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Other => General Topics => Topic started by: justinlee on July 30, 2011, 01:52:29 PM
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In Windows Disk Defragmenter it selects the Recovery Partition & System Reserved by default. Now, i cannot see when you would ever have the need to defrag either of these and have in fact heard that defragmenting these areas could cause more harm than anything. So, with that in mind why does Windows even give you the option to defrag them and why are they selected automatically?
Before anyone says it may be a system fault it is not as i recently bought a brand new laptop and those areas are also selected.
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Can you post a screenshot ?
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Screen shots attached. Defrag1.jpg shows the initial disk defrag screen once opened and Defrag2.jpg shows the disks selected by default. This is from the new laptop.
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Well i am not so sure that this is really the Win 7 system reserved partition, it would literally be named "System Reserved" if it were, unless you renamed it that is. Must be something your laptop manufacturer creates for, i am just guessing, restore purposes or who knows what. What is the size of that partition(SYSTEM) ? The system reserved partition that Windows creates is 100 MB, unless you have changed that.
And yes it would probably be pointless to defrag the system reserved partition since it's so small and doesn't really get changed but i never heard it would cause any harm to do so. Where have you read that ?
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Well i am not so sure that this is really the Win 7 system reserved partition, it would literally be named "System Reserved" if it were, unless you renamed it that is. Must be something your laptop manufacturer creates for, i am just guessing, restore purposes or who knows what. What is the size of that partition(SYSTEM) ? The system reserved partition that Windows creates is 100 MB, unless you have changed that.
And yes it would probably be pointless to defrag the system reserved partition since it's so small and doesn't really get changed but i never heard it would cause any harm to do so. Where have you read that ?
It is definitely the System Reserved partition that's just how Samsung choose to put it. I have a Sony Vaio and on that it does say System Reserved and that was also checked by default. As for where i have heard it could cause issues was on sevenforums.com (Well, some said it was harmless, whilst others say it could cause issues)
I have included links to the threads below...
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/should-you-defragment-your-recovery-partition/9bf4f10e-6405-48b7-a370-20075a8c39dd (http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/should-you-defragment-your-recovery-partition/9bf4f10e-6405-48b7-a370-20075a8c39dd)
http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/177538-safe-defragment-recovery-partition.html#post1509319 (http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/177538-safe-defragment-recovery-partition.html#post1509319)
My opinion on this is if they are selected by default then i seriously doubt dragging them would cause any issues but at the same time because these partitions are never really used defragging them seems a little pointless.
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I have included links to the threads below...
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/should-you-defragment-your-recovery-partition/9bf4f10e-6405-48b7-a370-20075a8c39dd (http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/should-you-defragment-your-recovery-partition/9bf4f10e-6405-48b7-a370-20075a8c39dd)
Key comment from that article by Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP And by the way, Windows 7 defrags itself automatically, so you never really need to defrag any partition.
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@justinlee: If the partition contains zero fragments it won't be defragged by WD anyway. It's not like WD keeps re-arranging the files on there each time it runs, it simply leaves the files alone if they are already defragged. Nothing to worry about, the files on that partition probably were never fragmented to begin with so i suspect WD never even touched them. So what if it's selected in the defrag schedule, when the schedule will run, WD will analyze the partition and see it has no fragmented files on there and will simply skip to the next partition in the list.
And i really don't see why it would cause trouble if you defragged it ? That's nonsense imho, ask that poster to explain exactly what harm would come out of defragging it. A proper technical explanation with some examples and not some random guesswork.
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Defragging is like putting a house in order.
I've never heard anyone state that an orderly house isn't as good as a house in disarray.
Defragging simply makes access faster.
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@justinlee: If the partition contains zero fragments it won't be defragged by WD anyway. It's not like WD keeps re-arranging the files on there each time it runs, it simply leaves the files alone if they are already defragged. Nothing to worry about, the files on that partition probably were never fragmented to begin with so i suspect WD never even touched them. So what if it's selected in the defrag schedule, when the schedule will run, WD will analyze the partition and see it has no fragmented files on there and will simply skip to the next partition in the list.
And i really don't see why it would cause trouble if you defragged it ? That's nonsense imho, ask that poster to explain exactly what harm would come out of defragging it. A proper technical explanation with some examples and not some random guesswork.
This is exactly what i was thinking and you have managed to explain this better than people on Microsoft & Seven forums (See that is why i love this forum :) ) It am sure they are checked by default but as they never get fragmented Windows will never Defragment them. Simple! Kinda sounds like i knew the answer to the question i asked in the first place i know, but i was receiving so many different opinions i just really wanted this clarified.
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Hi justinlee ! Glad to have been of some service. :)
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I have read that you should never defrag the Recovery Partition, especially on HP computers. They say it can mess it up. How, I have no idea.
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I have read that you should never defrag the Recovery Partition, especially on HP computers. They say it can mess it up. How, I have no idea.
I messed up my recovery partition on HP. It failed to restore when I need it.
But I'm not sure which s*** I have done ;D
I really can't believe on defragmentation to do that.
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I have read that you should never defrag the Recovery Partition, especially on HP computers. They say it can mess it up. How, I have no idea.
I messed up my recovery partition on HP. It failed to restore when I need it.
But I'm not sure which s*** I have done ;D
I really can't believe on defragmentation to do that.
I have read a bit about this and apparently it can do that.
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I have read that you should never defrag the Recovery Partition, especially on HP computers. They say it can mess it up. How, I have no idea.
I messed up my recovery partition on HP. It failed to restore when I need it.
But I'm not sure which s*** I have done ;D
I really can't believe on defragmentation to do that.
I have read a bit about this and apparently it can do that.
The simple answer to this is to make a restore CD/DVD and get rid of the recovery partition. :)
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I have read that you should never defrag the Recovery Partition, especially on HP computers. They say it can mess it up. How, I have no idea.
I messed up my recovery partition on HP. It failed to restore when I need it.
But I'm not sure which s*** I have done ;D
I really can't believe on defragmentation to do that.
I have read a bit about this and apparently it can do that.
The simple answer to this is to make a restore CD/DVD and get rid of the recovery partition. :)
I couldn't agree more, who in their right mind wants to go back to the factory installation image. The older your system is 3-6 or even longer the less use doing a factory restore is, you may well have done numerous security updates or even SP updates, not to mention application installations, updates and tweaks to settings.
Making regular Image backups (weekly) with hard disk/partition imaging software is really the way to go and keep at least the last 6 backups. Should you ever have to recover from a problem, be that system problem or virus etc. you just recover to the last image backup.
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My Laptop came with Windows Vista some years back. I've since upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate.
I certainly have no intentions to ever going back to Windows Vista. ;D
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I couldn't agree more, who in their right mind wants to go back to the factory installation image. The older your system is 3-6 or even longer the less use doing a factory restore is, you may well have done numerous security updates or even SP updates, not to mention application installations, updates and tweaks to settings.
Making regular Image backups (weekly) with hard disk/partition imaging software is really the way to go and keep at least the last 6 backups. Should you ever have to recover from a problem, be that system problem or virus etc. you just recover to the last image backup.
I perform a weekly backup of my system, including image onto an external HDD. I am correct in saying that i can also create a new set of Recovery Disks that if ever needed would restore my system to the exact state it is in now, with all the programs, settings, drivers etc? On previous occasions when i re-installed Windows i created a new set of recovery disks immediately after re-installation so obviously once used they would restore my system to its original 'Out if the box' state.
I suppose on the other hand i could question why that would be needed as the back up of my system the way it is now is on an external HDD and constantly being updated so even if i had to re-install Windows using the original restore disks i could then restore to the latest image afterwards. But. I would still like to know if the latest image can be saved to a DVD Boot Disk just in case the external HDD ever failed?
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That rather depends on what the backup software is.
I can't recall if the win7 backup feature allows you to create a recovery disk as such. I have never investigated that as a don't have a cd/dvd on my win7 netbook.
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If you go to backup and restore then up the top left there is create system image, open that and you have the choice to put it to hard disc or DVD
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That rather depends on what the backup software is.
I can't recall if the win7 backup feature allows you to create a recovery disk as such. I have never investigated that as a don't have a cd/dvd on my win7 netbook.
It allows to to create a System Repair Disk, which is different from Create System Image See attached file.
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click on create system image then you get the choice.
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I have read that you should never defrag the Recovery Partition, especially on HP computers. They say it can mess it up. How, I have no idea.
I messed up my recovery partition on HP. It failed to restore when I need it.
But I'm not sure which s*** I have done ;D
I really can't believe on defragmentation to do that.
I have read a bit about this and apparently it can do that.
The simple answer to this is to make a restore CD/DVD and get rid of the recovery partition. :)
How would I do that? I have a Dell that has a "RECOVERY" partition that shows can be defragged by the W7 defrag tool. I don't need that RECOVERY partition since I do System Images every 2 weeks............How would I delete that?
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I've switched to SSD on my netbook and now i'll never have to bother with defragmentation :P
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Forget my question above. I did some searching and it seems it's not at all a good idea to remove the Dell RECOVERY partition on a W7 computer..........The machine won't boot.
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Forget my question above. I did some searching and it seems it's not at all a good idea to remove the Dell RECOVERY partition on a W7 computer..........The machine won't boot.
You must be using a different search engine that me. ;D
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Forget my question above. I did some searching and it seems it's not at all a good idea to remove the Dell RECOVERY partition on a W7 computer..........The machine won't boot.
You would presumably also have to replace the MBR (Master Boot Record), and there are ways to do that.
I find it strange that it wouldn't boot as it should default to boot into the primary boot partition. The only time it would be a problem is if you tried to interrupt the normal boot sequence to get into the Dell recovery console or recovery partition.
Edit: I have never had a Dell (goes back a long way to the cr*pware it used to install) and I didn't do any searches, just basic logic that it would only be an issue for trying to boot into the Dell recovery console or recovery partition.
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I have read that you should never defrag the Recovery Partition, especially on HP computers. They say it can mess it up. How, I have no idea.
I messed up my recovery partition on HP. It failed to restore when I need it.
But I'm not sure which s*** I have done ;D
I really can't believe on defragmentation to do that.
I have read a bit about this and apparently it can do that.
The simple answer to this is to make a restore CD/DVD and get rid of the recovery partition. :)
If you mean make an OS installation disc and then reformat the drive, you're right. If you mean just removing the Recovery Partition and leaving everything else as it is it's not quite that easy. In order to remove it without causing problems, you have to follow the procedure given by the manufacturer. Just removing it by other means can seriously compromise the machine. The best way to do it is to download an ISO of the operating system and burn it to a disk. After saving the drivers from whatever folder they are stored in, (for HP it's called SWSETUP and you just save the whole folder to an external media) then reformat the drive and install the OS from your created disk using the product key that came with the machine. You will then have a fresh OS with no extra partitions. Or you can make a system image if you have the proper software and hardware and just copy that to the HDD after reformatting it. I'm not sure if the system image would include the Recovery partition or not though since I have never made an image.
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Going back to my original post i have given this some thought. In my household we have 2 Sony Vaios and a Samsung laptop and they ALL have the Recovery Partition & System Reserved checked by default in disk Defragmenter. With this is mind surely it is of no harm to leave them checked.
The likelihood of the Recovery Partition ever becoming fragmented is practically zero, but if for whatever reason it did then Windows would do what it needed to do and Defrag it. It Defraging those partitions would cause harm then i cannot see how the computer manufacturer would leave them checked.
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justinlee its up to you if you want to defrag the recovery partition or not, as you said it's unlikely to get fragmented and at the same time it will not harm anything if you do.
Did you manage to work out how to put a system image to disc ?
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Did you manage to work out how to put a system image to disc ?
Yes i knew this already but have chosen not to do it as i do a weekly backup to an external HDD anyway and i include a system image. Btw, thanks for your advice. Greatly appreciated :)
Apologies if it seems i am going on about this one but its just that in all the forums i have posted no one seems to be able to give a straight yes or no answer. Apart from in the Avast forum of course ;)
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If you actually analyze your recovery partition with a defragger, you will see that it is usually on the order of 95% fragmented. The main reason why it is not recommended to attempt defragging it is that there is not enough free space in that partition to accommodate all of the file movement that would have to take place. It would most likely fail and leave it in a broken state.
I'll say it again, you should never defragment it unless you want to make it unusable.
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If you actually analyze your recovery partition with a defragger, you will see that it is usually on the order of 95% fragmented. The main reason why it is not recommended to attempt defragging it is that there is not enough free space in that partition to accommodate all of the file movement that would have to take place. It would most likely fail and leave it in a broken state.
I'll say it again, you should never defragment it unless you want to make it unusable.
Why does windows have the recovery partition ticked for defragging by default then ? there not going to set it like that if it would do damage.
I just checked my win 7 64 desktop and windows defragmenter said after an analyze that it 0% fragmented then i analyzed the same partition with defraggler and it said 53% fragmented so i defraged the recovery partition with defraggler and now it's 0% :)
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Perhaps because it just sees it as another HDD partition, I doubt it even knows it is a recovery partition as that in essence is no different to any other partition.
If it were a hidden partition, then perhaps it wouldn't flag it and other partitions by default.
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Both programs ( win defrag and defraggler ) both recognize that partition as HP Recovery but yes essentially it shouldn't be any different to the other partition.
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Yes, but isn't that just its descriptive name rather than just a drive/partition letter, it isn't actually detecting it as a recovery partition. I name my partitions also and it would just be retrieving that partition name as Puran Defrag does on my system.
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Why does windows have the recovery partition ticked for defragging by default then ? there not going to set it like that if it would do damage.
I just checked my win 7 64 desktop and windows defragmenter said after an analyze that it 0% fragmented then i analyzed the same partition with defraggler and it said 53% fragmented so i defraged the recovery partition with defraggler and now it's 0% :)
a)WD does NOT attempt to defrag a partition if free space is less than 15 percent.
b)WD does NOT display file fragments larger than 64MB in statistics and it does not defrag them either.
I do not have any experience with defragging recovery partitions because a)i would get rid of it if i had it, just like i did on my Acer netbook and b)i've built my own desktop systems since i was 12 yrs old and i never ever owned a desktop brand computer(and never will) such as Dell or HP or whatever. c)Why the hell would i want to defrag it anyway ? Absolutely no real reason to defrag it.
But from the info i posted above it should be clear that WD is extremely safe and should not cause any data loss on partitions. I cannot say the same for 3rd party defraggers but MS designed WD to be really safe.
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c)Why the hell would i want to defrag it anyway ? Absolutely no real reason to defrag it.
Something nice to do when you have time to waste. ;D Something nice to do when you listen
to people who tell you that defragging your computer will speed up your computer. ;D
Would you like some other stupid reasons ???
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I am We are talking about the recovery partition Bob, not our system partitions or other partitions that our HDD's access all the time.
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I am We are talking about the recovery partition Bob, not our system partitions or other partitions that our HDD's access all the time.
I know which I mentioned wasting time things to do. None of these thing do any good unless you have a totally fragmented drive.
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Why does windows have the recovery partition ticked for defragging by default then ? there not going to set it like that if it would do damage.
I just checked my win 7 64 desktop and windows defragmenter said after an analyze that it 0% fragmented then i analyzed the same partition with defraggler and it said 53% fragmented so i defraged the recovery partition with defraggler and now it's 0% :)
a)WD does NOT attempt to defrag a partition if free space is less than 15 percent.
b)WD does NOT display file fragments larger than 64MB in statistics and it does not defrag them either.
I do not have any experience with defragging recovery partitions because a)i would get rid of it if i had it, just like i did on my Acer netbook and b)i've built my own desktop systems since i was 12 yrs old and i never ever owned a desktop brand computer(and never will) such as Dell or HP or whatever. c)Why the hell would i want to defrag it anyway ? Absolutely no real reason to defrag it.
But from the info i posted above it should be clear that WD is extremely safe and should not cause any data loss on partitions. I cannot say the same for 3rd party defraggers but MS designed WD to be really safe.
Good on you for building your own computer at 12 ( your special ) ::) maybe you can try to build your own netbook and then you wont have to buy brand versions of those either, and quite frankly you couldn't build this computer for the price that i paid for it.
I also know that there is no reason to defrag the recovery partition but i wanted to for a test, is that alright with you !
And lastly i fail to see anywhere above that you posted where you have shown that it is safe to defrag recovery, that is why i tested it myself.
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a)I mentioned that i've been building my own pc's just to explain why i don't own any brand name desktop pc's. I build my own pc's simply because i enjoy doing it and i like to select and buy every component separately. That's not bragging it's simply explaining why i don't own any brand name desktops.
b)Yes i would probably build my own laptop if i did not get this netbook for an amazing price. How does 20 euros sound for a netbook ?
c)Of course it is alright if you want to defrag your recovery partition, i never said you shouldn't, simply that i see no real reason for doing it. What you do with your machines is none of my bussines. You can set them on fire for all i care.
d)If you can't understand why i posted that info on WD(and i am talking about WD not defrag programs in general) then perhaps you need to re-read my post. And if you don't understand it, well then that's your problem.
e)What the hell are you getting so worked up about ?
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Below is some advice i got from a guy called 'Digerati' a Microsoft MVP on w7forums.com
Make of it what you will...
The alternative defraggers are, at best, a waste of disk space, at worse, a waste of money too. It is important to note that if you need to defrag, then defragging is simply treating the symptom, and not the cause of the problem. The cause of the problem is the USER has failed to keep a sufficient amount of "free" disk space available. And the cure is to free up or buy more disk space.
Whenever you defrag a drive, the second, and I mean that literally, the second you start to use that drive again, fragmentation starts again. Temporary Internet files, cookies, OS temp files, revised documents and other files, now a different size, will be moved and/or split, starting the fragmentation process again. For this reason alone, it is pointless to use a more aggressive program to eke out one more percentage point of defragging. All that extra effort is lost, almost immediately.
The absolute best way to minimize the adverse affects of fragmentation is to ensure you have ample free space on the drive. If you are defragmenting because you are low on disk space, it is senseless, and counterproductive to download yet another program that takes up more space.
To optimize defragging, boot into Safe Mode, run Windows Disk Cleanup to purge your system of 1000s of cookies and temporary files. Reboot into Safe Mode again to delete any files Disk Cleanup (or CC) could not delete while running, then run defrag.
Note: Do NOT run any defragger (including Windows 7 defragger) automatically via a schedule. The scheduled defragging will be counterproductive due to the 1000s of temp files on the disk.
Note 2: I am not saying the alternative defraggers are no good, I am just saying they are not needed, and are a waste of disk space. Windows' own is just fine, and already there.
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I actually agree with Digerati(he knows what he is talking about btw), but his post is assuming that you have all your data on a single partition on a single HDD. Not all of us have that kind of a setup.
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c)Why the hell would i want to defrag it anyway ? Absolutely no real reason to defrag it.
Something nice to do when you have time to waste. ;D Something nice to do when you listen
to people who tell you that defragging your computer will speed up your computer. ;D
Would you like some other stupid reasons ???
The second one is not stupid actually, it can speed up the computer if the fragmentation is excessive. For the gamers among us, it also can make a big difference if the game files (some of which can be as large as 4gb) are fragmented causing excessive seeking by the HD during game play. It is true though that today's hard disks are so much faster than the ones that existed when defraggers came into vogue that defragmentation now has far less impact on overall system performance than it did back then.
Having said that, defragging the recovery partition will have no effect at all on performance since it's very rarely, if ever, accessed.
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c)Why the hell would i want to defrag it anyway ? Absolutely no real reason to defrag it.
Something nice to do when you have time to waste. ;D Something nice to do when you listen
to people who tell you that defragging your computer will speed up your computer. ;D
Would you like some other stupid reasons ???
The second one is not stupid actually, it can speed up the computer if the fragmentation is excessive. For the gamers among us, it also can make a big difference if the game files (some of which can be as large as 4gb) are fragmented causing excessive seeking by the HD during game play. It is true though that today's hard disks are so much faster than the ones that existed when defraggers came into vogue that defragmentation now has far less impact on overall system performance than it did back then.
Having said that, defragging the recovery partition will have no effect at all on performance since it's very rarely, if ever, accessed.
If you had read the following, you would have realized that that statement was already made. :)
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=82380.msg674777#msg674777 (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=82380.msg674777#msg674777)
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The second one is not stupid actually, it can speed up the computer if the fragmentation is excessive. For the gamers among us, it also can make a big difference if the game files (some of which can be as large as 4gb) are fragmented causing excessive seeking by the HD during game play. It is true though that today's hard disks are so much faster than the ones that existed when defraggers came into vogue that defragmentation now has far less impact on overall system performance than it did back then.
Having said that, defragging the recovery partition will have no effect at all on performance since it's very rarely, if ever, accessed.
Yeah exactly, i have a separate partition on my second HDD just for my games and that is the one that i really want\need to keep well defragged and optimized, as you said it really helps during gameplay.
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"Digerati" to me, sounds a bit like a Microsoft fanboy, he probably uses MSE and IE9 too. ;)
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"Digerati" to me, sounds a bit like a Microsoft fanboy, he probably uses MSE and IE9 too. ;)
IE9 is great and by many reports is the best browser available now. MSE is another story though
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"Digerati" to me, sounds a bit like a Microsoft fanboy, he probably uses MSE and IE9 too. ;)
IE9 is great and by many reports is the best browser available now. MSE is another story though
You're right IE9 is great and i use it along with Chrome. I do find myself going back to Chrome more because it just has that edge on the speed front.