This article has been viewed 43, times. Learn more This guide will teach you how to do a manual disk defrag through the Windows command prompt. Some Windows users have trouble with the Disk Defragmenter program so this is a solution to that problem, and might come in handy for other instances, too. Log in Social login does not work in incognito and private browsers. Please log in with your username or email to continue. No account yet?
Create an account. Edit this Article. We use cookies to make wikiHow great. By using our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Cookie Settings. Learn why people trust wikiHow. Download Article Explore this Article Steps. Tips and Warnings. Related Articles. So it comes as no surprise that I'm a big fan of Vista's automatic-defrag setting. But I also know better than to put all my faith in Microsoft's ability to keep my system healthy. Last year, I started using Auslogics' free Disk Defrag utility, which works with Windows and up.
The interface of Vista's Disk Defragmenter is nonexistent; the utility is clearly designed for behind-the-scenes operation. Your only options are to set the defrag schedule, select the volumes to defrag, and run the defragger. XP's version of the Disk Defragmenter isn't much more functional, although it does give you a little more graphical feedback about the state of your drives. You get more control over your disk defrags by running Windows' defragger utility from a command prompt and entering command switches that modify its actions.
Start by opening a command-prompt window. At the command prompt, type defrag? In both XP and Vista, you can add -a to the "defrag" command to analyze the drive only, -f to force a defrag with less than 15 percent free space, -b to defrag only boot files, and -v to show a "verbose" report of the defrag.
Vista adds a couple of other switches: -i defrags even when the PC isn't idle, -c works on all drives, and -w processes chunks of files smaller than 64MB; without this switch, Vista's defragger ignores all file fragments smaller than 64MB. For example, to defrag all your Vista volumes regardless of fragment size and when there's less than 15 percent free space, enter this line at the command prompt and then press Enter:.
The utility will display a report on the selected volumes prior to beginning the defragmentation. If you're doing it on a large scale with many computers, the time savings when backing up a properly defragged hard disk compared to one where the files are broken into many fragments may be significant. Another possible reason might be if you are capturing video on your computer and don't want any frames to be skipped; if the disk is fragmented without a contiguous free space for the entire video file, the hard disk head may have to skip over occupied sectors in the middle of recording, causing your recording software to skip frames.
To get Vista's defragger to give you some information about your hard disk, and to control which hard disk or partition it defragments, you will need to use the command line defragmentation utility.
It will still not give you any feedback while defragmenting, just as the GUI version of the defragmenter will not, but at least you can get information on the fragmentation level of your hard disk, control whether to defragment even if the file fragments are larger than 64 MB, and control which partition or hard disk to defragment. To use the command line defrag tool in Windows Vista, you have to run the Command Prompt as an administrator. In Vista, this is not automatic even if you are logged in as the administrator.
Click the Windows button previously the Start button in earlier versions of Windows , the All Programs menu item and the Accessories menu item. Right click the "Command Prompt" button and select "Run as administrator". A command prompt window will appear. Everything you run in this Window will be run with administrator rights. The "-a" parameter tells the defragger to perform a fragmentation analysis. The "-v" option tells it to be verbose in its report. If you want a report on drive D: or some other drive, substitute that drive letter in place of c:.
Be aware that defrag may tell you that you have no fragmented files even if you have some. On NTFS partitions, the reporting function of defrag does not consider fragmented files with fragments greater than 64 MB as fragmented. If you need truly detailed information, you may have to consider getting a third party defragmenter such as those listed on the Free Defragmentation Utilities page on thefreecountry.
The "-r" option tells the defragmentation utility to treat files that are fragmented with 64 MB fragments or larger as though they are not fragmented. This partial defragmentation is the default for "defrag", and it's the only way the GUI defragmenter in Vista works. You can also force the defragmenter to defragment everything.
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