Laptop hard drive fragmentation

[PrestonK]

Hello,

I have a 5 yr. old Hewlett Packard dv6000 with 2 GB RAM, 200 GB HDD, and WIN 7. I ran CCleaner, CHKDSK, which found some bad areas and I used CHKDSK /F. Everything runs fine -- until I run Defraggler and it finds 45% fragmentation and after running the program there is still 45% fragmentation, just fewer files. Does this mean I should reload the OS or buy a new HDD?

[Leif]

I don't think you necessarily have a problem. Defraggler can be set to ignore certain files, and or you may have selected not to move large files, or there may be some 'system volume information' (system restore) files.

Click on the 'Files' tab and sort by size. What files are listed?

See also Defraggler - Large files and free space defragmentation

Having said that, if CHKDSK is finding bad sectors, it may be time to consider a new drive - I'd run it again in a day or so and see if there are any new issues. But then again, some may consider 5 years a long time in the life of a computer..

[StuartR]

Another common reason for high fragmentation is if the disk is nearly full. How much of the 200GB hard disk space is free?

[HansV]

In addition to Leif's comment: as is explained in Disk Defragmentation – Background and Engineering the Windows 7 Improvements, there is nothing to be gained by defragmenting large files that consist of a small number of big chunks. But leaving such files alone means that a sizable percentage of the hard disk counts as fragmented. So the fragmentation percentage bi itself doesn't mean much without looking at the layout of the files in more detail.

[PrestonK]

Success!
I turned off System Restore and it now has 0% fragmentation. Before I turned it off, Syste m restore was allocated 15% of the HDD space for its use. That had to be the problem since the drive is usually 3/4 unused.

Thank you all.

[HansV]

System Restore entries are usually not defragmented, I think - the defragmenter doesn't have permission to move them.

[StuartR]

It is not a problem if system restore points are fragmented.

The main reason we defragment hard drives is to speed up the time it takes to read files, but system restore points are almost never read, and when you do read them the extra few fractions of a second caused by the fragmentation is not going to have any impact.