Solve : Not enough disk space when trying to defrag?

1.	Solve : Not enough disk space when trying to defrag?
Answer» I am trying to defrag a mini Dell running XP that was given to me. I am getting a message "9% FREE but only 8% is available. Not enough disk space to properly complete operation, delete unwanted files" The capacity is 7.11 GB, free space 552 GB. I've done a disk cleanup, removed unwanted programs and emptied the recycle bin. How do I figure out what is left?Kill system restore, disable hibernation, kill any hibernation files on the drive, and for temporary sake, if there's an explicit setting for the swap file, put it back to auto and then restart. Usually one or more of those is plenty to get a small HDD back to the 20% free that defrag would like to see. There's also the -f switch which will force a defrag regardless of disk space. If you wanted to do this to drive C: you'd do the following: Code: [Select]WindowsKey+R (Run Box) defrag c: -f One other thing to consider is taking a look at the "report" and sorting it by the "fragmentation" column. Doing that will put the worst files at the top and in a LOT of cases this will highlight some large temp files and such that can be nuked. Deleting a fragmented file is a double win because you don't have to defrag that file and it's less space/files to process. As a last resort, you could do a search for files that are over a certain size, like 100mb, an if you find any that aren't 'crucial' you could move them off to a USB stick or USB HDD while you defrag. I will try it all! I'm a beginner so it may take some time to get to all these places! But I won't give up until it works!If you have an 8G HDD with only 500Mg left as free space you need to do some serious housekeeping... Restore points etc. are not gonna cut it.What do you suggest?The advice to start by disabling system restore was correct. That will free up a great deal of space. You can then re-enable system restore and change the setting to use less disk space. You can then download and run treeesize (http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml) to see what is using the space.I deleted some files and now have 10%. I'm just afraid to start deleting things. I didn't understand some of the things to do, so I may just leave it the way it is and hope for the best!Ccleaner is a good way to free up space, a lot of space can be freed up with that simple little program. Here is the URL for it http://www.piriform.com/Quote from: slotty on December 22, 2010, 05:34:35 PM I deleted some files and now have 10%. I'm just afraid to start deleting things. I didn't understand some of the things to do, so I may just leave it the way it is and hope for the best! Any music; movies and pictures can safely be burned to DVD's.... they can be viewed right from DVD... You may want to consider shopping for a larger HDD.After having freed up as much space, even if its way less than 15%, some of the commercial defraggers (like Diskeeper - has worked for me) will defrag in extremely low free space. You can try it out. Quote from: talontromper on December 23, 2010, 12:04:46 AM Ccleaner is a good way to free up space, a lot of space can be freed up with that simple little program. Here is the URL for it http://www.piriform.com/ Slotty, If you are running XP, than stick with XP utilities. All foreign utilities are a danger to your system. Your system should have about 35% free space. Unload movies, music, pictures old E-Mail and all those space grabbers from your system. After all, why would you want to keep someone Else's stuff? Be more diligent with XP's Disk Cleanup, Temporary Internet Files, %TEMP%, Defragmenter and Checkdisk When using Defragmenter, monitor the Screen, make a change to a few Text files and run Defragmenter again. Keep doing this until there is nothing more to Defrag, it will take several times! Stay away from Ccleaner if you are not familiar with it!Quote from: alexK on December 30, 2010, 06:43:12 PM Slotty, If you are running XP, than stick with XP utilities. All foreign utilities are a danger to your system. The included "utilities" Are the fisher-price equivalent of more full-featured applications provided by other vendors. The Disk Defrag Utility included in Windows XP is quite literally a stripped down version of the "dangerous foreign Utility" Executive Software Diskeeper. Directly from the MS KB: (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314848) Quote The version that is included with Windows XP and later provides limited functionality in maintaining disk performance by defragmenting volumes that use the FAT, FAT32, or NTFS file system. It says it right there in black and white- it provides limited functionality. This is why there is a market for the third party utilities, in fact, I'm pretty sure that MS is "too scared" to actually release a useful utility because they would no doubt face a backlash from the "dangerous foreign Utility" vendors. It's interesting that you would label these third party utilities as inherently dangerous but you provide no citations. Are there bugs? No doubt. Have people lost data as a result? No doubt. But people have lost data as a result of chkdsk, and scandisk, and disk defragmentor and the be all end all of "dangerous software" the MS-DOS "RECOVER" command. None of those are third party utilities, therefore your assumption that any first-party utility is magically perfectly safe to use in any context is entirely false. Is the SYSINTERNALS version of chkdsk, with free source code, any more dangerous then that provided with windows? No, it does exactly the same thing- and adds a few things for some operating systems. Additionally most of the functionality used by chkdsk, disk defragmenter and various other utilities are in fact inherent in the OS. Quote When using Defragmenter, monitor the Screen, make a change to a few Text files and run Defragmenter again. Keep doing this until there is nothing more to Defrag, it will take several times! And what will this accomplish? Does nobody even understand what defragmenting does? because wasting an afternoon making sure that the built in utility does what it was supposed to do in the first place sounds like a gigantic waste of time, especially when there are free utilities that can gasp do it properly to begin with! BC_P I spend close 5 decades in the IT industry, and know BL..DY well what a defragmenter does. Both platforms suffer from the syndrome called "The Chaining Effect". It sticks / links the altered / new data on the bottom. Not in between somewhere. -On a PC it will take several passes to clean up the mess. Have you really tested this out? Of course you would not spend the time testing this out because you consider it all nonsense. -On a Mainframe, the files are unloaded and reloaded. During the years I have seen enough Vendors with useless unreliable products. It is safer to stick with XP utilities if have a XP. Period. By the way BC_P, do you always take your North American car to an Asian repair shop or visa versa?Quote from: alexK on December 30, 2010, 07:58:45 PM BC_P I spend close 5 decades in the IT industry, and know BL..DY well what a defragmenter does. if you spend 5 decades in IT it doesn't logically follow that you know what a defragmenter does. Clearly you are proof of this. Quote Both platforms suffer from the syndrome called "The Chaining Effect". It sticks / links the altered / new data on the bottom. Not in between somewhere. No. new data is placed in the first available free spot. mainframes may be different but they are largely irrelevant in the context of Microcomputers. Quote -On a PC it will take several passes to clean up the mess. Have you really tested this out? Of course you would not spend the time testing this out because you consider it all nonsense. Have I tested it out? you mean have I used the built in defragmenter repeatedly and edited text files to achieve what is a foggy and ill-specified GOAL at best? No,can't say that I have. Quote -On a Mainframe, the files are unloaded and reloaded. Again, Mainframe!=Minicomputer!=Microcomputer. Quote During the years I have seen enough Vendors with useless unreliable products. There are plenty of those, to be sure, malware, registry cleaners, and the like. But that doesn't make then any and all third party utilities bad. This is particularly driven home by the fact that the very XP utilities to are pushing are in and of themselves based on these "evil foreign software" programs that you are decrying, with very thin reasoning as to why. Quote It is safer to stick with XP utilities if have a XP. Period. It's nice of you to make declarative statements WITHOUT any actual citations, but you're going to need to use something other then some off-hand knowledge about how a mainframe works to convince most people that you even understand how a file system works or how files are stored, let alone that you know what the best tool for messing around with those. Either way, I am forced to agree with your statement that it is "safer" but it's even safer to not run any utility to begin with. Additionally you didn't say that. You originally said that Quote All foreign utilities are a danger to your system. Which is false. Quote By the way BC_P, do you always take your North American car to an Asian repair shop or visa versa? Irrelevant; What you are saying now is that the windows utilities "know more" about how windows is working internally then the third party products, this doesn't begin to address the fact that the XP utilities are licensed versions of third party products; As I noted, for example, Disk Defragmentor as included with XP is simply a lite, reduced functionality version of a "asian repair shop" Executive Software Diskeeper. Microsoft has never written and provided a Disk Defragmenter with any NT-based OS that I am aware of. chkdsk can be duplicated in a few pages of C code, Diskmanagement simply works with well documented partition table and MBR information that is hardly specific to Windows. Disk cleanup doesn't really do anything all that different from CCleaner, since they both call the exact same functions to cleanup (I mean exact same- most Disk Cleanup ROUTINES are in fact external libraries that are added to by various products). Really it's interesting because what you are implicitly saying is that everybody should Use internet Explorer because it's "included" with the OS, and that somehow means it's "safer".

Answer»

I am trying to defrag a mini Dell running XP that was given to me. I am getting a message "9% FREE but only 8% is available. Not enough disk space to properly complete operation, delete unwanted files" The capacity is 7.11 GB, free space 552 GB. I've done a disk cleanup, removed unwanted programs and emptied the recycle bin. How do I figure out what is left?Kill system restore, disable hibernation, kill any hibernation files on the drive, and for temporary sake, if there's an explicit setting for the swap file, put it back to auto and then restart.

Usually one or more of those is plenty to get a small HDD back to the 20% free that defrag would like to see.

There's also the -f switch which will force a defrag regardless of disk space. If you wanted to do this to drive C: you'd do the following:

Code: [Select]WindowsKey+R (Run Box)
defrag c: -f

One other thing to consider is taking a look at the "report" and sorting it by the "fragmentation" column. Doing that will put the worst files at the top and in a LOT of cases this will highlight some large temp files and such that can be nuked. Deleting a fragmented file is a double win because you don't have to defrag that file and it's less space/files to process.

As a last resort, you could do a search for files that are over a certain size, like 100mb, an if you find any that aren't 'crucial' you could move them off to a USB stick or USB HDD while you defrag. I will try it all! I'm a beginner so it may take some time to get to all these places! But I won't give up until it works!If you have an 8G HDD with only 500Mg left as free space you need to do some serious housekeeping...
Restore points etc. are not gonna cut it.What do you suggest?The advice to start by disabling system restore was correct. That will free up a great deal of space. You can then re-enable system restore and change the setting to use less disk space. You can then download and run treeesize (http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml) to see what is using the space.I deleted some files and now have 10%. I'm just afraid to start deleting things. I didn't understand some of the things to do, so I may just leave it the way it is and hope for the best!Ccleaner is a good way to free up space, a lot of space can be freed up with that simple little program. Here is the URL for it http://www.piriform.com/Quote from: slotty on December 22, 2010, 05:34:35 PM

I deleted some files and now have 10%. I'm just afraid to start deleting things. I didn't understand some of the things to do, so I may just leave it the way it is and hope for the best!

Any music; movies and pictures can safely be burned to DVD's.... they can be viewed right from DVD...

You may want to consider shopping for a larger HDD.After having freed up as much space, even if its way less than 15%, some of the commercial defraggers (like Diskeeper - has worked for me) will defrag in extremely low free space. You can try it out. Quote from: talontromper on December 23, 2010, 12:04:46 AM

Ccleaner is a good way to free up space, a lot of space can be freed up with that simple little program. Here is the URL for it http://www.piriform.com/

Slotty,
If you are running XP, than stick with XP utilities.
All foreign utilities are a danger to your system.

Your system should have about 35% free space.
Unload movies, music, pictures old E-Mail and all those space grabbers from your system.
After all, why would you want to keep someone Else's stuff?

Be more diligent with XP's Disk Cleanup, Temporary Internet Files, %TEMP%, Defragmenter and Checkdisk
When using Defragmenter, monitor the Screen, make a change to a few Text files and run Defragmenter again. Keep doing this until there is nothing more to Defrag, it will take several times!

Stay away from Ccleaner if you are not familiar with it!Quote from: alexK on December 30, 2010, 06:43:12 PM

Slotty,
If you are running XP, than stick with XP utilities.
All foreign utilities are a danger to your system.

The included "utilities" Are the fisher-price equivalent of more full-featured applications provided by other vendors. The Disk Defrag Utility included in Windows XP is quite literally a stripped down version of the "dangerous foreign Utility" Executive Software Diskeeper.

Directly from the MS KB: (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314848)
Quote

The version that is included with Windows XP and later provides limited functionality in maintaining disk performance by defragmenting volumes that use the FAT, FAT32, or NTFS file system.

It says it right there in black and white- it provides limited functionality. This is why there is a market for the third party utilities, in fact, I'm pretty sure that MS is "too scared" to actually release a useful utility because they would no doubt face a backlash from the "dangerous foreign Utility" vendors.

It's interesting that you would label these third party utilities as inherently dangerous but you provide no citations. Are there bugs? No doubt. Have people lost data as a result? No doubt. But people have lost data as a result of chkdsk, and scandisk, and disk defragmentor and the be all end all of "dangerous software" the MS-DOS "RECOVER" command. None of those are third party utilities, therefore your assumption that any first-party utility is magically perfectly safe to use in any context is entirely false.

Is the SYSINTERNALS version of chkdsk, with free source code, any more dangerous then that provided with windows? No, it does exactly the same thing- and adds a few things for some operating systems. Additionally most of the functionality used by chkdsk, disk defragmenter and various other utilities are in fact inherent in the OS.

Quote

When using Defragmenter, monitor the Screen, make a change to a few Text files and run Defragmenter again. Keep doing this until there is nothing more to Defrag, it will take several times!

And what will this accomplish? Does nobody even understand what defragmenting does? because wasting an afternoon making sure that the built in utility does what it was supposed to do in the first place sounds like a gigantic waste of time, especially when there are free utilities that can *gasp* do it properly to begin with!

BC_P
I spend close 5 decades in the IT industry, and know BL..DY well what a defragmenter does.
Both platforms suffer from the syndrome called "The Chaining Effect". It sticks / links the altered / new data on the bottom. Not in between somewhere.

-On a PC it will take several passes to clean up the mess. Have you really tested this out? Of course you would not spend the time testing this out because you consider it all nonsense.
-On a Mainframe, the files are unloaded and reloaded.

During the years I have seen enough Vendors with useless unreliable products.

It is safer to stick with XP utilities if have a XP. Period.

By the way BC_P, do you always take your North American car to an Asian repair shop or visa versa?Quote from: alexK on December 30, 2010, 07:58:45 PM

BC_P
I spend close 5 decades in the IT industry, and know BL..DY well what a defragmenter does.

if you spend 5 decades in IT it doesn't logically follow that you know what a defragmenter does. Clearly you are proof of this.

Quote

Both platforms suffer from the syndrome called "The Chaining Effect". It sticks / links the altered / new data on the bottom. Not in between somewhere.

No. new data is placed in the first available free spot. mainframes may be different but they are largely irrelevant in the context of Microcomputers.

Quote

-On a PC it will take several passes to clean up the mess. Have you really tested this out? Of course you would not spend the time testing this out because you consider it all nonsense.

Have I tested it out? you mean have I used the built in defragmenter repeatedly and edited text files to achieve what is a foggy and ill-specified GOAL at best? No,can't say that I have.
Quote

-On a Mainframe, the files are unloaded and reloaded.

Again, Mainframe!=Minicomputer!=Microcomputer.
Quote

During the years I have seen enough Vendors with useless unreliable products.

There are plenty of those, to be sure, malware, registry cleaners, and the like. But that doesn't make then any and all third party utilities bad. This is particularly driven home by the fact that the very XP utilities to are pushing are in and of themselves based on these "evil foreign software" programs that you are decrying, with very thin reasoning as to why.

Quote

It is safer to stick with XP utilities if have a XP. Period.

It's nice of you to make declarative statements WITHOUT any actual citations, but you're going to need to use something other then some off-hand knowledge about how a mainframe works to convince most people that you even understand how a file system works or how files are stored, let alone that you know what the best tool for messing around with those. Either way, I am forced to agree with your statement that it is "safer" but it's even safer to not run any utility to begin with. Additionally you didn't say that. You originally said that
Quote

All foreign utilities are a danger to your system.

Which is false.

Quote

By the way BC_P, do you always take your North American car to an Asian repair shop or visa versa?

Irrelevant; What you are saying now is that the windows utilities "know more" about how windows is working internally then the third party products, this doesn't begin to address the fact that the XP utilities are licensed versions of third party products; As I noted, for example, Disk Defragmentor as included with XP is simply a lite, reduced functionality version of a "asian repair shop" Executive Software Diskeeper. Microsoft has never written and provided a Disk Defragmenter with any NT-based OS that I am aware of. chkdsk can be duplicated in a few pages of C code, Diskmanagement simply works with well documented partition table and MBR information that is hardly specific to Windows. Disk cleanup doesn't really do anything all that different from CCleaner, since they both call the exact same functions to cleanup (I mean exact same- most Disk Cleanup ROUTINES are in fact external libraries that are added to by various products). Really it's interesting because what you are implicitly saying is that everybody should Use internet Explorer because it's "included" with the OS, and that somehow means it's "safer".

Solve : Not enough disk space when trying to defrag?

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