I normally let Vista perform a regularly scheduled Defrag, but I was having
performance issues that did not appear to be infection related (scanned the
Dell laptop with AVG/Kaspersky online/Trojan Remover and found nothing).

Around 4pm I started "defrag.exe c: -c -w -v" in a dos window, under Vista
SP2.



Well, it displayed a brief text report, early on, in the dos window, and the
drive light has been blinking away, with obvious activity for the past 10
hours!

Here's my Defrag report:

Defragmentation report for volume C:
Volume size = 298 GB
Cluster size = 4 KB
Used space = 145 GB
Free space = 153 GB
Percent free space = 51 %
File fragmentation
Percent file fragmentation = 0 %
Total movable files = 329,248
Average file size = 432 KB
Total fragmented files = 786
Total excess fragments = 3,161
Average fragments per file = 1.01
Total unmovable files = 82
Free space fragmentation
Free space = 153 GB
Total free space extent = 23,023
Average free space per extent = 7 MB
Largest free space extent = 107 GB
Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 51,526
Fragmented folders = 22
Excess folder fragments = 142
Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT size = 336 MB
MFT record count = 330,573
Percent MFT in use = 96
Total MFT fragments = 10

The dos screen's cursor is sitting there blinking (and giving me no
indication, of course, how many more hours I am going to have to wait for it
to finish)... I can do other tasks out side the dos window and run things
normally, but I'd like to take my defragger and go home now, it's getting
late. LOL!

How does one stop this safely?

AND, anything else out there (that you've had no major issues with) that will give me SOME kind of idea when the "drive blinkies" will end, when I defrag? Open to third party solutions...

I don't want to simply kill the task, unless I know that the files won't be
left in a damaged state (but then again, they may already be shuffled like a
deck of cards by a dealer with convulsize tendencies).

8-O

P.S. Running in Windows Safe Mode, if it makes a difference.


Gil

That's exactly what I did. And Auslogic's solution finished the defrag in 14 min! Instead of 12 hours (and still goiing), with MS's solution. Not impressed.

I am aware that the light blinks on a regular basis (been using computers and building them, since the mid-80's). But this constant thrashing for 11 hours was making me late for a nice warm cup of tea and a comfy bed.

Problem solved, but don't really know why the laptop went off to La-La land for hours on end. I hope it left a nice interesting pile of bits for me to examine, after all that work. Regardless, the Ctrl-C was accepted by the Dos window, and confirmed by the process itself, so I feel somewhat better that the proggy was at least listening for an interrupt. Let's hope it just didn't respond like one of the dogs in the movie "UP", and drop everything for a squirrel.

Thanks a bunch!

Gil

Originally Posted by stoneys-nutz

Hello Pixelgrower,
You can stop the process with no problems.
I would recommend this Defragging tool, it's quick, easy to use, and it's free.

Download Auslogics Disk Defrag 3.1.0.65 - Improve your computer's performance and stability - Softpedia

The drive will always blink, as it is continually writing to the system restore for a backup, and there is always a process accessing the HHD at one time or another.
Follow the link to download and give it a try, hope this helps, good luck and post your results.