Odd Fragmentation At End Of Disk

Firebat · 20 Jun 2011

Hello All!

Okay, so here is the problem, I just recently formatted my hard-drive, reinstalled Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit, and have done multiple Defrag Runs on the system using both Piriform's Defraggler, and the Windows 7 built-in defragmentation program.

The problem being, is that I have multiple fragmented files at the end of my partioned disk... I don't know how to get rid of them.

The only reason I ask this is because I like to be COMPLETELY organized and am an orginization freak, so, if anyone could possibly give me the reason and or a fix to this problem. I would greatly appreciate it. I will actually have provided an image below and or attached so you can check the problem out visually.

Thank you very much,
I appreciate the future help,
Aaron Brewer

ignatzatsonic · 20 Jun 2011

What would you do if you could not satisfy your organization obsession and could not COMPLETELY defragment the disk?

Could you live with that? Or not? Would you give up computing?

Windows defragmenter by design does not defragment larger chunks.

I don't think that drive map is necessarily accurate as to the location of the defragmented files. I recall a discussion of drive maps on this forum a few months ago and the conclusion was that those maps are not an accurate representation.

Firebat · 20 Jun 2011

What would I do huh? I do not know, lol.

I could live with that though.

Although that does make me feel a little bit better on the situation.

ignatzatsonic · 20 Jun 2011

It's good that you could live with it because I don't think you have much choice. You are at the mercy of the defragmenter and the drive map. It might even be true that there is some defragmentation even if the map shows no defragmentation. What then?? At some point, you have to either go crazy or decide it isn't all that important.

Sedril · 20 Jun 2011

I'm the same way, I use perfectdisk for defragging, and it is able to do a "consolidate free space" defrag which moves everything to the front of the disk...

Oaken · 21 Jun 2011

Hi Firebat,

Chances are the files in question are Windows system files, and the only way to move them is when the OS is offline (boot time defrag).

Perfectdisk (trial version) can do this very well and/or if you analyze the disk and run a report it will give you a very good idea what the files are?

Puran Defrag Freeware Edition is the only freeware that offers boot time defragmentation (so far as I know). Although I stopped using Puran some time ago as every now and then it would wipe all of the shadow copies, though I believe support for this has now been improved?

In any case please be sure to check individual developers documentation concerning shadow copies/restore points, and back up your system fully beforehand.

logicearth · 21 Jun 2011

I'll just like to point out you are not being a organization freak, you are being obsessive compulsive. Defragmentation has nothing to do with organization. It doesn't organize your files with other like files or what not. What you are wanting to do is a waste of time and resources. It won't improve performance and five seconds later it will be back where it was.

**cluberti** · 21 Jun 2011

It's worth noting that some defragmentation programs put "space hog" type files at the logical end of a volume, to keep them away from other files and folders and causing corruption there unnecessarily. I've seen defraggler doing this on some machines, so it might think that this folder is a potential for causing fragmentation, therefore moving it to the end. The Google Last Session folder in %appdata% is tracking your tabs (and a few other things in Chrome), and it seems that defraggler thinks this belongs at the end as well. The $Extend folder contains optional NTFS data like the USN journal, reparse point info, quota data (if any is set), etc. In all honestly, this is probably a really good question for the developers on these folders, as these choices may be on purpose, but it could also be a Defraggler bug if it is marking these as needing to go to the end of the disk unnecessarily.

Also, as to your issue with defragmenting files, there's really no way (short of defragmenting a volume offline in another OS, like a WinPE environment) you are going to get a completely fragment-free disk. In fact, even Microsoft says this goal is counterintuitive, and why they no longer try with their own defrag engine.