System Reserve is fragmented

bru · 21 Jun 2012

There is an old post about this topic but it looks like it wasn't resolved.

System Reserve is 7% fragmented

My SYSTEM is now 9% fragmented. It has gotten to this level after 1.5 years, but most of it occured in the last six months or so.

I use the built-in Defrag tool and it is set to default. In the old thread OldMX mentions that the tool should defrag the SYSTEM unless a setting was changed, which I don't think I did. And indeed the settings say it should defrag the SYSTEM.

I have not manually tried to defrag that partition. Windows Backup and Restore was mentioned in the post, I do use it but only have the most recent backup saved.

Should I be concerned about the fragrmentation? If so what should I do about it?

DMHolt57 · 21 Jun 2012

My advice would be to uncheck that disk and leave it alone....

ignatzatsonic · 21 Jun 2012

bru said:

.Should I be concerned about the fragrmentation? If so what should I do about it?

No and nothing.

wanchoo · 21 Jun 2012

System Reserved is gererally a 100 mb drive-letterless partition. It is used only during the booting process as far as I understand. Therefore you are hardly going to get any improvement in performance in case you defragment it.

Defragmenting it would be a fruitless exercise and it should be left alone. That said, I don't think defragmenting it would in any way degrade your system. You can therefore try it out if you are in an adventurous mood and want to experiment.

bru · 22 Jun 2012

Thanks for the replies.

Now with a better understanding of the System Reserve I thnk my questions/concerns include why has it become fragmented? Why has Disk Defragmenter not automatically defragmented it since it was set to do that automatically? Will the System continue to fragment and is there a point heavy fragmentation will cause problems?

kado897 · 22 Jun 2012

I don't know why it has become fragmented, maybe SP1 updates, but even if you allow windows defrag tool to run on it it just ignores it, probably because the files are in use.

Interestingly the third party tools I have used don't even present it as an option.

TBoyd · 22 Jun 2012

I agree - don't be concerned with it. Another possible reason why it won't defrag is because that 100MB system partition doesn't have enough free space to defrag.

wanchoo · 23 Jun 2012

The size of the System Reserved Partition can be easily increased to 200 megabytes or even more. I haven't created a System Reserved Partition when installing W 7 because I don't like it, but I am reasonably certain that the free, third party application "Puran Defrag" would be able to defragment it.

kado897 · 23 Jun 2012

Puran doesn't even present it as an option.

wanchoo · 23 Jun 2012

Not even after you assign to it a Drive Letter, that can later (after defragmentation) be removed.

But then I do not have a System Reserved Partition so I can't say for sure without trying out if the above work-around would work.

kado897 said:

Puran doesn't even present it as an option.