Hard drive won't defrag

offroadguy56

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Apr 3, 2013
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Is my drive performance being affected? Is this something I should be worrying about?



So I bought a 1TB hard drive to replace my 320gb hard drive. I did a clone with EaseUS and moved all the data to the 1TB. I've since installed about 100-150gb of games from my steam library. Afterwards I did a defrag. Defraggler said I had 90gb of fragmented files at 14%. However Windows did an update without me knowing and now defraggler is saying I had 156gb of fragmented files at 27%.

I've run the defrag multiple times and the fragments get smaller and smaller but the size of the files never decreases. Upon further inspection the 156gb fragmented file is the System Volume Information file. I've no idea how that got fragmented I didn't think it was even possible.

No matter how much I defrag the drive that file will won't move. When I click the file and try to defrag it specifically, defraggler says there is nothing to defrag.



I'm not sure if this is related but after the "failed" defrag during the windows update I've noticed about 100gb of space was magically filled in on the hard drive. I've no idea where the data came from.

After I installed my games I had 450gb-ish of free space left. I did the defrag, Windows updated and restarted the PC, came back and noticed the defrag didn't do much and that the drive was now populated by for all I know, jelly.

Here's an image.
Jy0Pp9n.png

All the red at the bottom of the drive is the volume information, the scattered red squares at the top are other system files that also will not be defragged.
 
Solution
Don't worry about "System Volume Information", it's where the restore points are stored and is only accessible to the "System" service, that's why you can't defrag that area. It is not causing any problems.

offroadguy56

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Apr 3, 2013
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Thank you for an answer that makes sense. Would it be possible to defrag that area if I booted into windows on a USB stick? A restore point would also explain why the disk suddenly got populated by data.
 

You would gain exactly nothing by doing so. That's one of several places that users have no business mucking around. You still wouldn't be able to access that area from a USB boot anyway. If it really bothers you then simply turn System Restore off to remove all restore points, then turn it back on. Or, if you never use the feature, just leave it off.
 

offroadguy56

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Apr 3, 2013
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I see. It just irks with all that red. I'll leave it alone then. I'll disable the system restore to see if it will remove all that fragmented gunk.


I noticed your signature, I too like subs. A new naval game launched the other day called NavyField2. Don't know if your interested but I thought I'd let you know.