Frequently Asked Questions

Chances are, others have the same questions that you do. Therefore, we have taken the common questions for Diskeeper, Sitekeeper and Undelete and provided the answers (and the questions) below in our Frequently Asked Questions section. Simply select the product below that you have questions about. If you can’t find the answer you’re looking for, you can submit a tech support question here.

Diskeeper | Sitekeeper | Undelete

Question
Diskeeper appears to take a very long time to defragment Windows 2000 and XP systems.
Answer
The most likely cause is the use of the FAT32 file system on the drive that Diskeeper is running on. The Fat32 file system is the file system designed by Microsoft for Windows 98 and as a result response time is good when FAT32 is used on Windows 98. As for Windows 2000, and Windows XP, they do support FAT32, but these operating systems were designed on the NT Technologies. As a result they perform all functions best, including defragmenting, when the disk is formatted to the NT File System format (NTFS). We recommend that the drive is changed from the FAT32 file system to NTFS. The following are several suggested solutions to change from FAT32 to NTFS in Windows 2000 / XP: A. Convert the disk to NTFS. Prior to running conversions, we recommend you reading a step by step article from Microsoft on this. The article can be accessed by clicking on this link: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx To convert a volume to NTFS from the command prompt 1. Open Command Prompt by clicking Start, Selecting Run, then typing in CMD and then clicking OK. 2. In the command prompt window, type convert drive_letter: /fs:NTFS For example, typing convert D: /fs:NTFS would format drive D: with the NTFS format. B. Set a schedule for Diskeeper to defragment the disk. This scheduled process will usually run in the background at the lowest CPU overhead level. In this mode, the length of time it takes is not important as long as the job completes while you are still able to be productive on your system. C. In defragmenting your disk manually from the Diskeeper Window, close the window after launching the defragmentation process. Closing the window will not terminate the defragmentation process and will decrease resources required to update the screen. After 15 or 20 minutes, simply open Diskeeper once more and the current status of the job will be displayed on the screen. If the status is Defragmenting you know it's still running. If the status is Defragmented the job is completed.

Question

Diskeeper appears to take a very long time to defragment Windows 2000 and XP systems.

Answer

The most likely cause is the use of the FAT32 file system on the drive that Diskeeper is running on.

The Fat32 file system is the file system designed by Microsoft for Windows 98 and as a result response time is good when FAT32 is used on Windows 98.

As for Windows 2000, and Windows XP, they do support FAT32, but these operating systems were designed on the NT Technologies. As a result they perform all functions best, including defragmenting, when the disk is formatted to the NT File System format (NTFS).

We recommend that the drive is changed from the FAT32 file system to NTFS.

The following are several suggested solutions to change from FAT32 to NTFS in Windows 2000 / XP:

A. Convert the disk to NTFS. Prior to running conversions, we recommend you reading a step by step article from Microsoft on this. The article can be accessed by clicking on this link:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx

To convert a volume to NTFS from the command prompt

1. Open Command Prompt by clicking Start, Selecting Run, then typing in CMD and then clicking OK.

2. In the command prompt window, type

convert drive_letter: /fs:NTFS

For example, typing convert D: /fs:NTFS would format drive D: with the NTFS format.

B. Set a schedule for Diskeeper to defragment the disk. This scheduled process will usually run in the background at the lowest CPU overhead level. In this mode, the length of time it takes is not important as long as the job completes while you are still able to be productive on your system.

C. In defragmenting your disk manually from the Diskeeper Window, close the window after launching the defragmentation process. Closing the window will not terminate the defragmentation process and will decrease resources required to update the screen. After 15 or 20 minutes, simply open Diskeeper once more and the current status of the job will be displayed on the screen. If the status is Defragmenting you know it's still running. If the status is Defragmented the job is completed.

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