Hi, My name is Karin
I have a HP Laptop with windows XP Media Center Edition, My Recovery dirve wants me to defrag it and it realy needs to be done but I only have 9% free.
Most of the D: drive is fragmented and it happend when I had to do a recovery on it.
HP said it is not supposed to defrag! Now if that is true then why do I keep getting told to do it.
Can any one please help me I have tried different way to defrag and have not had any luck yet?
I know that you all can help me or tell me my laptop is freeking out on me.
Thank you in advance for the help,
Karin
What is the precise message that you are getting, that tells you to defrag your recovery partition?
Microsoft Defrag will not run if FREE Space is less that 11-15%.
Recovery partitions are generally quite small, and have small amounts of FREE Space even when first created
But please tell us….. Have you Saved any additional file information to your Recovery Partition.
You should not be doing so.
If you have Saved files to the Recovery Partition, consider moving them to your C:\ drive or to other storage.
You may be able to squeeze a little more FREE Space in your Recovery Partition by Reducing the amount of Space Reserved for System Restore (Restore Points). You can "get by" with as little as 200 or 300mb.
*** Caution: "Do not" turn-off your System Restore……… at least until we understand the situation better and are assured that your system is not at risk and is functioning stable.
Do you know how to "reduce" Space Reserved for System Restore?
You should defrag this volume
I normaly do not have anything else to do with this drive so as far as I know I have not saved anything else to the drive but it looks like I might have but I do not know how I did it.
I do not know how to get into the recovery partition. My computer will not let me in at all
I do not know how to enlarg or reduce the partion either.
I only have 9% of the partition empty so it will not defrag.
I can show you what the files are.
Here is the copy,
olume HP_RECOVERY (D:)
Volume size = 11.75 GB
Cluster size = 4 KB
Used space = 10.60 GB
Free space = 1.15 GB
Percent free space = 9 %
Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 47 %
File fragmentation = 94 %
Free space fragmentation = 0 %
File fragmentation
Total files = 1,782
Average file size = 6 MB
Total fragmented files = 17
Total excess fragments = 18
Average fragments per file = 1.01
Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 0 bytes
Total fragments = 0
Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 53
Fragmented folders = 6
Excess folder fragments = 23
——————————————————————————–
Fragments File Size Most fragmented files
2 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE.INP
3 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_01.INP
2 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_02.INP
2 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_03.INP
2 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_04.INP
2 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_05.INP
2 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_06.INP
2 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_07.INP
2 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_08.INP
2 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_09.INP
2 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_10.INP
2 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_11.INP
2 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_12.INP
2 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_13.INP
2 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_14.INP
2 620 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_15.INP
2 390 MB \PRELOAD\BASE1.INP
Hope this helps
Thank you for the help,
Karin
I do not know how to get into the recovery partition. My computer will not let me in at all
I do not know how to enlarg or reduce the partion either.
I only have 9% of the partition empty so it will not defrag.
Hope this helps
Thank you for the help,
Karin
Hello Wildhorse,
Until Doug comes back to answer your post, this is the way you can reduce your Systems Restore disk space saved.
Right click on My Computer on your desktop>properties>system restore tab>highlight the drive>click settings> and pull the slider to the left until it is showing between 2 and 3%>apply>okay>okay again.
If you have more than one drive as I have, repeat with each drive as above.
Reboot and then attempt to defrag again. This result will depend on how much System Restore disk space you had saved as to whether you will regain enough to allow you to defrag.
Kind regards, and post back as I am sure Doug will come on when he is not busy.
Hi Wildhorse,
It would be best not to attempt to defrag your recovery partition.
The recovery partition was put there by the machine's manufacturer to restore your machine to its factory condition should you ever hit severe problems with your operating system that cannot be resolved by the usual means.
Be warned that if you do this (activate the image on your recovery partition) all your data, files, address book, documents, letters, photographs, music, your PHd thesis etc and all the programmes you have either downloaded or put on your machine since you bought it may be lost. This is a good reason for ensuring that your back up of all your important stuff is 100% up to date accurate and reproducible. As you can see the recovery partition is a powerful tool, but is only to be used after all the usual things have been tried.
The recovery partition is by necessity small and no application should be writing to it in the general course of events.
The size of the partition should remain constant, and there is no need to defrag it.
NOTE it is wise to defrag your c drive and data drives if you have them but with your recovery partition please leave it alone! (The degree of fragmentation will not cause any problems) The tool that is advising you to defrag it cannot differentiate between defragging of your c drive or data drives (that would be good) and the Recovery partition (that would be bad!)
The documentation that came with your machine or is downloadable from the manufacturers website will give you full details on how to deploy it should it ever become necessary. For this reason it would be wise to familiarise yourself with the steps (perhaps print them out for safe keeping) so you are prepared. Make sure you have the recovery discs if they are available as these will usually also contain copies of your drivers.
To sum up, don't worry, but back everything up, and download the manual if necessary.
Regards
paws
If you continue to have difficulty with this machine or this issue, please provide a bit more information about your machine, the specific utility that is prompting you to defrag, and any other information about what you are/were doing directly around the time when the problem occurred.
To get a good overview of your machine, what's installed, how the hardware is running, and what might be recommended to optimize the machine's function, consider running the PCPitstop Full Tests and posting the Results here in this thread for our Techs to assist you with recommendations.
Please Run the PCPitstop Full Tests, here:
http://www.pcpitstop.com Register and create a password Accept the ActiveX component to allow your machine to run the Full Tests
Registering and accepting the ActiveX are both SAFE and FREE. Full Tests is the first item in the left hand column of that page.
The Full Tests take less than 5 minutes for most machines.
Once you have your Results, please post the TechExpress Link back here into this thread for review.
TechExpress is the last item on the list in the yellow box in upper right area of any Results page.
Post the entire URL link information back here into this Forum thread.
Caution: During the testing of Video Adapter, a variety of patterns, shapes, colors and text are “flashed” onto the users monitor screen. In the many thousands of daily uses of the PCPitstop Full Tests over several years, two individuals who suffer epilepsy experienced discomfort and temporary dizziness when viewing the flashing patterns.
If you know that you are susceptible to photo driven seizure, look away from your screen during the Video Adapter testing sequence.
I do not know how to get into the recovery partition. My computer will not let me in at all 
