| Author |
Defragmenting Windows installation |
Thernhoghas
Grand Admiral
Exathra Alliance Fleet
Joined: September 18, 2010
Posts: 243
From: somewhere in Germany
|  Posted: 2012-08-07 07:33
Since my google-fu has failed me and I have gotten good advices from DS-community in terms of computer related problems, I'll ask this here too.
I have (finally) bought a new computer yesterday. But right now, it's hard drive is giving me a headache. I want to make the partition with the OS (windows 7) on it smaller. but I can't make it as small as I want to, because there are some system files strewn all over the partiton that prevent me from making the partition smaller than 210 Gb.
Does anybody here know a defragmentation program that could COMPLETELY defrag (including system relevant files) that partition?
I hope someone can help me.
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Pantheon
Marshal
Palestar
Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 1789
| Posted: 2012-08-07 08:24
I wouldn't recommend altering partition sizes on an already setup system.
You need to do this sort of thing prior to installing the OS.
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Thernhoghas
Grand Admiral
Exathra Alliance Fleet
Joined: September 18, 2010
Posts: 243
From: somewhere in Germany
| Posted: 2012-08-07 09:12
Quote:
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On 2012-08-07 08:24, Pantheon wrote:
I wouldn't recommend altering partition sizes on an already setup system.
You need to do this sort of thing prior to installing the OS.
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I dare to say "need" isn't entirely appropriate in this context.
And creating the partitions before installing the OS wasn't possible, since the computer was ready-to-use.
You're more or less telling me that the best course of action would be to format the partition and reinstall the OS, right?
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Doran
Chief Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 29, 2003
Posts: 4032
From: The Gideon Unit
| Posted: 2012-08-07 09:49
setting up partitions before hand is definatly the way to go.
if you insist on making changes to a live partition (something with data on it), i've had good experiance with gparted on several occasions. burn it to one of those little mini CDRW or a thumbdrive, and boot into gparted instead of windows, then go to town.
obvious caveat here is . gparted is non-destructive, but it's still possible for something to go pear-shaped in the process.
for defragmentation before running gparted, you could do worse than defraggler. can run it in safe mode, or better yet, schedule a boot-time defrag to minimise the ammount of windows system files in use at the time. combine that (booting into safemode) with [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce]
"autoshutdown"="shutdown -s -f" to automatically shut down your pc as soon as it starts up, to further mimimise files getting written/moved after youre done defragmenting.
so
- back up your data
- burn gparted to live-cd or usb
- set defraggler to do a boot-time defrag
- use msconfig (or your other preferred method) to set windows to boot into safe mode on next restart
- create a registry key called autoshutdown (or really, name it anything you like) with a value of shutdown -s -f at [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce]
- restart windows, let defraggler do its thing and wait for the computer to shut itself off again.
- boot into gparted off the cd/usb and make the desired partition changes
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Thernhoghas
Grand Admiral
Exathra Alliance Fleet
Joined: September 18, 2010
Posts: 243
From: somewhere in Germany
| Posted: 2012-08-07 10:24
Considering the facts that there are still lots of... "obviously redundent applications" remaining from the factory-settings and that i have everything I need to reinstall Windows 7 within my arms' reach, it might be the best to reinstall it.
Thanks for the answers.
P.S.:
It's kind of discouraging that the DS forum gets you faster and better results in terms of computer problems than many forums that are dedicated to solving computer related problems :|
P.P.S.:
How the hörk can one get the OS-files that fragmented anyways? With about 50 Gb empty space between some of them? O.o
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Virus
Marshal
Courageous Elite Commandos
Joined: August 18, 2003
Posts: 116
| Posted: 2012-08-07 12:18
Just use diskpart to resize your hard drive, b ut please backup your data before trying this.
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-DBS
Marshal
Joined: January 04, 2011
Posts: 204
From: St. Petersburg, FL
| Posted: 2012-08-07 15:32
G parted if free and runs from a live CD. I would though, because your using windows, do a clean install after setting your partitions...
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Thernhoghas
Grand Admiral
Exathra Alliance Fleet
Joined: September 18, 2010
Posts: 243
From: somewhere in Germany
| Posted: 2012-08-08 05:44
Well, there were some troubles with reinstalling windows because of the GPT partitions of the computer, but now everything's running fine and I'm currently transferring the files from my old Data-drive to my new one.
I hope I'll find some time to check out the new release of DS this week before I'm off to my government sponsored volunteer year, where I only have slow internet available.
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