Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

BB — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:57:32 GMT

This post is a good overview of how to use defrag and what to use it for, but I'm interested to know how fragmentation performance issues might come into play when using RAID5 or other disk striping or storage i.e. SAN technology is used.

Do the performance penalties come into play due solely to the seek times of getting data from disparate parts of the disk or are there file system table efficiencies to be gained by defragmentation?

How would an administrator identify that fragmentation is actually causing a slow down on a system?

Defrag

Dwayne's Blog — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 02:53:42 GMT

Bit of deja vu here, been a while (or an OS or two) since I discussed defrag seriously. Nice article

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

anonymous — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:21:40 GMT

What is the allocation unit size that MS could recommend for 30-50 GB partitions so that wasted space is minimum yet fragmentation is also minimum?

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

someone — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:29:20 GMT

I can understand about the color coded display being removed, but some sort of progress indicator is a must. Please consider adding at least a basic progress indicator to Windows 7.

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Gisabun — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:30:12 GMT

I'll assume the version is more specifically for Vista as XP doesn't have as many options. XP's Defrag is also dated from 2001.

Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Microsoft Product's — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:38:56 GMT

When addressing system performance issues, a key element that is often overlooked is Disk Fragmentation

Disk Fragmentation. How a 100MB Video File Gets Shattered into 25,000 Pieces.

Realtime Community | Windows Server — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:50:46 GMT

We all know disk fragmentation isn bad, but cluster sizes on Windows boxes make lots of little pieces out of one big piece. When those pieces get out of order, we see slowdowns. CC Hameed of the Microsoft Performance Team explains the process in this

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Aegis — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:51:36 GMT

Automatic defragmentation is indeed the best solution to fix this persistent problem. After I installed an auto defragger (third party) I disabled auto defrag for the backups drive, but left it on for the OS and program files partitions. It's awesome since it does a great job yet I dont need to defrag manually or schedule it for midnights. Saves me time and effort. If auto defrag can help even a home user with just 3 PCs (ok, so one's a laptop), I can understand its usefulness in the corporate sector where its money and labor saving potential is quite high.

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

MVE — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:37:34 GMT

Very nice article indeed!

Next step is how you put it to work in a large organization: how do you start and schedule the job without slowing the computer down and thus disturbing tjhe user at times when it is critical that the user is not disturbed.

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Jeremy Noring — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:54:33 GMT

Great article. This was a big help to us when we were troubleshooting some issues with our application and we suspected disk problems.

One quick suggestion: it doesn't appear that the /? shows all of the above flags and settings. Admittedly I only tried it on XP Pro and not Vista, but it sure would be nice to have all of the help options display.

Thanks again,

Jeremy Noring

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Quark Fusion — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:32:19 GMT

Do you know what -g switch means? (It's used in ScheduledDefrag task)

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Madhana — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:30:21 GMT

Hi is there any recommendation of how much Free space (%) is required on C:\ DRIVE ?

Is there any correlation of free space on drive affecting the performance throughput (particularly C:\ Drive) ?

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Terry Ledbetter — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:44:21 GMT

What about programs running in the background? I have problems with 'driver changed - restarting' appearing.

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Russ — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 07:25:48 GMT

I'm an amature. How do I get defragmetter to work from the Start/Programs/accessories/System Tools/Disk defragmetter. I get an error message that says...Disk Defragmetter would not start. Is there a simple way to fis this or do I need to go the the DOS window as the above article explains?

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

bob — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:59:43 GMT

can diskfragmenting be harmfull if done too much? what about disk fragmenting a few times in a row?

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Quant2 — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 02:13:47 GMT

@bob

I've been defragging 2-3 times a week using WDD (on Windows XP laptop) for about 2 years now and I haven't got any issues whatsoever.

I also don't think defragmenting in a row is harmful if you don't do this too often.

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Joe — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:58:22 GMT

I try to defrag my system and I get the error message "Disk Defragmenter could not start". How do I fix the Disk Defragmenter?

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

laonianren — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:53:49 GMT

I just installed a new disk in my PC and copied over some big files (mainly virtual machine images) using Windows Explorer. Disk defragmenter now tells me that this new disk is seriously fragmented. All I've done is copy some files to it and set the permissions.

Any idea what's going on?

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Tony B. — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:27:00 GMT

I have tried to defrag my system and now it says "Disk Defragmenter could not start." How do I fix this?

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Tony B. — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:38:17 GMT

I also have tried to get this to work in the command prompt with the same response.

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Virginia Quinteros — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 08:50:52 GMT

I have tried to defrag my system and now it says "Disk Defragmenter could not start." How do I fix this?

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

kenny — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:06:41 GMT

Just wanna say thanks to the author(s).Quite educative.

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

steve — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:50:12 GMT

"disk defragmenter could not start"

in both the program and dos instances

???

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

ISRAEL PESSOA — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:03:42 GMT

I try to defrag my system and I get the error message "Disk Defragmenter could not start". How do I fix the Disk Defragmenter?

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Amy — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:57:01 GMT

Does anyone ever answer these messages? The same question has been posted numerous times...

I keep getting the same message "Disk Defragmenter Could Not Start" no matter which drive i try to defrag.

How do i solve this?

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

CC Hameed — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:33:56 GMT

For those having issues with the "Disk Defragmenter could not start", I am assuming that you are running the utility using an account with administrative privileges. If you are, and you are experiencing the issue, please check the following:

1) Verify that you actually have a page file. If the page file is zeroed out, this may cause the issue.

2) Verify that the Logical Disk Manager service is set to Automatic and started

3) Verify that the DCOM Server Process Launcher is started (primarily a Windows XP issue)

4) If you have a third-party utility installed that performs disk defragmentation, this may cause the native Disk Defragmenter utility to fail. In this instance, you will need to re-register the files for Disk Defragmenter:

- from a command prompt change to the %systemroot%\system32 folder

- run the following commands

regsvr32 dfrgsnap.dll

regsvr32 dfrgui.dll

5) If Disk Defragmenter does not work, browse to c:\windows\inf, and find the dfrg.inf file. Right click this file, select Install.

Hope this helps!

- CC

Please see the following non-MS resources:

http://www.andreasroom.com/blog/archive/2004/01/18/defrag.aspx

http://www.theeldergeek.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=28251

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

TBlenk — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 13:00:17 GMT

I want to get a list of the files that could not be defragmented. With Windows XP it was easy, but with Vista the defragmentation just ends. How do I get the list?

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Terry — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 03:38:19 GMT

I get the error message: Disk Defragmenter Could Not Start. How do I fix this?

re: Disk Fragmentation and System Performance

Matt Stone — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:04:34 GMT

I also got "Disk Defragmenter Could Not Start" ? how do i fix this