Vista - Disk Defragmenting - please please update

Hi there,

I have just recently moved to Windows Vista Business and decided after all
my file transferring, installing and so on, that it would be a good idea to
run a defrag.

I was shocked to see that the Disk Defragmenter has actually gotten worse
from the old system and SHOWS NO PROGRESS INDICATION!

I am sitting here wondering how long the operation might take and I haven't
got a clue. It's incredibly frustrating and I would definitely like to see
this rectified as soon as possible in an update.

I have written a blog post about this as well with more detailed information:
http://www.pixelapes.com/index.php/2...s-display.html

Kind regards,

Alex

"Alex Leonard" <AlexLeonard@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote ...
> I was shocked to see that the Disk Defragmenter has actually gotten worse
> from the old system and SHOWS NO PROGRESS INDICATION!


Hi Alex,

This change was actually on purpose. As I understand it, in Vista, Defrag
was rewritten by Microsoft to remove the last of the code they'd licensed
from Executive Software. In the process, it was noted that the old Defrag
GUI, although visually appealing, was actually quite an inaccurate picture
of what was really happening on the disk. To rework the UI to provide an
accurate, real-time image of the disk would have been a major project. Even
keeping the existing GUI would have carried a cost, because that code would
have needed to pass a Vista security review - another major project, and for
tombstoned code.

Furthermore, in Vista Defrag is configured to run silently in the
background, as Scheduled Task; so a glossy UI was less important than
earlier versions where Defrag only ran interactively. In Vista, all you get
is the "Disk Defragmanter" dialogue box, with a "Run on a Schedule" option
(selected by default) and a "Defragment Now" button to kick off a manual
defrag. The idea is that most of the time, most users will never run Defrag
interactively - it will be a weekly or daily background task they never
notice (like the many other regularly scheduled maintence tasks in Vista).

My understanding is that Microsoft hope to add a more descriptive visual GUI
in a later release, for users who wish to run Defrag interactively. They are
aware the users liked the old visuals. But for the release of Vista, it was
judged a reasonable trade-off, to ditch the misleading and unsecured old
GUI, in favor of the minimal but adequate (and secured) UI we see today.

Hope this helps,
--
Andrew McLaren
amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your reply. I am definitely appreciative that the disk defrag now
runs as a background task and doesn't need any tweaking. Mike Hall mentioned
that the bar would need to be pretty long too to show an accurate
representation.

However it does seem strange that there isn't even a rough "8% complete.
Time Taken: 30min, Estimated time remaining: 1 hour 13 minutes" indication or
anything.

The only reason I would ever manually run a defrag is just before one of my
gigs to ensure that the hard drive in my laptop is running as optimally as
possible as hard drive access times can cause problems with sample loading.
It would be nice if I knew how long it was going to take.

I hope this clarifies my initial comment a bit more.

"Andrew McLaren" wrote:

> Hi Alex,
>
> This change was actually on purpose. As I understand it, in Vista, Defrag
> was rewritten by Microsoft to remove the last of the code they'd licensed
> from Executive Software. In the process, it was noted that the old Defrag
> GUI, although visually appealing, was actually quite an inaccurate picture
> of what was really happening on the disk. To rework the UI to provide an
> accurate, real-time image of the disk would have been a major project. Even
> keeping the existing GUI would have carried a cost, because that code would
> have needed to pass a Vista security review - another major project, and for
> tombstoned code.
>
> Furthermore, in Vista Defrag is configured to run silently in the
> background, as Scheduled Task; so a glossy UI was less important than
> earlier versions where Defrag only ran interactively. In Vista, all you get
> is the "Disk Defragmanter" dialogue box, with a "Run on a Schedule" option
> (selected by default) and a "Defragment Now" button to kick off a manual
> defrag. The idea is that most of the time, most users will never run Defrag
> interactively - it will be a weekly or daily background task they never
> notice (like the many other regularly scheduled maintence tasks in Vista).
>
> My understanding is that Microsoft hope to add a more descriptive visual GUI
> in a later release, for users who wish to run Defrag interactively. They are
> aware the users liked the old visuals. But for the release of Vista, it was
> judged a reasonable trade-off, to ditch the misleading and unsecured old
> GUI, in favor of the minimal but adequate (and secured) UI we see today.
>
> Hope this helps,
> --
> Andrew McLaren
> amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au
>
>