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I did. And it took 5 hours! Is this normal???? And perhaps I need to defrag more often?? It seemed to make things a bit faster. And yes, it is nice to know I have a nice orderly computer. My files are in tidy order now, thank you very much.But is this really necessary?? I realize I am not that adept at computers, but please. Talk to me.......How often should I defrag
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I defrag once a week. How long has it been, Cheryl? You can usually tell when to defrag when your system starts to run rather slow. 5 hours? hmmmmmm . . . Anyone else got a clue why it took so long? I'm curious. Bomba-dear
------------------ Bomba-Dear Jackie Vaughn #5115 Volcano, California www.chocoholic.com 10% Discount for Letterheads Use Reference Code letr01 email jackiebv@cdepot.net
Posts: 761 | From: Volcano, California, USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
Jackie.....that is what I was wondering too. I am a very impatient person....and this drove me nuts today waiting so long. But guess what? I do notice a lot of little things that used to 'irk' me....that stopped. So it did do some good. I haven't defraged in about 2 years. Joey! thanks for your message...! Joey said he defrags once a week also. (Sorry I missed your call but I certainly appreciate you taking the time to call me)
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Once a week is a good plan. Generally if you have not defregged in a long time it takes longer. Also the bigger the hard drive, the longer it takes. Of course the procesor speed makes a difference as well. Glad you got it going!
------------------ Brian Stoddard Expressions Signs A few puddles east of Seattle
Posts: 790 | From: Monroe, WA | Registered: Nov 1998
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Cheryl, also, when you defrag, scroll down while it's working with all those little boxes; if there are any white spaces, that means your computer needs to defrag.
Deleting files leaves empty spaces on your h/d, = all those white boxes. When you defrag, you're rearranging your info so the spaces are filled up. When your computer searches for a file, it has to run through those white spaces, thus slowing down your computer. When all the spaces are filled after defraging, things generally run much better.
Once a week is a great idea, or anytime you've deleted lots of stuff, whether it be programs or files. I start defraging when I want to get some sleep. In the morning it's all done. No waiting that way!
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Cheryl, Could be that your hard drive is going bad, if you had so many problems with things not working correctly and then it taking so long to defrag. Or could be that you were running low on hard drive space and with the files being broken into so many fragments it was having a hard time. When files get broken up and scattered your disk has to work harder to search and access files. If things start getting crazy again I would replace the hard drive, they're cheap for their size these days.
------------------ Larry
Elliott Design McLemoresville, Tn.
If you can't find the time to do it right, where gonna find the time to do it over?
Posts: 486 | From: McLemoresville, TN. USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
Hi, Cheryl If you haven't done so already, refer back to the posts of March 4th on "sluggish computer" and "scandisk". I had replies there that might be of help to you. Also, you might want to change your "history" setting to a shorter time-- mine is set to only show one day. Otherwise,"history" may be keeping track of where you've been on the web way more than you would ever need. If I can help you further my # is 607-547-2724. Keep in mind tho' that I'm not a 'puter expert, and there are a lot of areas I don't know beans about. That brings up another thought--One of the best magazines on computers that I have found is a monthly called Smart Computing-in plain English. It has gotten me out of more trouble than you can imagine. Best part is- no geek speak. Good luck.
------------------ Bill Preston Fly Creek, N.Y. USA wpreston2@stny.rr.com
Posts: 943 | From: Fly Creek, N.Y. USA | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Hi Cheryl. There's a "Maintenance Utillity Wizzard" that you can set up do do the defragging operation overnight, or whenever you're not ordinarily using your computer. You can also set up Scandisc to run at a regularly schedueled time slot more convenient for yourself as well. If you click on "Programs", then "Accessories", "System Tools", you'll find the Maintenance Wizzard. You can then set it up so that those operations necessary to keep your computer running at peak efficiency can be done automatically, while you're not using it.
Hope this helps you out.
------------------ Ken Henry Henry & Henry Signs London, Ontario Canada (519) 439-1881 e-mail kjmlhenry@home.
Some days you get to be the dog....other days, you get to be the fire hydrant.
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Hi again. Ken Henry, I had that set up in maintenance wizard, but for some reason it never would complete the defrag. (frickin frag) Ken Morse....no it did NOT help with any of that! I am sad to say My roland still cuts in zig zags all over....if I am cutting an 'O' it will cut the outer part, but the inner circle of the o will be in places it should not be. This is NOT a good situation. I am bummed
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One problem with defrag. If you're running a screen saver or any other program, the hard drive's contents have changed & it has to start all over. Havin' fun, Checkers
------------------ a.k.a. Brian Born Harrisburg, Pa 717.652.9073 members.home.net/sign-it/ This isn't Burger King, you can't have it your way.
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Hi, I have had similar situations here and over 780 cookies yesterday. Still getting the hang of it! I have two icons on my desktop to remind me and help. There is the disk defrag and also a disk cleanup. I do the disk cleanup before the disk defrag. and it is best done at night when you go to bed, they told me. That is interesting about screensavers,Checkers. I took mine off. Maybe I wasn't missing anything, thanks.
------------------ Deb Creative Signs
Posts: 5373 | From: Loves Park, Illinois | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
The above advice is correct. Defragging is the simple process of rearranging the files not only in tidy order but also rewriting each file as a complete unbroken file.
Think of your hard drive as a huge cassette tape full of songs. Each song is a file. Say you delete the 3rd 57th and 79th song on the tape. By deleting the file (song) what you are actually doing is telling the computer that you don't want that file any more. All the computer does is "lose" the information it needs to find that file. The file actually stays on the hard drive, but the information needed to find the file, its catalog info, is eliminated. Say the 3rd and 57th songs were short songs, (small files). Now you create a big file and save it. The computer, in trying to be efficiant, will save some of that big file where the 3rd song was, and the rest of the file in any other space available. Therefore, a single file may be stored on several different parts of the hard drive. This is what slows down your computer, when it has to find all the parts of a file to load it.
When you defrag the hard drive, the computer lifts as many files as it can off the hard drive (the amount of memory, RAM, determines how many files can be lifted) arranges the file's code in a continuous string of info, and deposits the file back onto the hard drive, eliminating all the small unused blocks of space. This is where you notice a speed increase because the computer doesn't have to search as much to find the entire file.
So defrag time is determined by a combination of how much memory you have, the size of the hard drive, how full and how fragmented the hard drive is. Defrag time should be less if you do it more often. I would say once a week is fine if you can set it up to do it automaticly, but once a month is probably the upper limit.
If this is more information than you wanted.... sorry.
------------------ Dave Sherby "Sandman" SherWood Sign & Graphic Design Crystal Falls, MI 49920 906-875-6201 ICQ: 21604027 sherwood@up.net
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Just to add to Checkers' comment and the idea of setting up an automatic time for defragging.
Setting up for automatic defragging is OK but you have to remember to shut down any programs that run automatically in the background. Screensavers are one but depending on what programs you have there could be several others. I usually go to the bottom right corner of my screen and disable any of the programs that are there that run automatically. If you don't do that then the defrag program will run until one of those programs activates and changes something on the HD. Then the defrag program will start over again. I learned this one time by starting a defrag and going to town for a few hours. When I got home I saw a message that defrag had restarted 14 times and was tired of doing so! "Would I please turn off whatever was accessing the HD and try again?" LOL
------------------ Dave Grundy AKA "applicator" on mIRC "stickin' sticky stuff to valuable vessels and vehicles!" in Granton, Ontario, Canada 1-519-225-2634 dave.grundy@quadro.net www.quadro.net/~shirley
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While typing my long winded post, and being interupted by a customer, the subject of screen savers came up. Tests have proved that computer monitors take a very, VERY long time to experience burn in, which the screen saver people have made you believe that this can be a problem. Screen savers are nothing more than cute little programs that use memory and hard drive space. If you have a huge amount of both and like your screen saver, by all means keep it. But they are really an unnecessary burden on your computer.
I use Norton Utilities for fixing minor disk problems and defragging. Norton recommends that you run this program from the CD or a second hard drive. You cannot defrag the area of your computer hard drive that the system files occupy, if the computer is running from that hard drive. Now I'm not sure if you can do this from a PC, but on my Mac, I insert the Norton CD, choose the CD as the start up disk, and restart the computer. Now the computer is running from the CD, and Norton can repair and defrag the entire hard drive because nothing from the hard drive is being used to run the computer.
------------------ Dave Sherby "Sandman" SherWood Sign & Graphic Design Crystal Falls, MI 49920 906-875-6201 ICQ: 21604027 sherwood@up.net
OK, this may open me up to hate mail, but I don't defrag. I think it's a waste of time.
I do format my drive and reinstall about once a year. But, that's because I'm sent eval software almost weekly, and install and uninstall a bizillion programs. The reformat is done to eliminate all the DLLs that are left behind, which can lead to conflicts.
If you want to be trouble-free, I recommend a hard drive that's never more than 50% full. And RAM that's at least twice the recommended amount by your biggest memory-hog program (RAM is super cheap right now).
Having to read a file from multiple sectors won't noticeably affect your performance -- most program launches, commands, etc. will read data from all over the drive in any event. If you're concerned your drive may be bad, having it move/write/rewrite every file on the drive - on a weekly basis! - will only hasten your drive's demise.
A memory-laden computer is about 1500 bucks. The drive will easily outlast its useful life, without defragging (obselesence occurs about every three years, in my opinion). The accounting is easy too ... straight line depreciation of $500 a year. With no lost days of production, or the frustration associated with it, I think 500 bucks a year is easily cost-justified.
At least that's the logic I use when asking my boss for a new computer
IMHO,
Jim
------------------ Jim Doggett Vice President Summa, Inc.
Seattle, WA USA jim@summusa.com
Posts: 500 | From: Sherman, TX USA | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Jim...I do defrag once in a while....Mainly when the topic comes up or I am bored and have nothing better to do than watch those little boxes move around and change color!
I am kinda like you...I re-format probably every 6 months or so. THAT is what really speeds things up! I am not a computer geek but after watching my son do it a few times and, since my son moved to Missouri, having a buddy do it a couple of times I just broke down one day and tackled it myself. NOW, I do have another computer that is fully functional to fall back on if necessary. AND it did take about 10 hours to figure out all of the things that I had to set up the first time I did it. BUT nowadays I can re-format and have my system up and running correctly in about 4 hrs.
For anyone considering a re-format, jump right in there and give it a whirl! BUT it is best to have a backup computer with all your stuff on it available. AND back up every user file, address books, contact lists, favourites lits etc.
------------------ Dave Grundy AKA "applicator" on mIRC "stickin' sticky stuff to valuable vessels and vehicles!" in Granton, Ontario, Canada 1-519-225-2634 dave.grundy@quadro.net www.quadro.net/~shirley
posted
Disable any and all screensavers on your computer, they're pointless. Monitors today wont get burned in for a very long time, at least not the good ones. After 8 years of never using a screensaver on my computer. my trusty ol' NEC monitor still looks like new.. less the decals and Post-It notes stuck all over it. =)
If you feel you just have to have something to "protect" your monitor, go into the display settings and set it so the monitor just shuts off after an hour or whatever. This way it's not gonna hog up system resources. The screensaver will affect the defrag time.
Programs running in the background will make degrag restart over and over.
A slow hard drive will degrag slow and a larger one takes longer. A really fragmented drive takes longer too. Although, a large hard drive doesnt always take a long time if it's a faster drive or if it's not too fragmented.
Reformatting is the mother of all hard drive maintenance tasks. Make sure you can backup all data files you wish to keep before wiping the slate clean. You can make things easier on yourself and get another harddrive and install only Windows on it. Keep all data files and programs off it. When you need to reformat, you dont have to worry about all those graphics files cause they're on a different drive. Reformatting makes your system feel like brand new.
Also, if you are using Windows 98, turn off the little menu animations and the Active Desktop. If your computer is a little aged, these two things have a drastic affect on system response and performance.
------------------ Mike Pipes Digital Illusion Custom Graphics Lake Havasu City, AZ http://www.stickerpimp.com
Posts: 8746 | From: Lake Havasu, AZ USA | Registered: Jun 2000
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