Can't defrag most of my hard drive.

DavidUK84 · 4 Aug 2010 at 10:34

Hello all. I hope this is the right place for this kind of question, I’m new.

I’ve recently been attempting to defrag my hard drive and have twice got to about 14% and received the message:

“Defragmentation is complete for: (C)

Some files on this volume could not be defragmented.
Please check the defragmentation report for the list of these files.”

I’ve run a full check disk scan on the hard drive and all seems to be well. But still it stubbornly refuses to defrag beyond the 14% barrier. Please: can anyone tell me what’s going on, why it’s happening, and how I can fix it?

Thank you.

Ph4lanx · 4 Aug 2010 at 10:56

Did you have a look at the defrag report, as it stated? What does it say?

DavidUK84 · 4 Aug 2010 at 11:02

Yes I did. It gives me a long list of various files on my hard disk. Which amount to most of the available space. It includes desktop folders, games files, apps, you name it. :confused:

Ph4lanx · 4 Aug 2010 at 11:03

Have a look at one of the named files' properties. Is it marked as read only perhaps?

CrimsonAvenger · 4 Aug 2010 at 11:09

I am assuming you are using the built in defrag program ?

DavidUK84 · 4 Aug 2010 at 11:24

Ph4lanx said:
Have a look at one of the named files' properties. Is it marked as read only perhaps?

No I don't think so. There are quite a lot of PDF files in the report but also quite a lot of others.

CrimsonAvenger said:
I am assuming you are using the built in defrag program ?

Yes. On Windows XP.

Ph4lanx · 4 Aug 2010 at 11:29

Try running the defrag in Safe Mode. Might be worth running Scandisk first before that, just to make sure the disk contents are OK.

DavidUK84 · 4 Aug 2010 at 11:35

Ph4lanx said:
Try running the defrag in Safe Mode. Might be worth running Scandisk first before that, just to make sure the disk contents are OK.

Sorry to be dumb, but I don't know how to do either of those things. Is Scandisk the same as the "Error Checking" option in "Local Disk (C) Properties"?

honosuseri · 4 Aug 2010 at 11:52

Safe mode can be selected by pressing F8 whilst the pc is booting up (press it soon as u power pc on) to be honest i dont think it will make any odds. Chances are it's because there is not enough free space on the HDD to defrag all the files.

Some files can't be defragmented as they are being used by windows, some apps will work outside of windows to do this though.

Hope this helps

DavidUK84 · 4 Aug 2010 at 12:16

honosuseri said:
Safe mode can be selected by pressing F8 whilst the pc is booting up (press it soon as u power pc on) to be honest i dont think it will make any odds. Chances are it's because there is not enough free space on the HDD to defrag all the files.

Some files can't be defragmented as they are being used by windows, some apps will work outside of windows to do this though.

Hope this helps

Thanks. I'll give it a go.

CrimsonAvenger · 4 Aug 2010 at 14:33

Perhaps you could give one of the other defraggers a go to see if that does the same.

Something like Defraggler for example.

JoDaMa · 4 Aug 2010 at 14:57

How much disk space do you have remaining?

I sometimes found that it would stop early if there wasn't enough space left on the drive when it tried to move large files.

Crowort · 4 Aug 2010 at 15:14

Really large files and/or not enough free space I'd say.

Doesn't windows defrag ignore really large files? Something about it not increasing performance or something? I'm pretty sure I read that on these forums at sometime.

Mattus · 4 Aug 2010 at 16:30

Crowort said:
Really large files and/or not enough free space I'd say.

Yup. Is the volume more than 90% full? It can cause problems with defragging.