Bootime Defrag won't work!!!

krokusnat · 19 Nov 2010

I have this Seagate 500gb sata barracuda drive and I use Ultimate Defrag 3 to keep the drive in peak condition. One problem though and I have had this problem with other defragmenting programs as well. When it's time for the boot time defrag to run before the operating system starts it's says it can't unlock the drive! Now I'm running W7 64 Enterprise and it is a homebuilt custom computer with an asus a8n-sli motherboard.

Does anybody know what is happening?
Is it something in my bios?
Or is it something that the drive manufacturer has done?
Or does it have something to do with windows 7 running a program before disktrix can run it's operation?

Any insight would highly be appreciated...

regards krokusnat

A Guy · 20 Nov 2010

Welcome to Seven Forums krokusnat. Can you post the exact error you get? It will make things easier. Try running chkdsk on the drive as well. A Guy

krokusnat · 20 Nov 2010

Thanks A Guy here is the error but I don't think it will help much and I have ran chkdsk and the volume is clean.

OpenVolume:st0000043
ERROR! Failed to open the volume!
Undefined error

A Guy · 20 Nov 2010

Yeah, you are right. Either another process is interfering, or there is a bad sector on your drive. Do us a favor, and fill in your system specifications so we know what hardware you have. Based on your HDD manufacturer, we can recommend a HDD diagnosis tool. Check disc will often not report a bad sector whereas a bootable HDD tool can often detect, and even repair simple errors.

You can also try Puran Defrag and see if it's boot defrag will work for you.

Disk Defragmenter x64 / 64 Bit / 32 Bit Windows 7 / Vista / Xp / 2003 / 2008 | Puran Defrag

A Guy

krokusnat · 21 Nov 2010

Ok, I have the same defragmenter on my wife's laptop it had the same error until I turned off the system managed paging file and set it to custom. Well that worked, so I did the same thing to mine hoping for the same results but not. I do have the Hard drive bad sector restore program that I could run but before I do that what does the hiberfile do and does it run or anything at start-up? And I did fill in the rest of my specs as you asked and I appreciate you help...

A Guy · 21 Nov 2010

krokusnat said:

Ok, I have the same defragmenter on my wife's laptop it had the same error until I turned off the system managed paging file and set it to custom. Well that worked, so I did the same thing to mine hoping for the same results but not. I do have the Hard drive bad sector restore program that I could run but before I do that what does the hiberfile do and does it run or anything at start-up? And I did fill in the rest of my specs as you asked and I appreciate you help...

Hiberfil.sys is the hibernation file. If you don't use hibernation, you can turn it off, that will also delete the hiberfil.sys

Option two on this fine tute

Hibernate - Enable or Disable

A Guy

essenbe · 21 Nov 2010

You have a segate HD and a external Seagate drive. Go to Seagates website (Hard Drives | Seagate) and download 'sea tools' that is their diagnostic tool. and FWIW, if you have problems with any of your seagate products, that is the only diagnostic tool they will accept the results of.

EDIT: once you know that the problem is not the HD (which it probably is not) then you can begin looking at other areas.

krokusnat · 22 Nov 2010

Thanks guys I will do both, eventually I'm hopeful that we will nail this problem, I'm leaning towards something in the operating system as being the cause for the reason that even on other hard drives being the master the same problem exists. That is why I keep asking about the system files that may run in conjunction with the deframenting programs...If you know of what system files start first before anything else that would probably be what is locking the drive, cause its obvious that the defragmenting programs aren't starting first....

essenbe · 24 Nov 2010

If your concern right now is the defrag. program, go there and set it to manual. That is what I did. Usually once a week I go there and analize the drives myself and determine if they need to be defraged. I did this for two reasons. 1. I have an SSD. and 2. I am more of a hands on type. I would rather do it myself and know that it is done and done when necessary and done right.

krokusnat · 24 Nov 2010

essenbe said:

If your concern right now is the defrag. program, go there and set it to manual. That is what I did. Usually once a week I go there and analize the drives myself and determine if they need to be defraged. I did this for two reasons. 1. I have an SSD. and 2. I am more of a hands on type. I would rather do it myself and know that it is done and done when necessary and done right.

I agree I don't autodefrag either, but I did find out that the drive does have a security feature on it while running HDAT2 v4.5.3 looking for bad sectors which right now is looking perfect, so I might just give seagate a call and find out for sure the specs on the drive. At this point I have the computer as starting no services or programs at startup. So the drive is manufactured locked or bios is locking the drive. So thats my next steps is looking at those to options and seeing what I can find out.