Pulling together the wisdom in the comments (and adding some of my
own) ;-)
There could be a number of reasons that your disk defrag time is
longer than before :
(1) DMA : DMA stands for Direct Memory Access and it allows data to
be read at very high speeds from your hard disk.
To check whether DMA is enabled -
- on your Desktop, RIGHT-click on the My Computer icon.
- From the menu that appears, click on Properties.
- On the 'System properties' window that appears, click on the
'Device manager' tab
- In the displayed hardware items list, Click on the plus(+)
sign besides the 'Disk Drives' item.
- A list containing the installed harddrives and floppy drives
will be displayed.
- Select your hard disk drive from the list and click the
Properties button near the bottom of the window. You hard disk drive
item will either have the company name(Seagate/Maxtor/Samsung etc.) or
a name like "GENERIC IDE DISK TYPE 47"
- In the Properties window that appears, click on the
'Settings' tab.
- In the options that are shown. one will be called 'DMA'
- If the DMA option is checked, then DMA is enabled and thats
not the problem.Click the Cancel button to close all the windows and
goto part 2 of this answer.
- If DMA option is not checked, then click on the checkbox
beside it to enable it.You may be shown a warning.Click on 'OK' to
continue, 'Cancel' to cancel DMA.
- Then click the OK button at the bottom of the page. The Disk
Properties window will close.
- Click the close button on the System Properties window. You
will be asked if you want to reboot.Say Yes.
- After the reboot, check the value of the DMA field again. If
it is checked, then DMA was successfully enabled, else your operating
system or your disk drive does not support the setting.Nothing you can
do, except upgrade to a better OS(Win XP) or buy a newer Harddisk with
DMA support.Maybe the other options will help you.
(2) Large Harddisk : The amount of time spent defragmenting your drive
depends directly on the amount of data it contains. As mooncrickett-ga
said, it is most likely that your new hard disk contains a much larger
number of files and data than your old computer ever did. that in
itself will increase the defrag time.
To speed up your defrag times, you could divide your harddisk space
into multiple partitions(C:,D:,E: etc) and divide your data between
these partitions.
For eg: C: could contain your windows installation
D: could contain your heavily used data files
E: could contain your music collection(which hardly ever needs
to be defraged)
...and so on.
This way you could speed up your defrag times by only defragging
one partition at a time. For eg., C: on Sundays,D: every other
wednesday and E: once a month.
Since you will be defragging a much smaller amount of files/data
at one time, defrag times will be dramatically lower.
(3) Another reason that defrag times are slower under Windows 98 is
that windows 98 monitors which applications you use the most, and
during defrag moves these application files near the beginning of the
disk so that they can be accessed faster.
This is why, the first time you run a defrag, it will take a very long
time.But times should improve for future defrags.
If you use a lot of different applications all the time with varying
frequency, this feature could slow down your defrags a lot.
For the disk defragmenter that ships with windows, you can disable
this feature as follows :
- Start Disk Defragmenter
- Click on the 'Settings...' button
- Uncheck the option to 'Rearrange program files so my programs
start faster.'
- Click 'Ok'
This should result in faster defrag times but,depending on your
configuration, you might experience slower application startup times,
so I would not recommend this method.
(4) The Software : The Disk Defragmentoer that ships by default with
windows is not really built for speed. The fastest disk defrag that I
have come across, and which I personally use, is 'Norton SpeedDisk'
sold by Symantec (www.symantec.com) as part of their 'Norton Utilities
2002' package. It has blazing fast disk defrag times, allows for a lot
of user customization and the Norton utilities package conatains a lot
of other utilities to keep your computer in great shape.
Another fast disk defragmentor is offered as part of the McAfee
Utilities software bundle.You can find out more at the McAfee Website
(www.mcafee.com)
Here is a PCWorld magazine article comparing the different Utilities
package (including their disk defragmenting components) :
( http://www.pcworld.com/features/article/0,aid,52823,00.asp )
Hope the above answer helped you understand your problem and hopefully
offered a solution. If you have any confusion, just ask for a
clarification. I will be glad to help. |
