PC Pals Forum
Technical Help & Discussion => General Tech Discussion, News & Q&A => Topic started by: Kaz on January 03, 2008, 19:18
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Hi Everyone,
Firstly Happy New Year to you all.
I have just installed Diskeeper 2008 and have defragmented my drives.
It has come up with Heavy Fragmented Problems
The Volume is Heavily fragmented
View most fragmented files
What does all this mean???????
Can someone explain to me exactly what this means I have googled this, but found nothing that appertains to this or that I understand
Thanks
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What it's saying is that your drive is a mess! ;) It basically means that bits and pieces of data are scattered all over the drive, which need to be pieced together each time an action is performed, or a file is accessed on the drive. This is caused by adding and removing data over a period of time, which everybody does. The act of 'defragmenting' or 'defragging', is supposed to tidy up the drive, so that data is more easily accessible, and therefore the drive runs more efficiently, theoretically improving the performance of your system.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about Diskeeper. I ran it for a while, admittedly the 2006 version, but found that it was constantly defragging, and this itself was impacting on performance. I wasn't convinced that it was having much of a positive effect, so I uninstalled it. People have different opinions, so do wait for some more responses. Some people think that Windows XP is efficient enough that defragging isn't essential, and some think that constant defragging can actually shorten the life span of the drive. Some people swear by Diskeeper and wouldn't be without it, so I guess it's each to their own. :)
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i never defrag now.. but then again most of my disk use ntfs and ext3 systems (with journalling)...
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I used to defrag every 3 months but now I only do it every 6 months or so.
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I defrag quite regularly, but I won't use Diskeeper - it loves to paint an alarming picture of what is a perfectly normal state for a hard drive.
I use Raxco's Perfect Disk, which will run through my 80GB system drive in about five minutes (without unduly impacting performance), and which will handle one of my 750GB data drives in about eight or nine minutes.
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oooo that sounds good Rik. do you have a link for it
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http://www.raxco.com/products/for_the_consumer.cfm
Free evaluations available. :)
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Well folks I don't have a Hard Drive Anymore to Defrag, it went down last night I think it has something to do with Diskeeper it just went :bawl:
I'm talking to you from my laptop ':|
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:oops: What actually happened, Kaz?
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Well Im not really sure I decided to not use the Diskeeper so I went to a backup of the day before I installed it and half way through the re-install it said Failed couldn't find drive of something like that so I stop it and re booted to a blank screen nothing no Icons so I re tried my backup again from another previous back up went through it all and it said installation successful I though great the last back up must have been corrupt (I do a check on the backups to make sure that they are ok) so went to reboot and Nothing again! so I got my XP installation cd and repair XP it did it in a fashion there was No C drive how the hell that worked I don't know where is Windows running from? no E drive No J drive and all my Icons on my desktop said drive missing the file you are looking for are on another drive Yes drive C and there isn't one ??? , well it's gone of to the PC Doctor it's a new 500g drive as you know only had it put in a few months ago and had a few teething problems then if you recall? Im so glad I have my Laptop it's like my right arm wouldn't be without it and Iv just spent £100 on an 750g external hard drive oh well Ill let you now what happens
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Ok good news Hard Drive is ok :)
Bad news well not so bad Drive Partitions had been deleted??????????????????????????????? Don't ask I have NO IDEA how that has happened :believe: :not: So I have had the Drives put back (I must learn how to use Partition Magic) cost me £20 for that and now I am reinstalling backups onto drives Now this is where I find out just how good Acronis is, but I must say it hasn't let me down yet (but I have never been in this position in loosing ALL my data) got a few hours to go yet will keep you informed think ill go and have a brew :beach:
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If I recall correctly, you have an 'unusual' method of removing unwanted programs by reverting to a back up copy of Windows, Kaz. Did you use this method to remove Diskeeper, without using the normal Add / Remove uninstall facility?
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Yes I did Simon
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Sorry, but I wouldn't mind betting that's what caused the missing partitions. :-\
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Why would that be then?
Because if that's that case surely you would have to uninstall from the Add & Remove Facility every piece of software every time before you go back to a previous backup, or am I missing something here?
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Someone more technical then me could probably explain it better, but Add / Remove programs is the conventional way to remove installed software, because it usually reverts things back to the way they were before the software was installed, and it often calls on the program's own uninstall utility for which to do this. Your method would probably work in most circumstances, but when programs like Diskeeper integrate themselves into drives, partitions, etc, you do run the risk of it changing something that hasn't been backed up, or even altering the back up files themselves, assuming that the back up files are stored on one of the drives or partitions that Diskeeper monitors. Reverting to a back up is fine, but personally, I would still use Add / Remove programs first, to remove unwanted programs.
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I understand what you are saying Simon, thanks I will keep this in mind :thumbs:
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I hope that I am not confusing things here Simon but I disagree with what you are saying about the Add/Remove program thing.
One of the reasons that PCs go wrong after an OS has been installed for a long time is that when you install a new program then it often replaces some of the original windows system files with its own modified versions.
When you uninstall the program it removes those files and doesnt always reinstate the original files which it replaced during the installation.
After you have done this a couple of times a month over 6 months or more you can get serious problems with the OS.
This can be rectified by running the SFC /SCANNOW command in the Run box in XP as it replaces the corrupted or missing files from the XP CD.
Or you can use System Restore to restore your PC back to how it was before installing those last programs which you installed then uninstalled.
The way Kaz is doing by restoring an earlier uncorrupted image of her drive is probably the best way of keeping an OS healthy, as long as it was working fine at the point the backup image was made :)
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Well, in this case, it obviously hasn't worked, Sandra, and I didn't have any problems when I removed Diskeeper with Add / Remove programs.
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Hi Sandra, Simon,
well I'm just in the process of putting everything back again.
Im no expert my self and I'm always open to suggestions and value all your expertise on any matter you have always helped me, and I do think the way I do thing is the best way for me a the moment I have spoken to others about installing and uninstalling and they pretty much do the same as me I like to keep my pc as clean as I can and everyday Im learning more and more, and if I install software one day and go back to a backup before the software was installed then surely there should be NO trace of it because it wasn't there in the first place if you understand my meaning
let you know how I go
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It must depend on how complete your backup is in the first place. I'm not saying using backups is a bad thing, just that it can't hurt to first remove programs with Add / Remove.
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Yes I think you could be right Simon what do you do for backing up, do you test/try software ?
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Hi Kaz
What software do you use to make the backups? As Simon has said, some apps do play with the partition table, so I would always use Add/Remove first, then restore an image if I felt the need.
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I have to admit to being fairly casual when it comes to backups, Kaz, which I'm not saying is right, just that I'm a bit lazy about it. I do frequently test programs, but have generally found either the program's own uninstaller, or a utility such as YourUninstaller to be perfectly adequate. When I do make a backup, it's usually just my data, music, pictures, and other documents which I burn onto a DVD. It's a poor method of housekeeping, which I wouldn't advocate, but it's got me by for about 6 years.
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When restoring an image it should format the drive, even if it only deletes the MBR so it shouldnt matter what you do prior to restoring from an image.
If it did then if you restored an earlier image, because you had a virus that you couldnt get rid of, then you would still have the virus in your system after you restored the image.
This clearly isnt the case so I stand by my earlier post :)
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MBR ????
:dunno:
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Master Boot Record.
Its like the index page in a reference book.
It tells the pc where stuff is on the drive.
Sometimes if you do a quick format it just wipes the MBR, this has the same effect as ripping the index page out of a book, the information is still in the book but its hard to find it.
This is why the data can be recovered from a formatted drive by recovery programs if they are not overwritten or zero filled.
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Ok
I have restored to my original xp disk I cant restore from my last backup at the moment it keeps telling me I have Hal.dll file missing I think I need to install this from the Windows XP disk, but Im going back one step at a time to see which backup works I don't understand this? maybe I'm wrong, but when I make a back up there is a Verification on the back up that I always use to check that the backup was successful which takes longer that the original backup most times Oh yes I use Acronis True Image
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This might help, Kaz:
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm
Scroll about half way down, to: HAL.DLL is Missing - Updated by MVP Alex Nichol
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Still trying to sort it out, but in the mean time what do you all think of Sandboxie? http://www.sandboxie.com/ anyone use it got it?
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doesnt sound like something that would really impact your speed. if anything I'd worry it would mess up your drive.