[SBernheart]

>> C:\Program Files\INITIO\Button Manager v1.874 <<

I found this and didn't know what it was in my Startup folder in 'Programs' and I dragged it from that folder to the end of the programs list. I don't know if that actually stops it from 'running' 24/7, but I had to figure out WHAT it was, WHERE it came from and WHY it was there in the first place every time I restarted my computer.

That said, I'm posting in Hardware, Components & Peripherals because I'm planning on performing a system recovery because my husband and I are, quite frankly, not happy with the performance of late and we've had a cable connection for the longest time so that shouldn't be happening. It's all my fault really. I didn't know when to 'save' stuff and when not to, so I've acquired a LOT of saved execute files I didn't need, for ex., as I could have easily gone back to a program's homepage to re-install something, but I know better now and I just want to go back to the beginning and start over, you know?

I bought a 500GB external hard drive to backup my personal files and to use in the future for photos and such so my hubby can't blame me for poor streams, etc., etc. Now that I'm happy with backing up everything it would let me back up, do I click on the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon in the system tray and THEN unplug it from the tower? I do realize that once I want to reconnect them, my peripherals will need to be 'recognized' once again and that I'll need to use any CD's that came with components like my printer or web cam, for example.

I know I'm all over the place when it comes to staying 'on topic' and maybe I actually should be posting elsewhere, but my original concern was my new external hard drive and protecting the backup of files I do want to use again after I restore my computer's default settings. Part of that concern included finding info on the 'ButtonManager v1.874' I recently discovered. After doing a Google on it, I found words I recognized. It was ArcSoft's 'TotalMedia Backup & Record' program that came with SimpleTech's SimpleDrive that the ButtonManager belonged to. Can anyone tell me what it is? It supposedly originates from a company called 'Initio', but going to their homepage at http://www.initio.com/ proved fruitless -- at least to me anyway. The user guide that came with the backup program didn't list anything at all about it. A search in their manual didn't even know about the 'Backup Monitor' I found in my system tray was, much less the ButtonManager. At least I could SEE that the monitor belonged to ArcSoft's program because it listed it in my Start Menu's 'Program Files' under ArcSoft. Clicking on THAT gave me a pop-up that said it was 'already running', but there's nothing at all in the manual about what IT does either. I mean, who writes these things anyway? LOL Depending on what it's used for, I'd like to get rid of the ButtonManager, if for no other reason than wanting to start fresh withOUT programs I don't use or don't want attached withOUT my choosing.

Maybe before I perform the recovery I'll check out other threads in other forums, but for today, I'd just like some info about what the manuals neglected to include like about the ButtonManager and what it does, what the Backup Manager does and most importantly, how to properly remove and care for the information I've just backed up so that when I plug it back in again and my computer 'recognizes' it once more, ALL my information I left on there will be there waiting for me. That's a lot of questions, I know, but it's really important to me right now that what I'm saving will be there 'when I get back'.

Thanks, in advance, for any help you can provide. I really am frustrated by the fact that the information I'm looking for isn't included in the user guides to begin with, but thank God for public forums! I really wouldn't know what to do without places like this. I attached a screen pic with a little info about the ButtonManager as I found it thru Google, if it helps. Unfortunately, it didn't help me....

SBernheart [;}]

PS: The ButtonManager IS listed in my 'Add/Remove Programs', but since I don't know what it is or what it's for, I'm reluctant to remove it until I do. Again, thank you.

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Does your external hard drive have a button on it that you can press to initiate a backup? If so, I'd guess that this is what the button manager software is for. It's not absolutely necessary for an external hard drive to function, but is likely part of a program that is automatically installed when you plug in the drive.

As for removing an external drive, yes you should go through the "safely remove" process prior to unplugging the drive. The reason for this is that XP sometimes caches the information you tell it to write to a disk for a short time before actually performing the write. Performing the "safely remove" routine tells the system to write out whatever it's holding in cache, and then tells you when it's safe to unplug the device. If you simply unplug the disk, not all the data may have been written to it and may become lost. Unplugging the drive without doing this will not cause physical damage, but it can cause data loss and corruption.

Unplugging a USB peripheral once it's been installed generally does not mean that you need to completely reinstall any drivers that came with the device should you plug it back in later. If you plug the device into the exact same USB port it was connected to when you installed it initially, it should set itself right back up with minimal fuss. If you plug it back into a different port, the system may see it as new hardware, simply because it hasn't seen that device on that port before. In this case it may prompt you to go through the "Add New Hardware" wizard, but if you tell it to automatically install the device, it should find the right drivers by itself.

Edited by jeffk813, 29 February 2008 - 05:25 AM.

[jeffk813]

Does your external hard drive have a button on it that you can press to initiate a backup? If so, I'd guess that this is what the button manager software is for. It's not absolutely necessary for an external hard drive to function, but is likely part of a program that is automatically installed when you plug in the drive.

As for removing an external drive, yes you should go through the "safely remove" process prior to unplugging the drive. The reason for this is that XP sometimes caches the information you tell it to write to a disk for a short time before actually performing the write. Performing the "safely remove" routine tells the system to write out whatever it's holding in cache, and then tells you when it's safe to unplug the device. If you simply unplug the disk, not all the data may have been written to it and may become lost. Unplugging the drive without doing this will not cause physical damage, but it can cause data loss and corruption.

Unplugging a USB peripheral once it's been installed generally does not mean that you need to completely reinstall any drivers that came with the device should you plug it back in later. If you plug the device into the exact same USB port it was connected to when you installed it initially, it should set itself right back up with minimal fuss. If you plug it back into a different port, the system may see it as new hardware, simply because it hasn't seen that device on that port before. In this case it may prompt you to go through the "Add New Hardware" wizard, but if you tell it to automatically install the device, it should find the right drivers by itself.

Edited by jeffk813, 29 February 2008 - 05:25 AM.

[SRX660]

If you have already hooked the external hard drive up to your computer the file you are referring to is most likely used by that external drive. In XP it is not wise to "JUST" unplug a external HD without stopping it first. By doing that it can lead to where the drive is not recoginized. I know this because i loaned my music collection(10,000 songs)that was on an external drive to my daughter and she continue to unplug and replug the drive when she wanted to look for songs. I got the drive back months later and ended up using a recovery program to get my songs back off the drive. I no longer use external drives for long term backup but instead use DVD's. I made a double set of DVD's( 11 dvds in each set) of my music so i will not lose all of them ever again. PITA, yes but now i do not worry about losing anything.

Any programs i download from the internet i always make a text file of where i bought it and any serial numbers i need for the program. I put these txt files and the original exe programs in folders named for the program and burn them to cd's or dvd's. That way i never lose any of them either. That is why i have some games and programs that i am running on my newest computers that i bought many years ago.

I firmly believe in backup,backup,and backup again. I have lost files that were only a week old because my experments caused a computer crash and i did not backup that week. Just installing downloaded software can cause a major crash so it is not wise to trust that every program is good.

Since you are running XP just installing the external software is really all you will need. In reality you don't even need the software for XP to see a external drive. I have a laptop external drive and a desktop external drive that all my XP computers see without any software installed at all. All the files on the drives are seen and i have had no problems with short term storage on these drives. It comes in handy when someone asks you to save certain data before a reformat and reinstall of windows.

SLOW computers? I have seen many. H-P and Compaq are some of the worse i have found for added unneeded software. I usually reformat and reinstall XP for a regular Microsoft retail CD and then install the drivers i download from the H-P website. This usually makes the computers pretty fast for what they are. Yes, i lose the restore partition, but i also usually make a GHOST set of CD's as recovery CD's After setting the computer up with the software the customer wants. I have not had a failure with Ghost yet, but it did take me "first bad CD" to learn what i needed to do to make recovery cd's.

SRX660

[SBernheart]

Yes, Jeff, my external hard drive does have an 'automatic backup' button on the component itself and if that's what the ButtonManager is for, that's fine. You gotta admit, though, when I did a search for 'ButtonManager' -- with AND without a space between 'Button' & 'Manager' -- and the User Guide for the drive didn't recognize it AT ALL, that it was weird, to say the least. Why not tell a person what 'comes with'?

>> If you plug the device into the exact same USB port it was connected to when you installed it initially, it should set itself right back up with minimal fuss. <<

That's something I didn't know and I'll keep that in mind if I need to use it elsewhere, but for my system recovery, I assumed that NOTHING would be recognized or remembered from one port or the next. It will set right up, however. All I had to do (if I wanted to) was to use the CD it came with to install a backup program (in my case, from ArcSoft called TotalMedia Backup & Restore), but that I think should still be there when I plug it back in UNLESS it needs to install something or some part on the computer itself (not just on the external drive, I mean). If it's installed on the external drive and that's all it needs, then I won't even have to monkey around with that. I'll know when I plug it in if that's something else I have to do. It's no biggy. I was mostly concerned with keeping what I'm backing up now on there safe and sound.

SRX660, that's a LOT of music -- WOW. Yeah, I can grasp what you're saying. Sure is nice just to have something explained for a change, you know? Like I said to Jeff, what's up with these manuals? LOL I never did get too much into burning CD's (I should install a DVD burner next), but it wasn't for a lack of trying. When I found out the first time I needed a system restore that I had to go back to square one because XP was 'nice enough' to have built-in restore capabilities, I wished someone would have explained that to me, too. Instead, when I tried to get info out of the store I bought it from, they acted like I was retarded or something. Don't these places get that I wouldn't be asking the 'dumb questions' if I understood in the first place? I was actually disappointed that I didn't get CD's too, but what can 'ya do? You live and learn just like you did with your daughter, right? LOL LOL I do plan on making a set of my own this time around. Can I make the CD's without all the crap it's going to re-install with the recovery? After I delete them, I mean. It'd be nice to not have to see them again and that the settings I prefer are saved as well, rather than the settings the factory installed.

As for slow computers, my husband can't stand it when he's watching one of his sports' streams and the thing freezes and rejoins in progress and he misses something. It's kind of like when the digital cable freezes and comes back where it feels like and we just miss whatever was in between. God I hate that! What are we paying over a hundred dollars a month for if both the TV and the computer don't run up to par? Geez....

I remember when we first got this thing (about 6 or 7 years years ago, which is probably near old age in computer years LOL), it came with all kinds of stuff we never used. Programs like Word, Quicken, games we never played, several music clubs that offered trials (so why did we get any of THEIR software?), programs we didn't even know what their function was (much less used them) and a whole bunch of stuff I can't remember anymore -- but I'm about to get it back all over again once I do this restore!! LOL What can I do besides delete the programs from the Add/Remove Programs page? I mean, is that all I NEED to do? See, one of my problems is that I don't know what half the stuff is as far as files/folders go and don't even get me STARTED on the Task Manager and the 'Processes' tab! If I knew what most of that stuff running on there was, I'd probably shut a lot of it down and THEN I wouldn't have so many headaches and my computer would be running a lot smoother, am I right? That's another forum's question, though. For now, I'm content with my decision to do this system restore, now that I have a new external drive for all my photos. Before the new digital cameras, it wasn't so bad, but my newest camera can pump out 1 - 1.5MB pics and larger. Take hundreds of pictures and those MB's add up real fast! But I digress. I imagine you have a similar experience with all your music, SRX660. It really doesn't matter WHAT you're into, as long as you have a place (or lots of CD's/DVD's) to store all you want saved.

As long as I'm in this forum, one of you guys could answer one more thing about the external drive for me, if you don't mind explaining something. Say, for the sake of this thread, I do restore my system and now my drive is plugged back in and running like it should, assuming my 'stuff' is saved on the drive (rather than on an internal one like before), will this new drive cause the computer to slow down based on the original system configurations? I've only got a Celeron 1.70GHz with 760MB of RAM, 5GB on my internal D drive and 32GB on my C drive and I'm not even allowed to perform a disc defrag because I'm told that there's not enough room to do it in. I try to dump temp files, cookies and such and when it's offered to rid my desktop of unused programs (not that THAT actually does anything, I'm just saying), I'm happy to do my part. So, if I'm truly starting at square one again AND I delete the programs that will be re-installed again AND I'm now saving my personal files/photos on the external drive, will my computer be slowed down at all by this new drive running along with all the rest? The only thing about it I THINK I understand is that if it's not used within a set amount of time (say fifteen minutes), it stops spinning until needed again. Does this mean that when it's NOT spinning it's NOT using the computer to function at that point? Will my husband finally get the most speed/power that this computer can get with it's cable connection? Not that I expected this drive to be my savoir, but when my husband first mentioned buying more memory, I told him that adding another 500MB (or even a GB) was really only going to get him another 50% because, of course, you have to remove an old one to have a place to insert the new one. If that's all he wanted to do was add memory, the external drive and all it's GB's was definitely the way to go for the price. Is it really going to accomplish what he wants to accomplish -- for the price?

Thanks, guys. One, for the prompt responses and two, for the explanations that were not condesending and three, for taking the time in the first place to help me. This is my first time in the forums and I've already felt at home. Don't know that I can add much more to that sentence although I apparently had no problems at all adding much, much more to the sentences above! LOL LOL Again -- thank you....

SBernheart [;}]

[SRX660]

I have 11 computers running all the time at my shop. At any given moment at least one of them has crashed and needs to be fixed. I purposely crash them to learn from them. I know it sound weird but that is how i know about fixes that no one else around here seems to know. It also lets me know what software is good software and what software is just not up to par. Right now i am not too happy with the Acronis true Image software i bought. It either does not work as advertised, or its so hard to configure that a set of restore dvd's i made were made wrong.

The reason i mentioned Ghost is that it can be a life saver when it comes to reinstalling a OS to a system. Above i talk about crashing a computer. With Ghost i can reinstall the OS completely configured with all added software, changed settings, ads add-ons i have installed, all at the same time i install the OS. No more days of configuring the system. I prefer Ghost 2003 to Ghost 10, but thats just my choice.

You can read up on it here.

http://ghost.radified.com/

At 1.7 Gig your computer is getting pretty long in the tooth. It's amazing that you are trying to watch streaming video with this computer. I don't even attempt watching video on my athlon 2400 computer that is really quite fast for what it is. Of course i have the advantage of building myself a new computer every 6 months so i can keep up with the new trends and hardware. Yes, i know about the high cost of the internet from the cable company's. My wife decided that we needed a flat panel HD TV in the bedroom because soon analog TV 's will need cable boxes to work.So we spent another $400 for a TV that runs at most a hour per day, Grrrr.

I am also into digital pictures like you. I have a 12 megapixel kodak, and 2 - 8 megapixel kodak cameras right now. I also save motorcycle, old auto, and anything else i can find in pictures from the internet. So now i have around 30 gigs of pictures. This along with the 50 gigs of music, and everything else makes me use 2 - 250 gig hard drives in my main computer. And YES, i do back up these files also. I am so ate up with backups that i have 2 diskgear 100 disk storage containers i use to store my backup cd's and dvd's. Go ahead and call me a packrat, but i have stuff that no one else has. I have even been saving old programs disks. Maybe they will never be used by the mainstream computers shops but i use them all the time fixing old computers.

Using a external drive should make the computer a little bit faster since windows will not have to search thru a lot of files for data your seeking. Not being able to defrag is probably slowing your computer down with all the fragmented files you probably have. I defrag my computers weekly even when windows says it doesn't need it. It IRK's me to use a slow running computer that i have to wait for it to react. Hard Drives are so cheap i am surprised that you have not switched to a much larger drive for your computer. A 80 gig drive should work very well for what you want and the cost is around $40-50. If you buy a new drive the drive maker usually included a program where you can transfer the complete OS with programs over to the new drive. I have been using the Paragon Drive Copy 8 software to do this with all the spare drives i have laying around. They have a new version called Drive Copy 8.5 but i'm still using the 8 version.

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/

Personally i would not treat any external drive just like a internal drive. That is why i use smaller drives (80-160 gig)for externals. I just plug them in when i want to store any data i do not want to keep on the computer. Otherwise i keep them unplugged. If you wanted extra storage space in the computer just add another drive into the computer. This computer i am using right now has a "C", "D", "E" cd-rw, "F" dvd-rw, "G" and "H" on a second hard drive. I was too lazy to reformatthe second drive so i left the compaq recovery partition on the drive. So my original drive has the compaq OS partition of 67 gigs, and a "D" partition of 8 gig's, meanwhile the g and h drives are 9.75 gigs and 67 gigs. I have no problems running this computer this way. And yes the drive should stop running if you do not access it after a period of time. Look into your power options in the control panel for when the computer turns off the drive.

While more ram is nice, running more than 512 really is not necessary. If you look in task manager, in the performance tab what do you see? On my computers i see about 350 MB being used most of the time. This is the 3 line on the physical memory part. I usually run 2 gigs of memory now simply because the new memory is so cheap, A gig only costs $35.

I hope this helps you somewhat in your decisions on what to do.

SRX660

[SBernheart]

It doesn't sound weird to me at all. I think a person has two choices. Read the manuals or learn from your experiences -- I, too, chose to learn from my experiences. That doesn't always mean you have to crash your computer, it just means you're learning from something. I'm self-taught, so I know how your mind works and there's nothing wrong with the way we choose to learn. I like to 'explore' and I'm not afraid to try something at least once! LOL If it wasn't for public forums like this one, I never would have made it this far. That's the God honest truth!!

Recently, our clothes dryer's belt broke and we both knew it was a simple fix, but before we took the dryer apart, I went hunting for a forum. I liked this one guy so much, I don't even mind giving out his forum's URL at http://repair2000.com/forum/ so if you're ever in need of appliance repair in general, people can check it out. Hope that wasn't like advertising or something, it was just a great find for me that I thought I'd share. I will check out the sites you gave me, too. I always appreciate sites that someone else gives me, if for no other reason than that it means to me that the site has been used currently, in real time by a real person -- not something I find in a help file, know what I mean?

Our niece has worked at Best Buy ever since she was old enough to work there and she led us to believe that it wasn't worth upgrading our computer. Frankly, I don't think she 'gets' much about computers, but I'd rather not start a family feud! LOL LOL Back when everybody was worried about upgrading to Vista, I knew my computer wasn't good enough for it. First I thought that Vista was just another way for companies to force you to continually buy new products just to be able to use the new software too. I still have the computer I learned stuff like Word, Excel, Accounting software, etc., etc. Had I known (or had the store informed me!) that in just a few short years we'd all have access to a thing called the world wide web, I would have waited for IT and I wouldn't have spent all my business' money on software that is now even MORE irrelevent and useless. Remember time before WWW? LOL

Anywho, how hard is it to install a new internal hard drive? I'm not afraid to open the tower as long as I think I know what I'm doing! LOL I've done yearly cleanings and I've changed out memory (RAM) and most of the components seem interchangable. If that's the case, I will also look into changing that out as well. It would be nice not to be told that I don't have room to do this or that. We were researching HD TVs and how things will be changing next year. I used to work in Cable TV and I told my husband that it was weird trying to explain cable-ready TV to customers back when that was still new and now there won't even be what used to be called 'free TV' because, at the very least, you will have to buy a converter just to receive the new signals to be able to watch the Network channels like ABC, CBS and NBC. Ah, technology!

My newest digital camera is an Olympus SP-510 at 7.1 megs with 10x optical and it fills up my photo folders quickly. Next, though, I'd like to get a digital SLR. I always loved my 35mm camera and what I could do with it -- including taking a basic photography class to have access to a black room -- that was really fun processing my own film. I do love the digitals though. The pics are so much easier now that you can crop them right from the computer and print the ones you want rather than having to pay for a whole roll that may have had only a few truly nice shots on it, you know?

In my Task Manager, the Physical Memory says that I have 777196 total with 457276 available, but the cache is only 312908. Is this what you meant? I'm using less than half of my memory, so I really don't need anymore in that department, right? I will definitely look into a new internal hard drive, now that I know it's an option for me. From now on, I'll have to NOT listen to my niece and shop at Circuit City, but don't worry -- she'll never know....

SBernheart [;}]

[SRX660]

Well, since you already have the external drive i would not spend more money on a internal drive. It would be better to save up for a new computer and they are 3 times faster than your Celeron 1.7. By the way, doesn't your computer run the RDram? If so that ram is very hard to find now. Yes. you are using about 1/2 your memory(313Mb to be close to exact). While i do suggest not buying a internal hard drive since you already have a drive, it is very easy to install. If you check inside the computer you will probably find a flat grey cable connecting your 2 hard drives( a 5 gig and a 32 gig, right?) Usually the HD that is plugged into the middle of the gray ATA cable is the slave drive in the system. if this was my computer i would install windows on the 32 gig drive and add a 160 gig drive as a SLAVE data drive. Even with all the junk i add to the "C" drive, my drive is up to 24 gigs used. This leaves 8 gigs or 25% of the drive free. I have 42 programs installed on my "C" drive, like office 2000, Nero ultra 7, Corel Draw 12 suite, 12 games, Kodak software, and many smaller program i just like to use. I don't consider the computer slow as i take care to keep it clean and defraged weekly. Now my slave drive has around 45 gigs on it and i often burn whole folders to DVD's and then delete the folders off the drive to save space. I have saved over 100 gigs from this computer so far, 26 DVD's with approx 4.4 gigs on each.

Anyway, back to the HD install. there are 4 phillips head screws usually holding the HD in the rails( 2 on each side). These screws are usually easily accessible with a long phillips screwdriver( #2 tip). With both sides off the computer just take the screws out, unplug the power cord and Data cable and pull the drive out of the front of the case. Reverse this to install. It's that easy. The only thing you need to be concerned about is 2 things. 1st is the jumper settings. Heres a pic i put on a photo internet site just to show people what your looking for.



This is for a seagate drive but most are the same. Usually you can look your hard drive up on google and find the jumper settings. The 2nd thing is you may want to reformat the drive after installing it in the computer. In XP you can do this in disk management( in computer management). There are tutorials on the net for this.

One last thing you need to be concerned with is what format your hard drives are in. If they are formatted as FAT 32 then the largest size a partition can be is 127 gigs. So, if you have a drive larger than a 120 gig drive you will need to have 2 partitions on the drive. As i said before i have 4 partitions on my computer with no problems. I'm just too lazy to use Partition magic to combine partitions. That, plus the "D" drive is my compaq restore partition.

I say ask any questions you have no matter how trivial you think they are. To me they are not trivial and that is what these forums are for. To answer questions of people that don't know the answers. All i ever ask is for people to do the same to others as i do to them. Give them the benefit of your knowledge.

SRX660

[SBernheart]

Pay It Forward!

That's what I say and I practice what I preach. I forwarded my appliance repairman's forum, didn't I? That was me forwarding the help he gave to me for free and now I'm giving him to whomever reads this thread!!

I'll be back on later today. I'm off to bed as I haven't been there yet! I know, I know, but I was looking stuff up and making sure that all my ducks were in a row, you know? In my spare time, I'm a poet, too!!!! Woosh....anywho, just let me wake up again and I'll give your reply it's proper due, then I'll get back to you if I have any questions, OK? Thanks for your help.....

SB [;}]

[SBernheart]

Remember the niece I mentioned? She told us that Vista wouldn't even work on our computer, but I did a Vista prep test and was surprised to learn that my monitor, of all things, wasn't good enough to run Vista -- not that I'm trying to do THAT now, too. It's just that it suggested upgrading my internal C and D drives to 40GB each and add a DVD drive as well. I apologize, it's the Intel® 82845G/GL Graphics Controller that wasn't good enough, not the monitor itself, I guess, but doesn't that involve the monitor? Never mind because I don't think I'll ever bother with Vista on this computer anyway. I'm saving up for a nice laptop -- maybe an Apple this time around. I'd like to see how the 'other half' live.
It also said the 768.00 MB of RAM was good enough, too, so I guess that's enough system memory, regardless of Vista, but I'm not sure I know what you're referring to by 'RDram'. I did some research on installing a DVD drive. Mine has an open slot for the DVD and I'm not sure I'd bother monkeying with the 3.5 floppy -- it's already installed -- I mean, that I understand I could use this slot for a 'slave' drive, as you mentioned. If I recall, the IDE ribbon cable has a wider portion for the hard drive (main) and the remaining portion would be connected to the 'slave' drive, or am I confusing the ribbon cable with ATA cable? Through research I found there's actually a lot more I could do than I realized, but you're right -- it's better to save up for a new laptop.
All I want out of this one is to get all the crap off, now that I know what NOT to fill it up with this time around. The CD drive is all I need for my use, but I can certainly understand why you'd need all those DVD's! LOL BTW, I finally managed to defrag my C drive, but it couldn't do the files included in this report:

Volume HP_PAVILION (C:)
Volume size = 32.23 GB
Cluster size = 4 KB
Used space = 26.47 GB
Free space = 5.76 GB
Percent free space = 17 %

Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 13 %
File fragmentation = 22 %
Free space fragmentation = 4 %

File fragmentation
Total files = 157,249
Average file size = 324 KB
Total fragmented files = 242
Total excess fragments = 52,171
Average fragments per file = 1.33

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 1.19 GB
Total fragments = 274

Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 16,362
Fragmented folders = 1
Excess folder fragments = 0

Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT size = 209 MB
MFT record count = 174,351
Percent MFT in use = 81 %
Total MFT fragments = 16

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fragments File Size Files that cannot be defragmented
305 12 MB \Program Files\Picasa2\picasai18n.dll
837 17 MB \Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Application Data\IM\Identities\{6B3A3265-1F38-4007-B63F-A895B5D3FB04}\Message Store\Newsletters_II1.imm
274 18 MB \Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\My Downloads\OpenOffice.org 2.3 Installation Files\openofficeorg1.cab
347 19 MB \Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Picasa2\db2\thumbs.db
1,422 25 MB \Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Application Data\IM\Identities\{6B3A3265-1F38-4007-B63F-A895B5D3FB04}\Message Store\Webpages.imm
525 33 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{B762F5BE-1DFD-40DA-9793-F321C2185D05}\RP536\A0103564.msi
365 34 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{B762F5BE-1DFD-40DA-9793-F321C2185D05}\RP545\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
369 34 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{B762F5BE-1DFD-40DA-9793-F321C2185D05}\RP539\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
384 34 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{B762F5BE-1DFD-40DA-9793-F321C2185D05}\RP536\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
374 34 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{B762F5BE-1DFD-40DA-9793-F321C2185D05}\RP534\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
279 34 MB \WINDOWS\system32\config\software
414 34 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{B762F5BE-1DFD-40DA-9793-F321C2185D05}\RP537\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
388 34 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{B762F5BE-1DFD-40DA-9793-F321C2185D05}\RP543\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
364 34 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{B762F5BE-1DFD-40DA-9793-F321C2185D05}\RP547\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
401 34 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{B762F5BE-1DFD-40DA-9793-F321C2185D05}\RP538\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
358 34 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{B762F5BE-1DFD-40DA-9793-F321C2185D05}\RP548\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
407 34 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{B762F5BE-1DFD-40DA-9793-F321C2185D05}\RP540\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
383 34 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{B762F5BE-1DFD-40DA-9793-F321C2185D05}\RP544\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
328 34 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{B762F5BE-1DFD-40DA-9793-F321C2185D05}\RP542\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
375 34 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{B762F5BE-1DFD-40DA-9793-F321C2185D05}\RP550\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
408 34 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{B762F5BE-1DFD-40DA-9793-F321C2185D05}\RP535\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
569 38 MB \Documents and Settings\Owner\Application Data\Shutterfly\Studio\mm_0_1.tdb
277 46 MB \Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Application Data\IM\Identities\{6B3A3265-1F38-4007-B63F-A895B5D3FB04}\Message Store\Personal_eMails.imm
488 63 MB \Program Files\OpenOffice.org 2.2\openofficeorg3.cab
581 65 MB \Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\My Downloads\OpenOffice.org 2.3 Installation Files\openofficeorg3.cab
474 85 MB \Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Application Data\IM\Identities\{6B3A3265-1F38-4007-B63F-A895B5D3FB04}\Message Store\Personal_eMails_II.imm
822 103 MB \Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Temp\OWPCE.tmp\WebDesigner.WW\EWDWW.cab
1,455 120 MB \Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\My Downloads\OOo_2.3.1_Win32Intel_install_wJRE_en-US.exe
285 284 MB \Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Photo Gallery\thumbcache_1024.db
30,777 492 MB \Backup1.bkf

I performed the defrag again, but the very same files could not be defragged. Why's that? Should I do something to change this? Here's what the second defrag accomplished:

Volume HP_PAVILION (C:)
Volume size = 32.23 GB
Cluster size = 4 KB
Used space = 26.47 GB
Free space = 5.77 GB
Percent free space = 17 %

Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 11 %
File fragmentation = 21 %
Free space fragmentation = 2 %

File fragmentation
Total files = 157,285
Average file size = 324 KB
Total fragmented files = 149
Total excess fragments = 50,002
Average fragments per file = 1.31

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 1.19 GB
Total fragments = 274

Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 16,362
Fragmented folders = 1
Excess folder fragments = 0

Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT size = 209 MB
MFT record count = 174,390
Percent MFT in use = 81 %
Total MFT fragments = 16

So, some things improved. That has to be a good thing BUT...I still wasn't allowed to defrag the D drive. It said I needed 15% and I only had 14% and there was nothing that I could see to change that percentage. I attached a screen pic showing the files in that folder. The Temp folder was empty and the Backup1 file was at 504,165KB, but I don't have access to that file. What would I change in that file anyway? At least by performing the system recovery I'll get my hard drive back to day one and, like I said, I know now what NOT to fill it up with! Sorry for the long post, but to understand something myself, I needed to show you what I'm seeing. Hope that's OK.
Yeah, I read about reformatting a drive, but I figured in my case and since I'm restoring anyway, this will accomplish the same thing -- sort of. As along as I don't do what I did the last time and use CD's and the new drive for my storage needs, I don't think I'll need to do that. Glad you included the info in this thread so the next guy will know their options. I do like the idea of switching out my D drive and making my C drive what I consider my 'hard drive'. In other words, if I were to add a new internal drive, I would keep the 32GB and make IT my Hp_Recovery and add a new, much larger GB drive what my computer considers the C drive 'HP_Pavilion'. About the formatting, right now the 5GB D drive is FAT32 and the 32GB C drive is formatted in NTFS. I could use the 32GB as a 'D drive' and add a new one as the 'C drive'. That's a good way to switch it up.
Finally, the only other question I have before I begin is actually more about what to do when making my system CD's AFTER I do the recovery. If I should start a different thread in a new forum, please let me know, but you mentioned the importance of backing up and making system CD's/DVD's and I had done some research on that and I'm wondering -- AFTER the recovery, I'd like to make my changes to, for ex., the screen resolution, making my personal settings, you know, THEN add programs I'm using like Incredimail along with POPFile, my email spam program, as well as any other programs I've used forever. Say I add a half a dozen programs I use all of the time along with my personal changes to how I like my XP, can I THEN make my system CD's? I'd sure like to put things 'back to normal' -- back to MY normal -- so that if I ever have to do a system recovery again, I won't have to 'start all over again' like when we first set the computer up. Is this do-able?
I said 'finally', but I do have another question. I have a disc for XP SP2 and I do understand that the SP2 DOES include SP1, so I don't have to worry about that, but will I have to go to Windows Update and install each and every update between SP2 and now? If so, should I do THAT before I start loading anything else? The order in which I figured I'd do things was to remove the peripherals, do the recovery, then add the modem, internet connection, SP2, updates -- if necessary -- my personal changes to the way I want XP to look, a few of my favorite programs/software, like even adding IE 7 with my Favorites, etc., etc. and, hopefully, make my NEW system CD's. Do I have the proper game plans in place?
A LOT of questions for my given task, but I think I have everything I need now and I guess I'm feeling a bit anxious at this point. It's not that I'm dreading what I'm about to do next, but once you press the button, what's done is done, right? Any last minute suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Again, thanks for ALL your help. I like the fact that you understand that someone ELSE justs wants to 'understand', too. Believe me when I say that it's not about money -- it would be CHEAPER and much, MUCH easier to take my tower to a shop and let someone ELSE be responsible, but like you, I like to 'dabble' and learn and explore and you 'get' that. That's the best compliment I can give in a public forum because when I help somebody with stuff I know about, I feel just as good as when I learned it in the first place. OK, now I'm getting mushy -- I think you know what I'm trying to say, so thanks......

SBernheart [;}]

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