Can anyone recommend a decent (and free) defrag utility that will work on a Win2K machine with NTFS?

I've attempted to use the Windows utility several times now. The first 3 times I started the program, left it for the night, and when I came back it appeared that it had done absolutely nothing. I got the same exact report back from an analysis. The last time I ran it it worked, but shouldn't it do better than resulting in 17% fragmentation of the drive? I mean, I had only about 60GB of 80GB full, so it's not like I'm pushing the drive to its limits.

Any suggestions?

The only decent defragmenter that I've found for Windows 2K is Norton SpeedDisk. Unfortunately, it's not free, and they insist on bundling it with the waste of space that is the rest of Norton Utilities.

You can try Diskeeper, which, again, is not free, but they do offer a trial period. It wasn't as good as SpeedDisk when I last tried it, but it's apparently a load better these days.

As for the defrag/disk space thing, Win2K defrag sucks. If the disk is more than 70% full, you need to run it loads of times before it starts to bite. Once it's got stuff basically sorted, it's quicker (and better) as long as you run it regularly.

WinXP's defrag seems to be a lot better.

If I understand the way NTFS works, 17% fragmentation is no big deal and you're doing OK with things as they are. You're not going to see a huge performance increase by defragmenting it any better.

I could be wrong, but Googlisms says I'm right, so... Believe what you will.

Of course, this is all academic, as Microsoft themselves stated that NTFS needs no defragmentation.

Of course, this is all academic, as Microsoft themselves stated that NTFS needs no defragmentation.

I think this was before they realized they didn't steal all the good bits of HPFS code. The defrag utility in 2000 seems to show they have backpeddled on this issue.

Thanks. I'll risk sorting through the other Norton utilities and try it out.

Also remember that if you have an anti-virus program running that you should stop that program before running a defrag or a scandisk. Mainly the defrag as the two will tend to chase each other around your drive... i.e oh look someone accessed that file I should scan it for a virus, oh look that file changed I should see if it's been fragmented... and so on.

Thanks, good advice. I can't remember if my virus software was open during those first runs. It may have given up because of that...

the waste of space that is the rest of Norton Utilities

I'm curious, is there a decent program out there that does what Norton Utilities is intended for? I mean, some program that will diagnose problems and fix them, but without scewing things up too badly? And, as usual, is there a free one?

Well I use Spinrite 5. It can find and fix errors on the hardware side you know bad sectors and ones Micro$oft said were bad but arn't. I hear, but I haven't used it yet, that the new version of Nortons is really good but again I haven't acually used it yet.