Defragging only REDUCES harddrive space on my PC, help!

Chris Light

Chris Light

Veteran
i'm never able to tell the difference after defragmanting my harddrive. i've heard the Windows Defrag doesn't even work. I just downloaded and ran JKDefrag, as it was recommended by a video magazine's review of a workstation as a way to squeeze more space out of a harddrive. but what it actually did was REDUCE the amount of space on my harddrive by 10GB. and on a 200GB harddrive, that's precious.

can anyone advise as to a good (free, if there is such a thing) Hard Disk Defrag program that does what it says, or possibly let me know why these free defrags (i've used Auslogics Defrag as well) always LOOK like they're working, but in the end, only seem to reduce the amount of diskspace?

thanks, i'm thouroughly confused, haha.

Chris
 
Files get stored on the hard drive in chunks. Sometimes when the chunks making up files, like a video file, get spaced too far apart, the PC has to work that much harder to locate them all. So defrag tries to place them closer together.

The disc space technically shouldn't change. But if your seeing a decrease in available space, it may be because of System Restore trying to store more information.
Sometimes I have to turn it off in order to delete it's cache, then turn it back on.
I did that once and I got back around 50gb. But generally it's lower than that. Might be worth a try.
 
i opened System Restore like you mentioned, but i didn't see where to turn it off, or any options for deleting anything...sounds like it may help once i get it figured out. thanks for the response!
 
On XP, open System Restore and you should see a link called 'Sytem Restore Settings'.
Click that and the Properties Page opens.

Select the 'System Restore' tab and you'll see a check box called
'Turn off System Restore on all drives'.
Check the box and hit OK and wait for it to do it's thing.

It will automatically delete it's cache. You don't have to do any deleting yourself. After a minute or 2 check your drives volume again. It should have gone up a bit. You may have to hit F5 to refresh.

You can then go back and turn it on again if you want.
 
When Defraging:

(1) First Delete un needed files on your hard drive

(2) Uninstall any un needed applications

(3) FLUSH all your temp/cache/userdata/logs/prefecth files (use CCleaner) DO NOT DO THIS MANUALLY, use CCLEANER

(4) Delete ALL but the most rececnt restore point.

(5) Do a Registry clean (run it a few times, untill no errors such up)

Then do a proper defrag.

As Raptor said Defrags purpose is to optimize file continuation, and thus reduce read latency.

JKDefrag (as recommended in my Blog see my signature) is very good, I;ve also found another great free defrager software, go to the CCleaner site and click on products.

Anhar
 
cool...i do use CCleaner, and i'll probably keep JKDefrag...but your right, sounds like i have to flush a few extra things out of my system to really see the difference...thanks guys, i appreciate the detailed advice!!

chris
 
Of course if you want to increase space there are only two ways:

(a) Delete data.

(b) Get more Hard Drive space.

Anhar
 
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