when I defrag it takes a long time, should it? was told it should not take more than 5 mins.?

Question

I have fat 32, and am told this is an old defrag system, is this true ? my pc is only 2 years old, when I alalyse it allways says I don't need to, but when I do defrag it takes very long, and I was told it should not take more than 5 mins, is this true? do I have an old system with fat 32? I have windows XP home

Answer 1

depends.. when you defrag you're copying and recopying data chunks and putting the related ones near each other so you can access them faster in the future. so it depends on your RAM, total disk space used, and how fragmented the files are. 5 minutes is almost unheard of unless perhaps you defrag right after defragging.. theres no point then...

Answer 2

Most systems don't use FAT32 because it is limited and generally slower. XP Supports it and some computer makers may have or still ship systems with C: drives that are FAT32. Thing is, While XP can read drives well over 32 GB that are formatted as FAT32, XP will not, itself, format a drive over 32 GB as FAT32. So either your hard drive is smaller than 32 GB, you upgraded from 9x, a friend installed it for you, first formatting with a 9x floppy, or your vendor created multiple partitions and made your C: drive both smaller than 32 GB and FAT32.


Defrags can take hours - this is normal. It depends on many factors, including the speed of your hard drive, the speed of your computer, how many files are on your system, how much free space there is, how fragmented it currently is, and if there are any other programs running at the time (there can be, that's fine, but it might slow things down).

If you defrag every hour, it will take very little time. If you defrag only once a year, it will take a LONG time.

How often you should defrag depends on how you use the computer. I would say a good rule of thumb is to defrag once per month or whenever you install new software. If you download heavily, including videos and MP3 files, then probably once per week.

Answer 3

there is fat32 which is older and there is NTFS which is newer, fact is from what i have seen in trying to recover or repair windows , the fat 32 system is more forgiving, and NTFS is way more strict, as far as the defrag goes, i doubt this has anything to do with it, what size is your hard drive and how much is actually being used, you can check this by going to my computer and right clicking your hard drive and click properties, when you defrag analyze it first if it looks mostly blue and not much red lines, then it doesnt need it, if its taking forever then you probably just have a large drive, about the five minutes that is not true expect 1 hour or more if its really fragmented, if you use your computer for two years and havent done this yet, i can guarantee it needs it, why is it saying you dont need to could be a plethora of reasons, maybe corrupted registry, maybe spyware, maybe a virus, but if its badly defragged let it go all night and view progress, your bound to see a change and if the hard drive light is flickering, chances are its doing its job, good luck Im not a computer genius so I could be wrong about the file system stuff.

Answer 4

If you have windows xp then it's not a fat32 file system because that was used in the older versions of windows like 98se. Whoever told you defragging only takes 5 minutes is wrong, sometimes it can take hours. Also, if you use your computer while defragging it will keep starting the process over and take longer just hit defrag and let it do it's thing

Answer 5

Defraging can take a long time, even if the system is two years old and you are running XP, I had a Notepad running WIN98 and it would take up to two hours to defrag even my new PC which is less then a year old with plenty of gig takes twenty minutes to def rag. So what I'm saying is, yes it should take a long time.

Answer 6

I have 5 hard drives total... 4 internal 320GB and 1 external 120GB. It would take me all night just to do mine. Might I also add that I have 2 other pcs 1 with a 40GB and the last with an 80GB and neither of them defrag in 5 mins. Whoever told you this bold-faced lie is not very computer literate and should not have told such lies. Depending on your hard drive size it could take any where from a few hours to all night. I suggest leaving it to run over night and it should be done by morning.

Answer 7

I have XP professional and defrag takes about 15 mins. It depends on how much data you have stored on the hard drive, as well as the overall speed of your system. You should defragment frequently. I usually clean out and defrag 1-2 times weekly, since my system gets heavy use. fat 32 was used for 98se, millenium.

Answer 8

It should take longer than 5 minutes. On a fat32 with lots of stuff on it, I'd give it at least 30 minutes.

The time may be more a matter of how much free space you have than how defragmented your files are.

Answer 9

it depends on how often you defrag if you don't do it often then it will take longer it also depends on how much installing and uninstalling/downloading and deleting of things that you do because that is what fragments your memory. Basically whenever you download/install something new it takes up a little more memory than it needs so when you defrag it takes back the extra memory it took to begin with.

Answer 10

I don't know about computers, but I know that I have a pretty new laptop and my defrag takes forever. If its taking hours upon hours that may not be a good thing, but mine takes at least an hour I think