Hardware Fragmentation

[Tornby]

hi,
i ve got a problem with a Harddrive. I have bought a new PC with a 80 GB Harddrive. After Boot and configure Winxp i moved my data from my old harddrive (10 GB). After working a while i became a message it is not enough discmemory avaible. So i check the diskspace. Windows says only 3 GB are free! I couldn't believe it and selects all Directorys and Files in this drive. Windows says these Files and Dirs have 12 or 13 GB. I think this must be a fragmentation error or a "disk space calculating error" (it could be when you format in linux a disc and reformat it with windows the discspace is calculated not correctly)

okay, i check out defragmentation application under windows. After checking the HD everthing was red (fragmented).
I ve defragged the HD (became previously a message that what says "not enough drive space avaible, to defragment correctly").

After the defragmentation, nothing happend. I ve got a Volume Fragmentation of 42 percent.

now my questions:

- What happend here?
- how can i fix this problem?
- what can i do that this happens never again?
- Could this be a new virus i don't now which try's to make my Hardware crazy (i think this is unplausible)

PLEASE: I wouldn't like to Backup these files and format the HD. This is the "last case" method i think cause it takes to much time.

I thank everone for any ideas

Tornby

 

[HoLoCroN]

Interesting,

Lets try a few things, in order to defrag your HDD you need at least 10-15% free space. Try deleting unneeded files (Intenet cache, temp folders, etc.) that might clear up enough space to degrag the drive.

Also, make sure to BACKUP your data, that is important since you are having drive issues.

Since you have XP, right click on "My Computer" and click on "Manage." When the system management window opens up look for "Disk Management."

Check to see what the disk size is, it could be that XP is has not registered the full capacity of the drive due to the Linux partitions.

Let us know whats up here.

 

[Tornby]

hi,

at first thank you for your reply.

10-15% free space are not easy to create. you must know:

- 12 GB are physical data
- 3 GB are free (says Windows => 4 %)
- 65 GB are the "maybe" fragged data sectors (my english is bad, i mean "the space which cant be used")

so... i cannot get 10-15% free space in order to backup all data. So i can also format the HD and Reinstall it.

The drive managment says the same as the property window in the explorer: Capacity 74 GB, Free 3GB (->4%)
Partition is NTFS and no errors on the disk.

Linux was never installed on this disk! This was only one idea from me, because i had an error with my 1,2 GB drive as i installed windows after i deleted linux.
The message which says: "Disk space calculating is not correctly..." was sended by scandisc (win98).

-> So i thought this error happens again on this disk, i thought the error on the disk calculating was not produced by linux (because it was never installed)... maybe it was produced by an error during the shutdown or switch of the pc during data transfer. i dont know.

Okay, i have checked out the Fragmentation on a other PC. Same Harddrive (80GB) with 18 GB data. The fragmentation was definitly not so high... It seems there was no fragmentation.

The next step is, i ve try a software (alternative to the standard defrag Application) like, repair the disk, to rescue the data. Maybe it displays me an error or can repair my disk.

Tornby