Safe to defrag on 1 GB free drive?

J

joseph10444

New Member
i recently picked up the habit of defragging my windows 7 laptop

my brother, however, is not a computer person and has a vista home premium 32 bit laptop.

i used defraggler and analyzed the computer and it was 22% fragmented

i'm all ready to hit the defrag button but there is only 1 gb free..

btw this is on the main drive with WINDOWS on it and all main files

so with 1 GB free, can i defrag the C:\ Drive?
 

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It depends on what types of files a fragmented I would advise you to find some space to deleted some files

You may want to see http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/76073-disk-cleanup.html?ltr=D for more details also delete some restore points because that takes up a lot of space then tell me how much space is left

Hope This Helps,
Josh
 

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Allow me to answer from a different perspective. Frequent defrags are not necessary and some even say harmful. Unless you are always installing and uninstlling programs, 2 or 3 times a year is all that is necessary. In fact, I have disabled the default schedule using task scheduler.
 

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richc46 said:
Allow me to answer from a different perspective. Frequent defrags are not necessary and some even say harmful. Unless you are always installing and uninstlling programs, 2 or 3 times a year is all that is necessary. In fact, I have disabled the default schedule using task scheduler.
Click to expand...

Fair point may I ask when was the computer last defragmented ?
 

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Shadowjk said:
richc46 said:
Allow me to answer from a different perspective. Frequent defrags are not necessary and some even say harmful. Unless you are always installing and uninstlling programs, 2 or 3 times a year is all that is necessary. In fact, I have disabled the default schedule using task scheduler.
Click to expand...

Fair point may I ask when was the computer last defragmented ?
Click to expand...

If directed at me, about 2 months ago. I download very little. Currently, I show about 3% needing defrag.
 

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I was asking joseph10444 but thanks anyway :)
 

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I'll check restore points.
He doesn't install/uninstall at all.
So the 2/3 defrags per year suggestion does sound reasonable.

But he has never defragged before.
Plus he does always uses his music (~9gb) and video/photo (from camera) files here and there. They take up the most space.

Also once, counter strike was installed, then uninstalled (over a year ago) and CSS did take up a lot of space.

EDIT: laptop bought ~3 years ago
 

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My Computer

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Ok also can you specify what is the size of the HDD
 

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Is there any programs that take up a lot of space that you don't need if so uninstall them
 

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System restore takes a lot of space, but do not delte all the points.
 

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joseph10444 said:
the C:\ partition is 80.5 GB out of a whole 160gb drive
Click to expand...

If you are trying to defrag C: and that partition only has 1 GB free space, I would go into Disk Management and see if you can non-destructively expand the C: partition. Then you would not need to uninstall things. (Anytime you mess with the system partition it's a good idea to have an image backup first. Such as Macrium Reflect or other program.)

Still, tight defrags tend to work the hell out of your drive. I try to get the free space to 70% before I defrag. I do an image backup, clean off temp files using CCleaner and remove all but one restore point. I get as close as I can to 70% free space, then use Puran Defrag. But I've used Auslogics for a long time too. That's also good. It's not super thorough and doesn't overwork your HD. It more or less does a "quicky" defrag. Puran will do the same or you can check options to optimize booting and folders etc.. Even then it's not like one of the super thorough defraggers. It won't overwork the drive. With all the optimizations unselected it's very close to what Auslogics does.

I would try to get at least 25% free space on the drive through a combination of making the partition larger and deleting unneeded files. Then you should get a decent defrag that's relatively fast. If you can keep 70% free space at the time of defrag you find that they take typically 15 minutes or so and you feel ok about doing them multiple times a week since it's not that much of a strain on the system.

edit: the one other proviso, if he's never defragged I think I would do
chkdsk /f first to clean up any bad files. Just right click on C: in explorer, use tools menu to fix errors, check the box "automatically fix file system errors." You'll have to reboot and it will run on the bootup. If you get tons of errors then I would not mess with the disk. I'd back it up pronto.
 

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Vista needs 15% free drive space to run defrag
 

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ilikefree said:
Vista needs 15% free drive space to run defrag
Click to expand...

Not to mention if some of the files are video images it's going to be tough to move them around. It will no doubt be faster to create free space, then do the defrag. There's probably some mathematical formula how much faster defrag is with the percentage of free space. But trying to do it with such a small free space, even if possible, probably does more damage than good. Get some space to work with.
 

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MilesAhead said:
ilikefree said:
Vista needs 15% free drive space to run defrag
Click to expand...

Not to mention if some of the files are video images it's going to be tough to move them around. It will no doubt be faster to create free space, then do the defrag. There's probably some mathematical formula how much faster defrag is with the percentage of free space. But trying to do it with such a small free space, even if possible, probably does more damage than good. Get some space to work with.
Click to expand...
Yeah, what I mean is it won't even run with less than 15% free space
It will give you the error message that it needs at least 15%.
 

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ilikefree said:
MilesAhead said:
ilikefree said:
Vista needs 15% free drive space to run defrag
Click to expand...

Not to mention if some of the files are video images it's going to be tough to move them around. It will no doubt be faster to create free space, then do the defrag. There's probably some mathematical formula how much faster defrag is with the percentage of free space. But trying to do it with such a small free space, even if possible, probably does more damage than good. Get some space to work with.
Click to expand...
Yeah, what I mean is it won't even run with less than 15% free space
It will give you the error message that it needs at least 15%.
Click to expand...

With anything that uses the OS API I have no doubt you are correct.
There's probably some low level sw that doesn't care what Vista thinks though.

Not that it's a good idea anyway. > 50% free space is always easier on the drive.
 

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