[I don't really get it]

I've just got defraggler and I have just finished defragmenting my Local Drive and it says I have 31% fragmentation. Does that mean that I need to defragment again or what?

 

Sorry if these seems like a really dumb question I just don't get what the program is supposed to do exactly. I got it because it seemed a good way to clear up your drive.

Defraggler is a fantastic program but it can't do everything. There are additional files that are in use while your OS is running. If you supplement Defraggler with a Microsoft product called PageDefrag which you can download for free from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897426.aspx This utility will allow you to evaluate your system for these in use files and schedule them to be defragged on your next system restart before your OS loads.

 

Don't be afraid to run Defraggler more then once. If you used the Microsoft built-in Defrag you might likely need to run it 16 times to get it to do a good job, even though it gives you bad advise saying that you do not need to defrag again. In one pass, Microsoft’s product only gets rid of most fragmentation and does not do the job that Defraggler does or arranging your files so that you will be less likely to become fragmented again. Defraggler removes many of the gaps between data so that you have plenty of contiguous free space for your new files. It is a shame that Microsoft OS's don't pay more attention to where they write data which is why fragmentation occurs so quickly, but I suppose if they evaluated your hard drive before they wrote to it, our PC’s would run even slower. Therefore, I see Defraggler and PageDefrag as a solution to the problems.

[$BadClus:$Bad]

There is nothing wrong with your file system or your disk (if chkdsk says so), but let me explain it from the very beginning.

 

First versions of NTFS were created about 15 years ago. That time the hard disks didn't have a built-in functionality for marking damaged clusters. It had to be supported by the file system. That was the purpose of creating $BadClus metafile (metafile is a special file system structure - intended for the internal use).

 

Please note that $BadClus is a sparse file which has the size equal to the size of the whole file system. A sparse file is a file of bigger size than actually allocated on the disk - it's filled with zeros and treated similarly to a compressed one. So even though it reports to have several gigs, it may have no space allocated at all.

 

Now, when the file system detected that a cluster is damaged it allocated it to the $BadClus:$Bad ($Bad is a named stream) file, so it couldn't be used by any other file.

 

Now the most important part : Modern hard disks have this feature built-in. The firmware automatically detects bad clusters and mark them as damaged, so they won't be used again. It does it instantely, so the file system doesn't even notice anything. That means that currently $BadClus:$Bad is not used and it is empty (although its "virtual" size is equal to the partition size).

 

Best regards

romanoff

 

I have the problem that you described and it is comforting to know that this is normal but I see that not all hard drives have this issue and in some cases it creates a problem when the $BadClus:$Bad will not move to a new location and therefore creates a problem with creating a large enough Page File without major page file fragmentation. Occasionally I have seen the $BadClus:$Bad go away after Defraggler's Advanced, "Check Drive for Errors" is run or CHKDSK, but not always. Is there anything that can be done to move these $BadClus:$Bad to different locations were this would allow space for the Page File. I have noted that at least sometimes reformatting the drive seems to help as does running Ghost to another drive then reuse the drive that was a problem; which of course takes a lot of time and effort. Defraggler is a fantastic product. Keep up the good work.

[File delete option from the files tab]

When using the Files tab to view fragmented files I often see a fragmented file that I know can be deleted. It would be nice to have a right click option to delete the file. I understand that this could be risky for people who think they don't need a file but it may be a required file, so it would need to be implimented carefully, maybe with an Advanced option that enables the delete option.