How many passes before defrag finishes?

Anonymous
2010-06-28T19:50:57+00:00

Original Title: "Defragmenting hard drive"

I am try to defrag my hard drive. It's on its 4th pass in 24 hours. How many passes does it make before it's done?

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Anonymous
2010-06-28T22:55:23+00:00

have seen as high as 7.

they seem to get faster the further along it goes.

look into using AUSLOGICS degragger instead.

faster and also has an option to move system files to the front.

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*I am try to defrag my hard drive. It's on its *

*4th pass in 24 hours. How many passes does it make before it's done?*

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-05-05T13:43:44+00:00

    My view is defragmentation taking many passes is sloppy programming on behalf of Microsoft. Years ago I worked on mainframe operating system development and the defragmenter I worked on did :

    1. a scan (to find where things were on the disc, including defragmented files, gaps etc.)
    2. a sort to order what to do
    3. move out (to move big files to remote areas of the disc)
    4. move in (to move files into their new squashed places)

    Worst case is you churn the disc twice plus the sort. So 1Tb should take no more than the time it takes to move about 1Tb data on the worst possible case (in reality much less than this) i.e about 6 hrs with modern HDDs.

    So you could argue there's 3 passes and a sort. I cant see why there should be more but hay I've only got a degree in mathematics - perhaps someone can prove you need more in certain (real life) situations.

    Oh and by the way we allowed defragmentation of files WHILST they were open too (read or write).

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-10-17T05:11:58+00:00

    LOL! I have a 500GB drive full at 300GB used and it went to 7 passes, took 3 minutes.

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-08-28T08:02:55+00:00

    mines on pass 11 41% and been going 24 hours so far and this is on my external hard drive of 750 gb so not looking forward to doing the 2tb internal one

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-07-22T21:08:40+00:00

    I am currently on pass 8 and it's still going... one day, maybe it will end.

    Well, thank goodness I said that cause it just ended. lol :) So defrag on 'Windows 7' can make up to 8 passes,

    maybe more.

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