Defragmenting taking over a day?

[Raven Ocara]

Sorry, I am not sure really where to post this.

This is not my computer so I don't know what all has been done to it. I am under the impression that this computer has never been defragmented or it has been a very long time since it has been defragmented however.

The laptop model is an Acer Aspire 5253-BZ656 which is running Windows 7 home premium

It advertises itself as a "500GB" hard drive but its more around 450GB.. only 50GB of that space has been used. Which is why I am confused defragging it has taken a day up already and will take up another day before it's finished.

Firstly, I am in safe mode when defragging. I am also using Piriform's Defraggler. The program shows that the drive's health is good- but I will probably run a SMART test later after defragmenting the computer. I already ran virus scans and the computer is clean.

My question is- why is it taking 2 days just to defrag only 50GB of a 450GB hard drive? Even if this computer has never been defragmented before, that still isn't a reason when barely any storage on the computer has been used right?

 

[ak47jar3d]

Disk defragments are very slow. I would not be worried. I would let it finish.

 

[Neur0nauT]

Fragmentation of data blocks is spread over the whole space of the hard drive, so defragging requires scanning the whole disk and juggling/reordering all of the data into a tidy order, little pieces of the 50GB of data might be spread over the whole 500GB drive.

You would probably be quicker to back up anything worth saving, and just carry out a full reformat & reinstall of the OS . A defrag may not necessarily speed the system up if there is a lot of legacy registry entries, and cached data that is clogging up the system.