defragmenting Hard Drive
#1
When I "received" my computer from my son, the hard drive was partioned into C, D, E, and F sections. Ihave no trouble defragmenting the D, E, or F sections but cannot defragment the C section. It will appear to start the process but never complete. What is the problem?m I am new to the computer world
#2
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What do you mean by never complete, does it start , get part way thru then appear to start over, because this can happen with the c drive, everytime there is a write to the c drive it will restart, usaully it goes a little further each time and eventually finishes . There is always more acivity on the c drive as that is where the operating system usually is. How much free space is left on the c drive ?
closing out everything you can including opened programs residing in the system box may help speed it up. If it keeps restarting , start your defrag when you go to bed and hopefully it will finish by the time you wake up.
closing out everything you can including opened programs residing in the system box may help speed it up. If it keeps restarting , start your defrag when you go to bed and hopefully it will finish by the time you wake up.
#3
you can also start the system with a startup disk that has format on it, usualy win95/98 start up, if you use a dos start up you will have to copy the format prog from your HD. Once the a: prompt comes up type format c: . Wont matter if its a C drive because the opperating systems is running from the A drive. Why so many partitions? is it a large drive? Or perhaps yer running win95 pre release b and only suppors 3gb hds? ( or was that 2.8? )
#4
BSB:
Be careful here. I don't think nhuriah wants to wipe out the hard drive, just defrag it.
nhuriah:
As dkerr says, as long as something is writing to the C: partition, it'll keep starting over. Shut down your screen saver and anything else you don't need.
Press alt cntl del and see what's running. End task all but explorer and systray and then try defragging.
If you do want to format the drive, and repartition it, you probably don't need 4 partitions. How big is the drive?
Be careful here. I don't think nhuriah wants to wipe out the hard drive, just defrag it.
nhuriah:
As dkerr says, as long as something is writing to the C: partition, it'll keep starting over. Shut down your screen saver and anything else you don't need.
Press alt cntl del and see what's running. End task all but explorer and systray and then try defragging.
If you do want to format the drive, and repartition it, you probably don't need 4 partitions. How big is the drive?
#5
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If you want to remove all these partitions and make a single c drive you must be aware that it would be a total wipe on all partitions, anything on c , d or e will be gone.
and you will be starting over and re-installing the system. Should you decide doing that then repost and I will give instructions on how to remove these partitions, instate a single partition and redo the system.
You orginal question did not address or ask about that only about a defrag issue.
and you will be starting over and re-installing the system. Should you decide doing that then repost and I will give instructions on how to remove these partitions, instate a single partition and redo the system.
You orginal question did not address or ask about that only about a defrag issue.
#6
member in another post of mine, where I said I would "look at the Screen'? Seems I need to read it aswell. hehe I must have been thinking about formating on eof my drives when I read that. Sorry about the format info on a defrag question.
I have reread the post 4 times and am still unsure where I came up with format. hmmmm
I have reread the post 4 times and am still unsure where I came up with format. hmmmm
#7
Just a note to Dker. There is software out there that will allow you to repartition a HD without the loss of info. Partition Magic makes a good piece of software that is easy to use and allows the repartioning with loss. My question is why so many partions unless it has a large capacity HD in an older machine that does not recognize large drives.
#8
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I am aware that there is software out there like partition magic that will allow you to do that, and most of the time it does do what it intends to do, but even with that kind of software I would back up what anything precious before running such a procedure just in case, unexpected things do happen sometimes. Utilities like partition magic do cost money to get. I have also had known partitions to just up and disappear in thin air, I've seen it happen once and everything on the hard drive was lost.
I do agree that seems like a lot of partitions for a single drive unless it is a very large capacity drive. Having a 2nd drive offers a bit more security for backing up files than on a different partition of the same drive, I now the 2nd drive could also have a failure but it is unlikely that both drives would fail at the same time.
I do agree that seems like a lot of partitions for a single drive unless it is a very large capacity drive. Having a 2nd drive offers a bit more security for backing up files than on a different partition of the same drive, I now the 2nd drive could also have a failure but it is unlikely that both drives would fail at the same time.