The endless defrag

[dstyle347]

I have been running diskeeper continuosly for a week with little result. I mean 24 hours a day continuosly. The MFT is in 3846 pieces. The paging file is in 186753 pieces. There has to be something else wrong here right?

There is also 16gb of reported free space not registering on the drive map. There is no white (free space) showing on the drive at all.

[primesuspect]

Have you done a boot time defrag with CHKDSK, Defrag MFT, and defrag paging file enabled?

[dstyle347]

Have you done a boot time defrag with CHKDSK, Defrag MFT, and defrag paging file enabled?
Prime, you mean to run these options from diskeeper in a boot time defrag correct?

[primesuspect]

yes - under "change options" or 'schedule' or something like that - you need to set a boot time defrag.

[dstyle347]

OK, I started running the bootime defrag at lunchtime and 6 hours later it's still running. Well, at least it's still running and not just stalled. We'll see what it looks like in the AM.

[primesuspect]

If a defrag is taking that long, I would check the hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostic tool - there may very well be a drive problem.

That is DEFINITELY not normal.

[tmh88]

Yea theres definately something wrong with the drive, it should never take that long. That happened to my friends Maxtor once but it was having problems already. Prior to the defrag, did you notice any unusual hd activity? (taking long time to load, noises, ect...)

[dstyle347]

It's an interns' machine so who knows.. I'll check it out.

[dstyle347]

OK, so the manufacturers diagnostic turns up nothing. It still does'nt map the 16gb of free space. The machine is used for research so the data is not disposable but I doubt it's worth the trouble of backing up and moving to a different machine (somewhat of a contradiction, I know). Any ideas on an aftermarket diagnostic or anything? It's an IBM (Hitachi) Cascade 40GB ATA100 4200RPM (HDI001818-00).