Diskeeper and Defragmenting

[Poximex]

Hey guys,

I have a T61 that's running Vista with SP1. The computer is up-to-date with all of the latest Lenovo and Windows updates. However, I am unable to defragment the hard drive. Traditionally I have been using Diskeeper (v. 9.0.545.0 - it came preinstalled) for defragmenting. This is also the application that comes up when you rightc-click on the hard drive on Computer and select defragment from the menu. As far as I can tell, I cannot find the Windows defragmenter.

However, for some unknown reason, Diskeeper will no longer defragment, or even analyze the disk for whatever reason. If you are familiar with Diskeeper, it only takes a few seconds for it to analyze the drive. When I click the analyze button, it sits at 0%. If you click around, and then click back on the C: drive, the analyze button is able to be clicked again - like it never did anything.

The defragmenting software does work. It can analyze the service partition as well as defragment an external HDD. It has worked in the past for C:, but I just don't know what has changed. The hard drive did pass the ThinkPad BIOS hard drive check for problems.

If it is any help, when I load CMD and type chkdsk, it begins to scan but gives me this message:

"CHKDSK cannot continue in read-only mode"

My gut tells me that the inability of the HDD to defragment and this chkdsk error are connected.

Thanks for your help guys. I'm sure its in my head, but I swear I can feel the system getting slower and slower as I do more and more with SolidWorks.

[Poximex]

I realize now that this is a known problem and my post is redundant. My attempts to google before did not reveal much, but I recently found several threads on this site that address the same issues. Glad to see I'm not the only one with this issue. Sorry for the repeated post.

[RealBlackStuff]

Maybe time to dump Diskeeper and go for a real Defragger:
PerfectDisk from http://www.raxco.com/

I used Diskeeper - from versions 4 to 8 - for many years until I stumbled upon PerfectDisk. I dumped DK in a heartbeat!
Many forum members also swear by it.

[Poximex]

Thanks for your recommendation!

If anyone is curious and stumbles upon this thread looking for how I fixed things:

The problem was Rescue and Recovery. My volume was labeled as "dirty", which means that there are some errors or corruption that require the disk to run CHKDSK at startup. However, R&R was preventing CHKDSK from opening the volume to actually scan and fix it. Diskeeper (to its credit), was smart and realized that 1) the disk was dirty and 2) CHKDSK was supposed to run, so would not defragment.

My first step was to follow this guide to actually get CHKDSK to run (and fail) at startup. Initially it had been scheduled, but would not even attempt to run.

Secondly, I just uninstalled R&R and rebooted the computer. CHKDSK ran and fixed a ton of files.

Best of luck to anyone else! I analyzed the disk on my drive and the entire thing was about 70% red or pink.[/url][/list]

[davidspalding]

You're in the Windows forum, not the Vista forum, so I presume you've already checked over there for Vista-specific things.

"chkdsk /f" is the "fix all problems, even if you have to do it after reboot" switch. Without /f, you're in read-only mode.

I currently use the Windows XP defragger (either dfrg.msc, or "defrag" on the command line), I never saw anything in DisKeeper that was a benefit without buying their full version. I rarely need to defrag > once a month, and I have a script which defrags using the CMD line "defrag" command and Sysinternals' tools contig and pagedfrg (for pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys, other system files). I could post a copy of the pertinent subroutines, but can't promise they'll work on Vista.