[Wol]

I have never had any problems defragging in the past.

My HP Pavilion, XP-SP3, has a "J" drive, a WD "MyBook" USB plug-in
drive that is mainly used for daily backups. At present the backups
are incrementals. Every so often I have to free up space by deleting
some of the backup folders, so obviously the drive is fragmented
pretty much by now.

It's just that I can't defrag it!

What happens:

I rightclick on the drive, select Properties > Tools > Defrag now

It goes to "Disk defrag", which has a list of my drives. I select the
J Drive and "Defrag", and the message:

"Disk defrag has detected that chkdsk is scheduled to run: Mybook (J)
- please run chkdsk /f.

I quit the defrag application, and go start > run > "chkdsk /f (Note
that this is NOT the J Drive, I'm just doing what I'm told, like one
does when the wife tells you to do anything).

Up comes a DOS-like window and the message " Type of file is NTFS:
cannot lock current drive: chkdsk cannot run because volume is in use
by another process".

I've tried half a dozen variations of defragging / chkdsk'ing, with
different parameters and with probably a dozen reboots and can't get a
defrag to run at all!

I have also tried it in Safe mode - same messages and result (or lack of it!)

HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLP!

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I wouldn't recommend that you defrag an external hard drive that's used as a backup media.....
performance gains will be minimal and there is a risk that something will go wrong and you damage your backups....

I also recommend you keep it switched off until it's needed....
it's less likely to suffer hardware failure and it's also protected from viruses.

IMPORTANT...always use the "safely remove hardware" icon in the system tray before disconnecting any USB flash or hard drives...it can make the drive unreadable ...(think dead)

[happyrock]

I wouldn't recommend that you defrag an external hard drive that's used as a backup media.....
performance gains will be minimal and there is a risk that something will go wrong and you damage your backups....

I also recommend you keep it switched off until it's needed....
it's less likely to suffer hardware failure and it's also protected from viruses.

IMPORTANT...always use the "safely remove hardware" icon in the system tray before disconnecting any USB flash or hard drives...it can make the drive unreadable ...(think dead)

[Wol]

Thanks - I hadn't thought of the unintended consequences!

But wouldn't defragging free up quite a lot of space, apart from performance issues?

[happyrock]

short answer is ....nope.....

deleting old backups creates new space...its always a good Idea to burn backups to dvd's too..
remember this...any data you don't have at least 2 copies of is data you really don't care about

[Wol]

short answer is ....nope.....

deleting old backups creates new space...its always a good Idea to burn backups to dvd's too..
remember this...any data you don't have at least 2 copies of is data you really don't care about

Oh, I *do* - the HD backups are daily and every month I do a clean backup to DVD and shove it in the safe.

[happyrock]

thats good...you can only lose a months worth of data that way...and that would only happen if say you had a lightning strike that takes out both drives at the same time...
BTW I unplug all my electronics when there is lightning in the area....