Hello all, My Windows XP + SP2 system is working okay, but my two hard disks have unusually high disk fragmentation - I have two partitions in one fixed disk: the first hard drive, C:\ (system disk) has 0%/0%, but Diskeeper claims the page file fragmention is at a total fragment of 6... my 2nd hard drive, D:\ (data) is 16%/35% - and I am running Diskeeper, but it's taking forever to fragment the drives, which isn't normal, because usually it finishes in less than 10 minutes... I'm not sure what to do, I don't want to reformat, but at the same time, I want it to speed up. It feels "stuck" at this stage. I hope nothing's wrong with my OS and hard drive. Thanks, Andrew PS - I used nLite to update my XP CD with the latest updates, plus some addons. I wonder if that's part of the problem? -Andrew

Run chdsk for starters. http://www.activewin.com/winxp/tips/basic/3.shtml http://www.ultratech-llc.com/KB/ASP/FileView.asp?File=/KB/ScanDisk.TXT Information about the chkdsk command http://www.computerhope.com/chkdskh.htm

Defrag can take from minutes to hours, depending on alot of things; how often defrag is done, how much info is on the disk, how much writing and erasing is done to and from the disk (installing and uninstalling). When I defrag it usually takes nothing less than 1.5 hours... and this is under normal use. But a defrag after a total format and reinstall or a large XP update will take me anywhere from 2 to 4 hours. The bottom line is; I wouldn't worry too much ... as can be seen, there is a large variance.

Try running defrag in Windows Safe-Mode. It should work better there.

You might also want to run a disk cleanup to remove unnecessary stuff before you defragment. Also do it more often (both cleanup and defrag. It wont take long each time you do it.