Windows XP Hacks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 74 Speed Up Your Hard Disk by Improving Defragging

One of the simplest ways to speed up your PC is
by defragmenting your hard disk. Here's how to get
the most out of XP's built-in defragmenter and a
third-party program that should speed up your hard disk even
more.

Perhaps the
simplest way to speed up your PC is
to use a disk defragmenter, which will help you open applications and
files more quickly. As you use applications and files, they get
spread out in fragments across your hard disk. The next time you go
to use them, they take longer to open because your hard disk has to
find each of those disparate fragments so they can be assembled when
you open the file. A disk defragmenter stores files and applications
contiguous to one another so that they can be fetched much more
quickly than if they were spread out across your whole disk.

XP includes a built-in
defragmentation program
(sometimes called a defragger), which you can
run by choosing Control Panel Performance and Maintenance
"Rearrange items on your hard disk to
make programs run faster." But there are ways you
can use it more effectively, and there are third-party programs that
do a more effective job of defragmentation as well.

8.3.1 Defragment Boot Files

One of the biggest improvements of
XP's defragger over previous Windows versions is
that it can perform a boot defragment, placing all boot files
contiguous to one another so that you boot faster. The
boot defragment option is
usually enabled by default, but there's a
possibility that it could be disabled, or enabled improperly. You can
make sure it's enabled, using a Registry hack. Run
the Registry Editor [Hack #68] and go
to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction.
Find the Enable string. If the String value is set
to N, change it to Y. If it is
Y, leave it as it is, since that means boot
defragmentation is enabled. Exit the Registry and reboot. When you
next defragment your disk, the boot files will be defragmented.

You can also defragment the paging file, the hibernation file, and the Registry hives [Hack #68] using the freeware program PageDefrag (http://www.sysinternals.com).

8.3.2 Run Disk Defragmenter from the Command Line

If you prefer
the command line to the
graphical interface, you can avoid maneuvering through menus and
dialog screens to defragment your hard drive. (Using the command line
also gives you greater control over the defragmentation process, as
you'll see in this hack.) To defragment a hard
drive, type defrag
C: at a
command prompt, where C is the hard drive
you want to defragment. When you use the command line, you
won't see a visual display of the defragmentation
process, and you won't be able to pause it or cancel
it.

defrag also does work invisibly in the background
to make sure that your programs load more quickly.
It's set up so that every three days, when your
computer is otherwise idle, it moves program code to the outside of
the disk to make programs load more quickly. You can force it to do
that manually, without having to do a full defragment, by using the
-b switch, like this:

defrag C: -b

It takes only a few minutes for defrag to do this,
in contrast with a full defragmentation, which can easily take more
than 20 minutes, depending on how defragmented your system is and the
speed of your processor.

There are several other command-line switches you can use with the
defrag command:

/A

Analyzes the drive you want to defragment and shows you a brief
analysis report, summarizing the hard disk size and total
fragmentation. It only displays the report, however; it does not
defragment the drive.

/V

Analyzes the drive you want to defragment and shows you a
comprehensive analysis report, detailing the size of the hard disk,
percent of free and used space, total fragmentation, and total number
of fragments, among other details. It gives the analysis report,
defragments the hard disk, and then gives an analysis of the hard
disk after defragmentation.

/F

Forces the drive to be defragmented, even if there
isn't a certain minimum amount of space. Normally,
you can defragment the drive only if your hard disk has at least 15%
space free.

8.3.3 What to Do if the Disk Defragmenter Won't Defragment Your Drive

There will be times when the Disk
Defragmenter won't defragment your drive, or will
defragment it only partially. It won't defragment
your drive if you don't have at least 15% of the
drive's space free. To solve the problem, as
explained previously, type defrag
C: /F at the command
line, where C is your hard drive.

There are also certain files and areas that the Disk Defragmenter
won't defragment: the Recycle Bin, the Windows page
file, Bootsect.dos,
Safeboot.fs, Saveboot.rsv,
Hiberfil.sys, and
Memory.dmp. There's not much
you can do about it, though it's a good idea to
empty the Recycle Bin before defragmenting.

Often, the Disk Defragmenter won't defragment every
file on the first pass. Your best bet here is to use brute force: run
it again until it defragments the files it missed the first time
around. Also, keep in mind that the Disk Defragmenter
won't defragment any files that are currently in
use, so make sure to close all programs; if there are files that
won't defragment, it might be because
they're being used by an open program. Sometimes,
programs may seem to be shut down, but in fact may be running in a
kind of phantom mode. For example, Outlook sometimes stays running
even after you've shut it down. To make sure your
programs are completely shut down before running the Disk
Defragmenter, run the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete or
right-clicking on the Taskbar and choosing Task Manager. Check both
the Applications and Processes tabs to see if any programs, like Word
for Windows (Winword.exe) or Outlook
(Outlook.exe), are still running. These two
programs sometimes continue running even after
you've shut them down.

8.3.4 Get a Better Disk Defragmenter

For most purposes,
XP's Disk Defragmenter works fine. But if
you're a system administrator who needs to
defragment multiple machines or defragment servers,
you'll be better off with a better defragmenter.
Even single users of XP might want a better disk defragmenter for
purposes such as easy scheduling of defragmenting and the ability to
defragment files that XP's defragmenter
can't handle. Two of the best XP defragmenters are
available as try-before-you-buy software:

Diskeeper

This
defragmenter can automatically defragment a disk on bootup, allows
you to remotely schedule boot-time defragmentation on multiple
machines, will let system administrators create different
defragmentation schedules for different groups of machines, will
defragment disks that have little free disk space, and makes it easy
to deploy on multiple machines. Get it at http://www.execsoft.com.
It's free to download and try, but
you'll have to pay if you decide to keep it. For an
individual home users it's $29.95; for a single
corporate user it's $44.95; and there are license
packs available for multiple users. There's also a
free version available, called Diskeeper Lite Freeware, which allows
you to defragment only one volume at a time and
doesn't allow scheduling.

PerfectDisk2000

Like Diskeeper, this defragmenter allows administrators to schedule
defragmentation of machines across a network, and it can defragment
disks with little free hard disk space. It can defragment files that
XP's built-in defragmenter can't,
such as the Windows page file. It also offers boot-time
defragmentation. You can get it at http://www.raxco.com. It's
free to download and try, but it is $44 per workstation should you
decide to keep it. Figure 8-5 shows the options for


using
PerfectDisk2000.

Figure 8-5. PerfectDisk2000 options