest. The linked thread doesn't help me at all.

[Tottel]

Defrag freespace just puts all the files next to each other, but if a file doesn't fit in, he will not be 'broken ' into smaller pieces, it will jsut be placed somewhere else.. This means that you will (always?) have some free space (white blocks) when you chose this option.

 

Defrag freespace (allow fragmentation) will try to put a large file between 2 other files, even if there isn't enough space. the file will be fragmented to fit in.. so the blocks will be red, but normally everything should be more or less in one giant block.

 

Please note that the (2?) previous versions were a bit bugged, I had some problems as well where it would just delete freespace.. or something else.. I lost 7 GB HD space.

[davey]

Please note that the (2?) previous versions were a bit bugged, I had some problems as well where it would just delete freespace.. or something else.. I lost 7 GB HD space.

Hi Tottel,

This link and following post may help you get your 7 GB back sooner than normal.

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?s=&amp...st&p=106234

Good luck,

davey

[Tottel]

thank you Davey

That really worked.. only 2 GB of defragmented files now ^^

I'll let you know how nice the drawings will look now when it's finished

 

EDIT: I just noticed it was 10 GB not 7..

 

EDIT: ok.. it's looking much better. of course, now that I turned system restore points on again, there's a 2 GB file again that can't be fragmented.

But it's better then 10