Is there a way to perform a defrag in Safe Mode?

Hi,See a similar thread here http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistaperformance/thread/78c031f7-cc71-4838-9a3c-d39cba6f1c11 Manu Philip Regards from www.windowsadmin.info

Tried that in the past and it did not work. Tried again and it still does not work. It accepts the command and returns to the prompt with no disk activity.I have Diskeeper, but it will not defrag in safe mode either.

I know this isn't really a fix for why you can't get it to run in Safe Mode, but it's in the same topic: The engineers who redeveloped the defrag system for Windows 7 posted a very detailed blog post on the "Engineering Windows 7" blog about this topic. It is available here. Given the NTFS file system's resiliency to fragmentation and the improvements to the defrag system, coupled with the automatic load-bearing and scheduling, Windows 7's defragmentation best practice is essentially hands-off. It takes care of it for you. Read the blog post for the great information, in fact the whole series of blogs is amazing. I especially like the details about Aero Snap. If this was helpful, please vote. If it solves the issue, please click Propose as Answer. Thanks!

I have heard the same claims about how manually defragging is no longer needed due to improvements in the file system, implementation of background defragging, faster computer hardware, etc. since Windows 95. And the fact is that despite these undoubted improvements, at least some systems develop signficant fragmentation, to the extent that a manual pass in safe mode is helpful. For instance, I am a developer, and in the course of compiling and testing many files of a variety of sizes are constantly being created and destroyed. Add to that the fact that our applications tend to create or consume really large data files. The result is that for me and my colleagues, occasional (about once every 3 months) manual defragging makes a big difference in the peformance of our systems. The process we use has been as follows: 1) use disk cleanup or similar to remove temporary files, unused system restore points, etc. 2) disable the system page file 3) boot into safe mode 4) defrag several times in a row overnight from a batch file 5) turn the page file back on and 5) boot back into normal mode. This always results in a big speedup, if at least a couple of months of normal (for us) use has transpired. What is not helpful is that, apparently, with Service Pack 1 of Windows 7, it was decided that Defrag shall not run in Safe Mode. In fact, the DLLs and .inf file associated with it have vanished from all systems where SP1 has been installed. This is another example of the incredibly frustrating tendency of Microsoft lately to quietly remove existing features as part of a new version of upgrade. This may well be the thing that finally alienates the user community enough to switch to the increasingly large number of alternatives.Software Developer

I wouldn't assume it was malicious. I haven't tried myself, but I'd say that -- if they did remove it across the board -- it was likely due to drivers such as a hard drive controller -- that doesn't load during safe mode and therefore makes it impossible to reliably defrag. What error do you get when you try to do it in Safe Mode? Shawn Keene

This reply seems to come from a different dimension from any post in this thread. From the OP above: "Tried that in the past and it did not work. Tried again and it still does not work. It accepts the command and returns to the prompt with no disk activity." From your reply: " I haven't tried myself, but I'd say that -- if they did remove it across the board -- it was likely due to drivers such as a hard drive controller -- that doesn't load during safe mode and therefore makes it impossible to reliably defrag." This statement is content-free - so many qualifiers and no reference to reality. An idea: go to a Windows 7 command prompt in safe mode and type "defrag c:". Then explain the result with reference to a) list of changes from an update or service pack KB or b) statement from someone in the Windows OS product group. If by some chance on your computer defrag operates normally, note whether you have Windows 7 SP 1 installed or not. I'd say that -- that might be -- helpful. Note that as far as I know it is extremely unlikely that you would need some HDD driver that would not load in safe mode to defrag a HDD. All of the IDE, SATA and SCSI drivers load in this mode. FYI the two computersSoftware Developer