Vista Defragmentation/Compression

V

vischo

Gawd
Joined
Jul 27, 2005
Messages
854
Woke up this morning with about 10-20GB extra free space since yesterday. I was about 5GB from maxed out and now I've got some space. I am curious how it happened, but glad because I just ordered another drive and now I have some space while I wait.

Best guess is the Disk Defragmentation is automatically scheduled to run every Weds. night at 1:00AM....

Anyone have any insight?
 
Could be because of System Restore/Volume Shadow Copy.

My drive says 10gb free, but I know if I go and manually clear up all the VSC data, I'll end up with 30ish GB. No need to though since it'll clear up if I actually need the space. Still, it's a bit alarming.
 
The defrag routines in Vista - if they're anything like the previous ones in older versions of Windows - will automagically compress files that are not being used as frequently as others. In today's multi-gigahertz processor world, compression/decompression of a file on a hard drive takes place almost in real-time so there's practically zero effect on overall system performance.

I'd say it sounds like perfectly normal operation, but... that does seem to be quite a lot of space recovered, and I doubt anyone has 10-20GB of highly compressible data on their machines at any given time.

The Shadow Copy thing is a distinct possibility, but the OS doesn't delete that stuff unless told to do so...

Interesting dilemma, at least.
 
Volume shadow copy related, I believe.

Vista defrag is an improvement on the one included with XP, and should be left to operate as installed IMO.

This wouldn't even be an issue if people followed the sensible practice of not cramming hard drives to the hilt with stuff. In today's world of inexpensive high capacity storage it's not necessary, and acts against good performance. If an old hard drive is cramping you up you should go replace the thing with a bigger one.
 
I didn't see it to be a problem, was happy to wake up to some extra space.... Just was curious as to what technology is going on....

Good insight guys.
 
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