Pagefile Fragmentation Question

[Suhaila]

My computer was running fine until a couple of days ago, when the hard drive started making a clicking sound, and the hard drive access light started coming on excessively. I had just received some large files by email, maybe 10-15 mb for each file - maybe 12 of them total. I know the files were virus free, and were just very large. I moved the files to a separate folder, and then copied the folder to a separate hard drive that I use for data archival, then deleted the original folder to make room on my Window's drive. My hard drive had been a bit low on space, so I suspected (hoped) that the clicking sound had to do with resources, and wasn't a lost drive. I finally got the system to successfully reboot, which took several failed attempts. Once it did reboot, I was able to defrag the drive. Everything was looking great at first, for the better part of a day...no more clicking...until I left the room for a few minutes, and Zone Alarm did an update. It was locked up when I returned, with the hard drive light on steadily.

My main question has to do with whether the fragmentation of the hard drive could be the problem. The report showed that the drive was badly in need of defragging, which was done. The Pagefile framentation was not corrected by the defrag, however. Here's the data:

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 600 MB
Total Fragments = 2,758

Any suggestions on how to proceed with this? I've already bought a new drive, and can install it when needed. If the current drive can be saved, though, I'd certainly rather do that.

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[Perris Calderon]

this will defrag your pagefile

 

[Suhaila]

Thanks, Perris! Next question on the same issue...

I'm sure that the fragmentation of the regular files on my hard drive is largely due to my large email files. I run a small online business, and like to keep all correspondence. When I first defragged, the volume analysis showed that some of the email files were heavily fragmented. I'm currently using the Netscape mail program that came with the older Netscape - using the older Netscape because it has Composer, which I like to use for editing html pages. Could I just copy the mail folder to one of my other hard drives, and change the local directory in the account settings in the program? I'm assuming that if I get rid of the source of the fragging problem, that that'll help keep other files (including pagefile?) from fragmenting in the future. Correct?

Again, I appreciate the help!

 

[ming]

PerfectDisk can do the job.
This piece of software requires reboot to do it, which is the same as PerfectDisk.

 

[Perris Calderon]

I'm assuming that if I get rid of the source of the fragging problem, that that'll help keep other files (including pagefile?) from fragmenting in the future. Correct?

Again, I appreciate the help!

the pagefile won't fragment again, it fragmented becuase you changed the size of it somwhere along the line or you increased the amount of memory

once you defrag the pagefile it will never get fragmented untill you resize it manually on your own

of course if you increase the amount of physical memory, this increases the size of the pagefile when its managed by the os...so increasing the amount of memory cuases pf fragmentation too=,but that;s it

and yes, when you have files that get changed all the time, like temp files, it's better having them on their own hardrive or partition

 

[Suhaila]

I was able to get the system to boot this morning. For some reason, if it sits for turned off for several hours, it'll boot up without clicking. Any idea why this happens? I opened the Window's disk defrag, and it showed that the disk went from 29% free space to 18% during the last crash (when Zone Labs was updating). I defragged again, which ran fine, but the clicking started as soon as the defrag finished. I was hoping to move all of the email files to a separate drive, then defrag again, and then defrag the pagefile. After that, I planned (hoped) to mirror the drive to another drive, to be able to get any files back that I may want later, and then install a new Window's drive. Does this sound like a reasonable strategy? Comments and suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Perris Calderon]

ya, if your drive is failing get that imaged as soon as possible, don't shut it down and don't defrag again until you image the drive

 

[LeeJend]

Do not defrag the sick drive again! Extremely stressful to failing hardware.

Defrag the "good drive". Then back up all of your data, Software/Media liscences, personal information (favorites, settings, etc) to the good drive. Copying files to an unfragmented disk will defragment them.

Once all your data is safe and your new HD arrives you can try rebooting again.

When you reboot make sure SMARTs is turned on in Bios if the HD supports it. The HD should support SMARTs (health diagnostics built into newer HDs).
If the drive has a problem ti will be reported to you and the option to print it out with an RMA for drive replacement.

Once everything is back up and running with the new HD make sure you do not let your email folders get too large. Large growing files are a major cause of fragemntation. Create multiple email folders to sort and save files to. These make smaller files on disk.