Windows 7: System Reserve is 7% fragmented

My defrager lists 4 items that it will defrag:
C:
Recovery (D)
HP_Tools (E)
System



The System became 7% fragment suddenly over the past 3 weeks, and will not defragment. How can I correct this?

Dear time2rit,
Are you using the built-in defrag tool of Win.7 or a third party tool, like, Auslogics, Mydefrag, Defraggler etc?

I am posing you this query is b'cause the paging file and the MFT in NTFS are not automatically defragged by the Win.7 defraf.tool!

Regards,
Sreedhav

Actually, the Windows 7 defragmenter does automatically defragment the MFT (consolidate zones). Not that it really matters much since the MFT is "grown" in 200MB chunks, so that the minimum fragment size is 200MB and hence has no performance impact.

Disk Defragmentation

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961095

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942092/en-us

Small bug in Windows 7 defrag command? - [H]ard|Forum

Windows Defrag Tool, by default will defragment that partition as scheduled, unless you messed with the settings. Mine is 0% fragmented and been this way since ever.

Apologies to all responders for not getting back to you quicker.Thank you all for your input. I do not have any other defrag software in operation. I tend to run the defrag operation 3 - 7 times per day because I play poker online at busy sites, to remove the difficulties that tend to slow down my computer (temp internet files, cookies, etc). As for the settings, I have not intentionally changed any settings, though I do not have an automatically scheduled defragment time set. From the sound of these responses, it would appear that I have done something to cause this problem. I use Norton 360 as my anti-virus program. Perhaps I set up something within that system that prevents the system reserve defragmentation?

There is software that is reliable, I have been using this software for about 10 years, that will do a very good job of defragmenting your hard drive.

Also take a look at your Windows Backup and Restore. If you have Windows set to run regularly scheduled backups you may have more copies of backups than you need. By default Windows will manage your default backup space and thus the number of backups that are saved at the maximum.

You can go into Backup and Restore, delete any extra backups that you have and use the Windows option to control the management of backup space yourself.

Then defrag your HDD that those files were stored on.

This could help reduce your disk defragmentation.

The defrag software that I use which I have used for 10 years and is now out in a version number over 10 and has a "boot" time defrag which when run will also help defrgament your HDD.

I set my defgrag software on "Auto" to backup each drive every three days. The degrag software when set this way only runs when the Drive letter that it is defragmenting is idle for X minutes. You get to choose the minutes. Basically the software does its thing automatically while I am away from computer like at night.

This software will successfully defrag your Metadata, MFT, Pagefile and Bootfile.

All of my actual physical and logical drives are continually maintained this way with less than 1% defragmentation and usually below .5% defragmentation.

I will not post the name of the software for obvious reasons including the fact that it is not free. So I ain't going to be spamming.

P.S. I have two rules of thumb that have I gone by for years with regard to defgragmenting the physical and logical drives.

1. Never let any physical or logical drive get more than 50% full. This is topic for discussion at another time other than to say that HDDs unless they are Solid State are cheap and USB ports and usb hubs are plentiful
2. Defrag the physical and logical drives often

AFAIK, historically the 15% free disk space 'rule' came about mainly for two reasons:

1. Approx. 13% of the drive space is pre-allocated to the MFT which is the single most critical file on any volume. Another 1-2% would be taken up by the page file (remember we're talking small drives from the past) If the free space dipped below below ~ 15%, the MFT would fragment if it had to expand, and this would impact disk performance especially as the free space decreased further and file/fragment sizes were smaller.

2. The default XP windows defragger could not defrag when free space was less than 15% because it could not defrag or move most system files including the MFT. It could also not defrag large fragmented files properly, especially in low space. Even the current windows defragger still has some similar drawbacks.

If you're using a good automatic defragger (not free as you said), especially one of the newer ones, then there is no concern about defragging system files or in low space...it will do both just fine. I use my HDDs up to about 95% full before retiring (i.e. archiving) them. Never had a problem so far. There is no reason to waste a few tens of GBs unnecessarily (15% of 500 GB is 75 GB!!).

There is ofcourse a decrease in access speed at the areas of the disk closest to the spindle compared to the periphery, but it's not intolerable, and no reason to waste space.

Funnily enough, my System Reserved partition has also been at 0% since day 1 about a year ago.

Mine is now 2% fragmented and that happened on Saturday when I loaded SP1.

Fascinating. Do you use Windows 7? I do. I was thinking that the problem is specific to my operating system. By the way, I'm still just 7% fragmented after continual daily use since I first posted.