The biggest difference between the defrag tool in
Windows XP and Windows Vista is that Vista is setup
to defrag all of the partitions of your hard disks
automatically and on a weekly schedule by default. I
suppose this was a decision by the Vista system
engineers probably based on the new search feature
and its constant indexing of your hard disks and the
importance of keeping tidy files for faster results.
If you try running a defrag manually, you will not
receive any system progress or receive any visual
indication of how fragmented your system partitions
are. However, it is possible to manipulate the
system via a command prompt to receive such
information. Here's how to run the command line
defragmentation utility:
To open a command prompt window, click the Windows
button>> All Programs>> Accessories>> Right click
the Command Prompt button and select the "Run as
administrator" option. A command prompt window will
now appear.
To receive information about how defragmented a
certain drive is, type:
defrag c: -a -v
The "defrag" lets the system know that you would
like to activate the command line defragmentation
utility.
The "c:" indicates the hard disk that you would like
to work in.
The "-a" indicates that you would like to perform an
analysis of the C: drive.
The "-v" indicates that you require a verbose (all
possible information) report.
Substitute the "c:" with any other drive that you
would like to analyze.
To actually defrag a certain drive, type:
defrag c: -v -r
This option will also give you a detailed report and
will defrag all files that are less than 64 MB in
size. If you would like to force Vista to attempt to
defrag ALL files no matter the size of the
fragments, type:
defrag c: -v -w
Again, you will receive a detailed report and with
the "-w" this will tell Vista to attempt to
consolidate all files wherever possible.
In all cases, you will not receive a report of
fragmented files of 64 MB or greater. Also, you
still will not receive a progress bar during the
defragmentation process. You at least now have
greater flexibility over how Windows Vista is
defragging your system files.
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