Defragging OS Drive with Another PC

[EliteK]

Well I just tryed defragging my pc with another PC and it did a really good job since windows is not loaded it cant conflict with processes running i was wondering if someone ells has tryed defragging windows OS drive with another pc or another windows loaded on your pc.

[Rob Defraggle]

was wondering if someone ells has tryed defragging windows OS drive with another pc or another windows loaded on your pc.

 

Yes, I have used Win7 64 Defrag and Defraggler on 32 bit Vista C: drive; that did seem to improve it but the $MFT is still rather heavily fragmented, and I am not sure it really makes much difference to Defraggler, the Other Window's C: is still a mounted NTFS filesystem and live.

[redhawk]

Defragging the main OS drive should be 99.9% possible, however access to c:\pagefile.sys isn't because it's always locked.

Booting from another Operating System via hard drive or CD-ROM is useful for access to pagefile.sys because the file is not in use.

I have a hard drive install of BartPE for this very purpose (booting from CD-ROM is too slow for my liking)

 

In addition to BartPE I also occasionally boot into Windows 98SE to run the Microsoft defrag tool - why you might ask??

 

The Windows API can moves files around at any location however unlike NTFS it's not possible to move fat32 directory entries.

So basically after a while you would end up with less and less contiguous free space and large files start to fragment.

Windows 98SE despite it's age has a better defragging tool for fat32 than XP because it has the ability to move directory entries.

I never understood the logic behind this however the poor support for fat32 was probably a deliberate ploy to kill fat32 in favor of NTFS.

While NTFS has it's advantages it also comes with it's own problems since it's not possible to defrag $MFT even from another Operating System.

 

Richard S.

[EliteK]

I find it does better placement for the long run I did it and haven't defragged in 4 months on my old pc didn't lose one bit of hdd performance.

[mr don]

I find it does better placement for the long run I did it and haven't defragged in 4 months on my old pc didn't lose one bit of hdd performance.

 

Wait, wait, wait, man!

 

What do you mean? Defragged?

 

Do you mean using Windows defragger, or Defraggler?

[mr don]

Since you like 98SE defragger, have you tried using Win ME defragger in 98?

 

Or, have you tried simply downloading the Win ME defrag utility & launch it in XP to defrag your drive without having to boot into Bart PE?

 

Have heard that Win ME defrag util was about 2 times faster, & doesn't complain as badly as 98 does on disk activity.

 

Let me know!