BRUTALLY SLOW!

[SteveOh]

I started a defrag at 4:00 PM yesterday and it has been at 96%, iterating through files, since getting back to my machine this morning at just before 8:00 AM. The hard drive is only 500GB and there was only 96GB fragmented after analyzing when this started. I left all settings at default, 500GB SATA drive, Intel Dual core at 2.19GHz, 2GB RAM, Windows XP Professional. I even ran CCleaner prior and restarted the computer twice before running Defraggler. Look, I'm all for supporting Piriform's software but man this is just brutally slow!! AUSLogics and JK Defrag were faster than this.

 

 

Steve

[redhawk]

To be honest defragging is a pretty slow process anyway but since Defragger, AUSLogics and JK Defrag all use the same Windows API I very much doubt there's any speed difference.

However I have experienced a problem with Defragger running incredibly slow, it turns out 2 threads were pegging my CPU even when I paused the program.

 

If you're using Defragger again and experience slowness, pause it and check for high CPU load.

 

Richard S.

[Flashfox]

I know the feeling... I am running an AMD Phenom-II x6 (1090T) boosted to 3.8 GHz/core (Windows 7 Pro x86 w/no core at more than 5% load). Defragmenting 116GB of a 1TB drive is already more than 3 hours into the process and it's only 56% done (sigh). When I started, Defraggler stated that only 16% of that drive was fragmented.

 

I was hoping that this application would be as fast as Diskeeper Pro. If it was the case, I would have contributed. However, as my home PC has 3x 1TB drives and this app can only handle one drive at a time, it is really way too slow. Looks like I will renew my Diskeeper Pro license (pity).

[etheReal]

I am just experiencing the same. In the past I had always been using O&O but recently I decided to not pay money anymore for Defrag software when there's free options.

 

A few hours ago I started a Defrag on an external USB drive that is 600GB in size, with 280GB used. It's mostly mp3 files, acronis backup files and program installation files.

The point is, it didn't look fragmented at all, all blocks were shown in blue, they were in perfect order, and it said 0% fragmented. I don't know why, but I clicked defrag anyways (and thought this would be a matter of minutes at most).

When I looked at it again half an hour later, I discovered it was only at 40%, and the data was now more fragmented then before, so I thought well, let it finish.

It is now several hours later (I think 5 hours), the progress is at 74% and the data is more fragmented than before - so I gotta let it run, because if I stop it now, the result is worse than in the beginning. At this rate, I'm not even sure it will be finished tomorrow morning...

 

I recently defragged the same drive on my netbook where I still have O&O installed, it contained the same amount of data but was much more fragmented to begin with - and it took maybe an hour until it was through. Now I don't know maybe Defraggler is much more thorough or something, but can I somehow make it not be that thorough? I mean other than using the fast defrag option, which hardly touches anything. Is there something in between?

[eL_PuSHeR]

I advise to use Quick Defrag on those scenarios or Analyzing the drive and defragging files individually from the file list. Regular defrag is a time consuming operation because in addition to defragging it fills all gaps between files and thus, it has to move/shuffle all data around.

[TheFallenOne]

Well, as far as a slow defrag process goes, here is my story.

 

I am an update freak so I always keep software I use at its newest version. When updating from version 2.02 to 2.03 I noticed a dramatic decrease in defrag performance. So I figured something must have changed either in Defraggler itself or in my system. Not being able to figure out something substantial for the 2.03 changelog and my system remaining pretty much the same, I went back to version 2.02 and lo and behold defrag performance was back to what it used to be.

 

Seeing that the original post is dated April 28, you have surely being using a 2.02+ version of Defraggler. My suggestion would be to download version 2.02.253 and try it out, comparing defrag speed. You can find earlier versions at Filehippo's Defraggler page.

 

Btw, I am not really sure if I should report this as a bug or not, or if developers need any more information about my system or anything, since I don't know how widespread this drop in performance is. It may well have been just an issue with Defraggler and my system. I would gladly provide info if it would help though.

[hazelnut]

Have you tried the latest version 2.05?

 

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=32587&pid=193606&st=0entry193606

[TheFallenOne]

Have you tried the latest version 2.05?

 

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=32587&pid=193606&st=0entry193606

Yes, I had just used 2.05 prior to posting in the thread and the performance was equally slow as every other version after 2.02.

 

I don't really know how I could help diagnose this atm. Does Defraggler keep logs somewhere that I could send you? Task Manager doesn't show excessive CPU usage btw, so it doesn't seem to be an issue of my system holding back Defraggler.

 

I run a fully updated Windows 7 Professional SP1 x64 bit machine. My HDD configuration is 2x Western Digital 500GB (I don't remember exact model but I can find it if needed) in RAID 0 on an ASUS P6T motherboard.

[redhawk]

Are you running the 32bit or native 64bit verision of Defraggler??

 

Richard S.

[hazelnut]

Does the same thing happen if you defrag in safe mode?

 

Do you keep a large number of system restore files?

 

Defraggler doesn't keep logs, but you can ask it to do debug logs

 

http://www.piriform.com/docs/defraggler/troubleshooting/running-defraggler-in-debug-mode

 

Are you doing a clean install or installing over the top?

[TheFallenOne]

Well thx for the quick replies. Here are my answers.

 

Are you running the 32bit or native 64bit verision of Defraggler??

 

Richard S.

It always seems to run in 64 bit. Well, the Start Menu shortcut defaults to 64bit, but even if I manually go into Defraggler installation folder and run the "Defraggler.exe" it still loads the 64 bit application. At least Sysinternal's Process Explorer says so. Maybe I am missing something?

 

Does the same thing happen if you defrag in safe mode?

Yes, it doesn't seem to make a difference.

 

Do you keep a large number of system restore files?

No, I actually have System Restore disabled. I live on the edge.

 

Defraggler doesn't keep logs, but you can ask it to do debug logs

 

http://www.piriform.com/docs/defraggler/troubleshooting/running-defraggler-in-debug-mode

Nice. Well I am linking (their size is prohibitive as far as attaching them here goes) three debug3 level log files in the end of the post explaining what is each. Funny enough 2.05 running a defrag operation on my C:\Users folder that previous analysis by Defraggler showed around 50 files fragmented and 150 fragments took more than 1 hour. I actually aborted it manually as I did on the Safe Mode test run, cuz I couldn't wait 1 more hour. There should be a lot of stuff on the log already though! The 2.02 run on the same folder, C:\Users with around the same level of fragmentation took less than 1 minute!!!

 

Are you doing a clean install or installing over the top?

Yes, I completely un-install the previous version first.

 

/debug3 log files

 

2.05 Normal Mode http://www.mediafire.com/?5lnd81onsd4x16i

2.05 Safe Mode http://www.mediafire.com/?0pdsj4juqlldd8e

2.02 Normal Mode http://www.mediafire.com/?yjw0kzv1io50p43

[hazelnut]

The devs read all threads so will see these logs (plus I've sent a link to them to one of the devs.)

 

Good of you to do them

[Guest MrRon]

Thanks, these are really useful.

[Arnold]

Well, as far as a slow defrag process goes, here is my story.

 

I am an update freak so I always keep software I use at its newest version. When updating from version 2.02 to 2.03 I noticed a dramatic decrease in defrag performance. So I figured something must have changed either in Defraggler itself or in my system. Not being able to figure out something substantial for the 2.03 changelog and my system remaining pretty much the same, I went back to version 2.02 and lo and behold defrag performance was back to what it used to be.

 

Seeing that the original post is dated April 28, you have surely being using a 2.02+ version of Defraggler. My suggestion would be to download version 2.02.253 and try it out, comparing defrag speed. You can find earlier versions at Filehippo's Defraggler page.

 

Btw, I am not really sure if I should report this as a bug or not, or if developers need any more information about my system or anything, since I don't know how widespread this drop in performance is. It may well have been just an issue with Defraggler and my system. I would gladly provide info if it would help though.

It's not just on your system, I've been experiencing the exact same issue since version 2.03. Tried upgrading to 2.05 yesterday, same story, and once again I've had to revert to version 2.02 in order to get decent speed. No idea what might be causing this problem but I hope the developers will address it in a future version. Defraggler has become pretty much unusable on Windows 7 x64.

[Guest]

I advise to use Quick Defrag on those scenarios or Analyzing the drive and defragging files individually from the file list. Regular defrag is a time consuming operation because in addition to defragging it fills all gaps between files and thus, it has to move/shuffle all data around.

^This

 

It's easier/faster to just do a file defrag. The performance gain between a file defrag and a full defrag are mostly negligible but a file defrag is substantially faster compared to a full one if you hard drive has a lot of fragmented freespace.

[HansSchulze]

I created a 2 TB USB3 file-by-file copy of another 2 TB drive, and due to Windows XP32 reserving a lot of space on the drive, the last few large files got horribly fragmented. I had to use "fsutil file create xxx" to get back some of the space so DF could have some space to work (250 GB). Then I watched 2.05.315 try to clean up the drive. BTW my settings include to put huge files on the top.

 

The Defrag Free Space option only moved a couple of files, then finished, less than 5 minutes, but lots of small fragments left.

 

DF full moved EVERY file, even the huge areas that weren't fragmented, and still left about 20 GB of contiguous fragments (8x8 blocks on 25x16 monitor), over a period of almost 2 days, before it reached the lower end of the large files that were DF'd by a previous version (and almost no free space).

 

There are essentially three levels of defrag you can do...

a ) make the largest free space hole as large as possible, with optional forced fragmentation (got that)

b ) go crazy and move every file (what I see sometimes)

c ) Try to move the fragmented files so as to best fill up the holes. I like this the best.

 

I would expect that if my maximum file size is say 1 GB I should not get a contiguous hole bigger than 1 GB. If there are file sizes of 20 MB-1000MB, I should not have many holes larger than 20MB. Generally if you move slightly smaller files into the smaller holes, it also helps to sort the files by size such that the largest file at the top of the drive is the largest file on the drive, and smaller as you go towards the middle, so that you almost always find a smaller file from the middle of the drive to fill a new hole near the end. Likewise for the even smaller files at the beginning of the drive. The outside of the drive gives faster reading speed to often-used larger files, while the small ones don't take time anyways.

 

Unless you are sorting based on file sizes and/or usage count, I hope that you don't have to move every file during a "normal" defrag. Or figure out how "serious" a user is about how much to move by giving maybe a third or fourth option.

 

I do believe that this "slowness" is version specific, I didn't have this sort of optimization happen every time on every machine.

 

I like the product, clean, sensible, not expensive. Keep up the good work. I will send in some money, because good work deserves it

 

I do recommend a drive cleaning strategy for polluted older systems:

- turn off hybernation (os specific commands) and swap file if possible (need 2GB RAM for Windows).

- Turn off the USN journal

- Disable and delete the restore points

- Run CCleaner and add the option to delete the updates uninstall files (hundreds of MB)

- Toss large movie/game files (500MB+) files to the top of the drive

- DF * the slow part

- Turn swap file back on, reboot.

 

Another comment: due to the number of bad sectors on large drives, it seems silly to call a large file that hops over a bad sector to be "fragmented". I would ignore those, otherwise you will never hit 0%. It's bad enough that there are $MFT and $USNJRNL and other hidden system files that you usually can't move.

[Jefr]

OK. Try this. Knock down all other apps and resident programs including firewalls and anti-virus s/w. Break connections to internet. It sounds like some s/w is constantly changing your drive. Try Quick Defrag then Action/Defrag Drive.

[jfreymann]

Same issue here Vista Ultimate x64 SP 3

 

Checked my task scheduler history prior to my upgrade to 2.05 on 5/22 the weekly defrag logs are running in minutes on all of my drives. After upgrading to 2.05 the same defrag operations are taking 10-15 times (1000% to 1500%) longer. This is on a variety of drives. Taskmanger shows that Defraggler64.exe is loaded when I run the GUI. I'm not sure which image is running from the task scheduler.

 

It caught my eye today on a 425GB partition that is 80% free space and the defrag was still running after 4.5 hours. Prior to 2.05 the same defrag would take 5 minutes. This is a ISO image storage drive, and no images have been added to it in the past 2 months.

 

It's not just on your system, I've been experiencing the exact same issue since version 2.03. Tried upgrading to 2.05 yesterday, same story, and once again I've had to revert to version 2.02 in order to get decent speed. No idea what might be causing this problem but I hope the developers will address it in a future version. Defraggler has become pretty much unusable on Windows 7 x64.

[Agent]

From today I stop using Defraggler in the hopes of it'll be fixed in the near future because unfortunately it is useless at te moment.

The defragmentation algorythm for manual defragmentation on big drives is heavily faulty. The calculations keep maxing out the CPU and the actual file read/write can actually be as low as a couple kilobytes/seconds. For example it takes about 20 seconds to defragment a 4096 kilobyte big file with an average of 4 framgents per files on a drive which is capable of writing for up to 80 megabytes/seconds. Ridiculous.

 

I don't remember having this kind of problem when I first started Defraggler a long time ago.

 

Please fix this.

 

Edit: v1.20 seems to be fine and fast unlike new versions.

[Arnold]

Just tried to upgrade to the new version 2.06 -- SAME ISSUES. Defragging a folder is glacially slow on Windows 7 64-bit. Reverting to Defraggler version 2.02 makes the folder defragmentation go very quickly. Note that both versions found the same number of fragmented files, and reported the same total file sizes. The only difference appears to be that versions after 2.02 don't work at an acceptable speed.