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I scanned my main 7TB storage drive yesterday and Windows 11 said it was 2% fragmented but then I scanned it with Defraggler and it is saying itβs 48% fragmented. I decided to go with Defragglers scan and Iβm currently defragmenting my HDD, it is showing >1 Day for time remaining. I have Windows set to defragment/optimize my drives once a week at midnight, but now Iβm wondering if it has even been doing it because I have never really left my PC running for more then 24hrs before. So Iβm thinking either Windows has been aborting defragmenting when i shut down my PC or defraggler is wrong about the amount of time it needs, even though I have actually had it running since about 11PM yesterday. So my question is why the huge discrepancy in the results between the two programs?
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both programs donβt look at the same files.
for example, Defraggler can be set to ignore the recycle bin, hibernation and paging files, and make sure you untick the option to include volume shadowing (VSS).
whereas the inbuilt defrag app has no controllable settings at all, so who knows what it includes/excludes.
I moved away from DF years ago, when I went to SSDβs, I simply set Windows to TRIM it once a month.
HDDβs should be defragged, in my humble opinion, only once or twice a year!
when I did use DF on HDDβs, I used to go to the File List tab, analyse the drive, then click on the Fragments column header to sort descending, select the largest 50 or 100 or what have you and defrag that bunch.
then repeat the exercise the for Size column.
that way, you are getting rid of the worst offenders, both in number of fragments, and sheer space used.
in other words, the best outcome for the least work.
I havenβt defragged my HDD in over five years, itβs purely a dumping repository of stuff I donβt want on my SSD, things like: Desktop, Downloads, Documents, Pictures etc - stuff I donβt care if it takes 500ms to access 10 fragments on the HDD instead of 40ms to address the cells on the SSD. -
Thatβs pretty much how I use my HDD too, itβs used for file storage, no programs. DF took almost 2 days to defrag the drive and I actually ended up aborting it at the last minute. It was defraging a 127GB video file, it was showing an eta of 1 minute but after 2 hrs i finally said forget it. That 127GB file was getting deleted anyway, but I think i might just run it one more time to actually fully defrag the HDD since that was the only file left to do.Comment
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in Defraggler, it allows you to move big files like that to the end of the drive.
I used to do that to my large, static files, to get them out of the way.Comment
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@Brandon Byrnes - any news?Comment
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looks good. You can mark solved, this more of just me asking a question then a issue.Comment
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no worries.Comment
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