Hi, I'm trying to run a defragmentation on a Windows 2k server drive, and I'm running into some problems. When I analyze the drive in question, about 80% of the files appear to be system files in the analyzer results (green blocks). So when I try to defrag the drive, it skips all of those chunks of data. Now, I ran the 'attrib' command on the directory with the majority of the data on the drive, and none of the files appear to have the system file flag on. I'm unsure what to do, and was hoping someone might have an idea. Thanks! Mike

The system file in green is your virtual memory paging file (swap file). It is located on the C:\ (if this is the location of the operation system) as "pagefile.sys." However, if you have more than one partition on the hard drive, you could relocate it to the D drive, etc. The defrag program will not move this file. The "help" with the operation system should give you more information about this file. CoffeeBreak

I don't think I gave a very good description of the analyzer results. The drive in question is a 118gb drive, with approximately 16gb free. There is a database on this drive that is about 95gb in size, and the paging file is set to be about 4gb. So if 80% of the analyzer results show up green (system files), then that must (in my mind) mean that some of that database directory is considered system files. My question is then, how can I change that so that they appear as normal files, and can be defragged?

This is probably just a long shot, but if you are using NTFS, the following link might be of help to you. It talks about "green" and "system files, disks that are getting full, etc. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q174619/ If this helps, keep us posted. CoffeeBreak

This is from the Diskeeper web site. Look for the FAQ - Diskeeper shows half of a drive is allocated towards "Reserved system space." http://support.diskeeper.com/support/diskeeperfaqs.aspx?Page=5&Subpage=2&cust=1&RId=1&CId=1&SId=5 CoffeeBreak

Coffebreak if the drive is partitioned into c: and d: there is no benefit to moving the pagefile to d: If d: was a different DRIVE your recommendation would be valid. Give a person a fish, they eat for a day. Suggest they internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.

The drive analyzer must not be accurate then, because it's telling me that 80% of my drive consists of system files and/or reserved system space, when I know that a large majority of the space is used up by files. The "drive" in question is actually a partition. Hundreds of thousands of small files pass through it, and most of the time it is nearly full from these files. I'm thinking the MFT has been heavily fragmented and it's throwing off the analyzer somehow. Thanks for your help! Mike