norton defrag: 33 hours and going...

[mitchell]

Can i use my computer while it is defraging? i.e. to watch a movie

Not recommended, i even pause my AV resident scanning while defragging

you stated you have 200gb of a 300gb utilized which is quite a lot to defrag and you said disk clean up removed 10gb! well you can gaurentee there will be a lot more that needs removed.

I would recommend running Ccleaner but PLEASE!! do not use the Registry cleaner unless you are confident in tampering with the Registry. If you feel tempted google should i use a registry cleaner and research so you can make an informed decision http://www.vistax64.com/software/86472-latest-ccleaner-version-released.html

I Windows is up to date and SP2 is sucessfully installed you can save about another 1Gb by running from an elevated command prompt type: compcln.exe and press enter this will clean out any reminants of the service pack installation.

You may find doing a clean out defrag may run better and a lot faster

oops forgot; if you open disk cleanup & select the more options tab & run system restore & shadow copies this will clean out all your old restore points & leave you with just your most recent one

 

[grimloktt]

OK. Well, I did a little research and decided not to use it while defraging. It's still running. I tried to look at the screen today but it was black and wouldn't show a picture (laptop who turns off the monitor). I still see the light blinking. My computer has been running at ~50%. It's been running for ~30 hours. I'm just going to let it go for a couple days. If all else fails, I'm thinking about a reformat...

 

[MilesAhead]

Reformat may be the easiest way out. But, if you can park a bunch of stuff on an external for awhile, Auslogics defrag is not that thorough, but it does help smooth out disk access. It could be a good first step. I find if I can eliminate very large files, like video files, or temporarily move them to an external, Auslogics will run very quickly. Once you get the drive in a bit better shape you can use something a little more thorough like MyDefrag Fast Optimize.

If you try to defrag too thoroughly something that hasn't been defragged in a long time it really beats the hell out of the drive. It might be wiser to attack in stages.

edit: also it might be good to check with a diagnostic and make sure it's not doing a bunch of retries.

 

[grimloktt]

How to I check diagnostics to see what happened, should I stop the deframent process? And, how should I stop the process if my screen won't light for me to click on cancel process button? If I hard shut off with button, will that damage stuff?

 

[grimloktt]

OK. I hard booted my computer. I went into manage under my computer and it identified my drive was healthy through SMART...or whatever (the acronym was spelled out). I installed Auslogics and analyzed the drive: 19% fragmented. I started it and was able to get a visual: nice! W/n 20 minutes or so it said it was 25% complete. I could see it handling big files, like my iso's, etc. Thoughts?

 

[grimloktt]

OK. It finished. It is now 5% fragmented. There was a large file that didn't have space...or something like that? And some locked Norton files. I need to learn how to defrag in safe mode and know when it's done.

 

[theog]

Hi grimloktt

That is looking good.

If can move the large file so that defrag has a bit room to work.

Run your Norton360 full scan at least one week.

 

[MilesAhead]

If at all possible life is much easier if you can leave at least 70% free space. On my desktop PCs quickie defrags like Auslogics typically take 5 or 10 minutes. MyDefrag Fast Optimize typically less than an hour. If you move large files, like videos, off to an external drive right before defragging, there's large open spaces for the defragger to put stuff with less shuffling around.

At some point the cure is worse than the disease. I'm not a believer in 12 hour defrags. It's just working your drive. If you have a lot of free space it doesn't have to be perfectly defragged. Once you have the situation stable then experiment and see what works for you. The one thing all defraggers have in common is the more free space to work with the better.