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Old October 26th 19, 12:48 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_7_]
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Posts: 603
Default Can I defragment my drive while working ?

In message , Fern
writes:

The system is so very slow to load and get ready for me to work.
Does that mean a defrag is needed or something else ?

_Likely_ to be something else. Has this started recently or been that
way a while? Does Task manager (taskmgr, select Performance tab) show
memory usage higher than (or close to) the amount of memory shown as
available? Does a SMART utility (I use
https://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup/ - the free one; there are
plenty of others) show a soon projected failure date, or reallocated or
pending sectors?

When you say "slow to load and get ready for me to work", do you mean
it's slow to boot, but is OK once booted? (If so, is it fine while doing
most things but slows down when it accesses the HD, or fine regardless?)

How full is the HD - or rather, how much space is unused, which is more
relevant than the _percentage_ used?

Paul in Houston TX wrote:
Fern wrote:

Is there a tool that will allow this?

I have a Windows XP Pro laptop.


Doing it that way would leave the drive fragmented making defrag a waste
of time.

Well ... depends whether Fern means while actually using the computer,
or just having booted it. If the latter, although in theory still some
fragmentation, in practice less, especially if started in safe mode. But
I've rarely found fragmentation to be the cause of slowdown, unless
there's _very_ little space _left_ on the disc.

Anyway, the built-in defragmenter will do _some_thing if run while
Windows is open.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The first banjo solo I played was actually just a series of mistakes. In fact
it was all the mistakes I knew at the time. - Tim Dowling, RT2015/6/20-26
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