I have windows vista and I am running the disk defragmenter, how long does it take?

Question

My neighbour said his laptop took all night and mine has been running since 6pm last night, its now 2.15pm next day. Any advice?

Answer 1

With a modern filing system like NTFS and an OS that you can't have had 6 months yet... just what good do you expect a defrag to do? (If your having preformance issues I'm reasonably certain a disk fragmentation won't be the issue)

Defrags can take extraordinary times(I've seen days) for little benefit for someone in your situation. Defraging can be exasperated if the disk in question is in use, eg if your still trying to run the OS or application from it or using it for swap space(so called virtual memory). Thus u could connect you neigbour's HDD drive as a slave and defrag his disk in say a tenth of the time he could himself as you'd still be running the Vista OS off of your own drive, AND vice-versa!

Think of it like trying to get your work done while the boss keep hassling constantly compared to working indepently and having occasional meetings, which takes longer??

Answer 2

It completely depends on how large your hard drive is and just how "fragmented" is truly is.

MS defrag tool is "ok" but it is very slow and is not automatic and self initiating.

I'd recommend that you consider purchasing Diskeeper for about $30. It automatically runs itself whenever it detects the need and keep your hard drive(s) constantly in a defragmenets situation. It will run itself in the background and give you cpu/resources priority if you are doing something. I've had it for about a year and it is a great tool for keeping your hard drive in an optimal situation.

Check it out. You can get it at: http://www.diskeeper.com/defrag.asp
http://www.download.com

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Shouldn't take that long - mine is Vista and it takes 30 mins maximum - BUT - I do it every week without fail - to take that long it sounds as though it has never been done and you have a lot of uninstalled software remnants floating around - and a big hard drive - mine is 80gb and takes 30 mins at most

Answer 4

That's one hell of a long time for a defrag to take - BUT if your disk was massively fragmented it is possible, especially if you know of one that took all night.
Generally speaking I would expect between 30 and 90 mins though.

Answer 5

Dear me, thats a long time. I still have xp, and it only takes on average about 30 mins. You must have a big cluttered hard drive that has never been defragmented before. Trick is to do it often.

Answer 6

sometimes it helps to ,to turn off the virus programm. this sometimes hinders the defrag to! Is it up in the precentage yet? if it is still down by 5% stop it and reboot the pc and start new.
Don't run anything while you defrag!!!1 Close any other programs! I usually cloe everything in my toolbar on the bottom to make it easier and faster

Answer 7

It all depends on how many programmes you have and how large each one is.
As the computer has to scan each one move to a spare space then group all similar programmes then re-scan and re-locate on your hard drive.
My computer running XP (and still better than Vista) takes on average 5-6 hours, but I don't have that many programmes.
The trick is to defragment regularly, this cuts the time down each time.

Answer 8

Yes, That is one bad thing towards windows vista, I kept running it for toooooo long, and after that I canceled it.
You have nothing to do for it but wait. it is boring.
I think I will right something to them about this.

Answer 9

the windows disk defragmenter takes a long time and is crap................get a different one like O&O Defrag it will do a better job in half the time....

Answer 10

it usually ranges from 30 minutes to 1 day depends on fragmented your harddisk is, the bigger HD the slower it takes.