We have a vista 32 bit machine that shows the page file to be fragmented more than we would like, I understand complete defragmentation is not always possible. I have run at boot time, with several defraggers including defraggler, have set page file to "no page file", rebooted, defragged, added page file. I have selected "scan large files last" or similar in defraggler. We know about transferring to another drive, recreating etc. but thought there was a simpler way, could be very wrong Any help is appreciated, we also just re-installed vista on that computer. Thanks!!!!
Use the "no page" file, clean up drive ( eg) recycle bin & temporaries found by cccleaner), turn off hibernation to remove hibefil.sys and remove restore points before doing the defrag.
Then once you have a large contiguous area available, renable the paging file, but this time pre-allocate it to a fixed fixed size by setting the min & max size to the size you need; it should be all be in same extent.
What is meant by that very technical term, which I last encountered perhaps 20 years ago.
A quick search found
"If one file record is too small for a file, due to too many attributes or the file becoming too fragmented and therefore requiring too many extent pointers to be stored, then overflow records are created within the MFT which are referred to by the base file record." on
Are you saying that your procedure may be hoped to result in a pagefile that could be fragmented, but with luck the various extent pointers will all fit in one record ?
Incidentally how many extent pointers can we get in one record ?
What is meant by that very technical term, which I last encountered perhaps 20 years ago.
What I meant by "all in same extent" was that the whole file is stored contiguously in one piece, 1 fragment seemed misleading as there'd be no fragmentation; so using "extent" seemed clearer. The term "Extents" are generally used for filesystems where the range of blocks are stored, rather than a list of every block used to store a file, so I'm surprised you had trouble finding a simpler explanation.
BTW Alan B's suggestion of using boot time frag is good, but might not work if you don't have a large contiguous area to create the page file, and may need to be redone when the automatically managed pagefile grows dynamically.
1 fragment seemed misleading as there'd be no fragmentation; so using "extent" seemed clearer.
I agree that counting from 1 instead of 0 is a STUPID misleading error that should never have been perpetrated,
but we seem to be stuck with a legacy now.
I believe "No Fragmentation" is something which cannot be misunderstood by anyone who uses or is interested in de-fragmentation tools.
I will accept that one of the definitions of "extent" may be clear, but I could only vaguely remember seeing this decades ago as something to do with file systems, and I doubt many other users of defraggler would be familiar with the definition, but I could be wrong.
Incidentally, I was amused by Wikepedias use of the term "extent" at
i.e "Reach (physical measurement), the extent between the tips of the wings of a human"
Why did mummy make me walk to school when she could have taught me to fly ! ! !
BTW Alan B's suggestion of using boot time frag is good. but might not work if you don't have a large contiguous area to create the page file, and may need to be redone when the automatically managed pagefile grows dynamically.
I believe "No Fragmentation" is something which cannot be misunderstood by anyone who uses or is interested in de-fragmentation tools.
Except that would have been gramatically clumsy and also in the general technically innacurate (there's more than one kind of fragmentation than the one you're considering).
I looked there and immediately above your quote is contradicted where it says
"The CP/M file system uses extents as well, but those don't correspond to the definition given above. CP/M's extents appear contiguously as a single block in the combined directory/allocation table; they do not necessarily correspond to a contiguous data-area on disk."
I am sorry, but the only way to be really precise is the legal way - communicate in Latin, a stable dead language ! ! !
You have said precisely what you meant - but it conveyed little to me.
I think the purpose of this forum is to advise people who have problems with defraggler and know less than you.