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Enormous problem with NTFS compressed files


Georg Metzger

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I am experiencing huge problems with a harddisk that contains a lot of highly compresses files (on filesystem level).

Example: The disk is 350GB, has 280GB free space and contains 400GB of data (as I said, the files are highly compressed).

All calculations of Defraggler are totally wrong, speed is extremely poor.

It looks like Defraggler is looking for free space for the new file, but BASED ON THE REAL FILESIZE, not based on the COMPRESSED size (i.e. the required space).

I do not know if my assumption is correct, of course, but I see that the green bar for the new file has the length the uncompressed file would have. After the file is moved, the really used space is totally diffrerent.

Additionally, the files have 5 MILLION fragments and this huge number seems also to be a problem.

Defragging using the normal command, also defragging free space is ultimately slow, Defragging single files (also with many selected) seems to be faster.

This makes Defraggler unusable with NTFS-compressed files.

 

 

Update:

Defraggler startet to do some strange things after it was not able to find enough free space for a file (with uncompressed size). The occupation map changed constantly and totally.

 

This program does not seem to reliable. If it is doing unexplainable things with my valuable data, I can not use it!

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3 hours ago, Georg Metzger said:

Example: The disk is 350GB, has 280GB free space and contains 400GB of data (as I said, the files are highly compressed).

hi Georg and welcome.

but to clarify...

the disk has 350GB capacity.
280GB free space.
and contains 400GB of data.

I want to see that pie chart :blink: - fire up File Explorer, right click that drive and select Properties.
attached a Snip of that screen and attach it here.

doesn't matter how highly compressed that drive is, you still can't fit a square peg into a round hole.

Backup now & backup often.
It's your digital life - protect it with a backup.
Three things are certain; Birth, Death and loss of data. You control the last.

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The disk does not exist anymore in the mentioned form.

I found another free defragger that was able to do the job very quickly.

It has been transformed now to 110GB with 30GB free and 300GB of data. That was the whole idea behind it all: I wanted to reduce the size of the disk (which is a VHD file, really, used in a VM)

But the pie chart looked totally normal in Defraggler, too, as well as the occupied space in numbers: 80 GB of 350 GB were occupied, pie chart looked like a quarter filled.

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ok, glad you got it sorted.

Backup now & backup often.
It's your digital life - protect it with a backup.
Three things are certain; Birth, Death and loss of data. You control the last.

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Hopefully the Devs will see this.

as to any sort of outcome, who knows.

Backup now & backup often.
It's your digital life - protect it with a backup.
Three things are certain; Birth, Death and loss of data. You control the last.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 months later...



 

Hi! - Sincerely apologise if I am crossing threads. The topic here seems so similar.

I am fine with Defrag, though curious in the example below:

One session I get 4% Free space. Next session,  or the next,  I get 42% free space. The 4% again.

The pie charts agree each time

Which is the true one? - Or simply 2 versions: Compressed files, and UN compressed files?

If I defrag both versions, am I going around in circles?


    Memory Usage    47 %
    Total Physical    1.49 GB
    Available Physical    806 MB
    Total Virtual    13 GB
    Available Virtual    12 GB
Files compressed to save disc space

 

Thank you for your patience

 

Free space 4.png

Free space 42.png

Space avail.txt

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the drive in question is only 28GB, so if it's the system drive, the big swings between 4% free and 40% free could easily be because of restore points, pagefile, hibernation file, swapfile, temp files, and the like.

you could either allocate C:\ more space or relocate system files to another drive.

Backup now & backup often.
It's your digital life - protect it with a backup.
Three things are certain; Birth, Death and loss of data. You control the last.

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Could also move particular files such as; Documents, Music, Videos if they're of any significant size onto an external/portable hard disk or SSD to free up space on drive C:\, and also uninstall software that is non-system critical and is no longer being used. 1.2% amount of free space doesn't give Windows much breathing room at all and most defrag tools requires at the bare minimum 10% free space, while other defrag tools may require at least 20% free space - many won't work correctly with only 1.2% free space available.

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