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Boot-time defrag of external USB disk?


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I have inherited an external HD that contains lots of data that I need to keep. However, it seems that it has never been defragmented, and there are large folder parts all over the space. Hence I need a boot-time defrag.

I schedule it for the next reboot, both folders file and MFT; the drive letter is Q:

When it reboots, it defragments my O: drive. :angry:

Looking up the FAQ on the Diskeeper Support pages I find this

Boot-Time Defragmentation runs very early in the boot process, before the USB (universal serial bus) drivers have been loaded. This means the USB drives are not yet available, so the Boot-Time Defragmentation cannot see this device. This occurs because USB drives are not yet seen by Windows at this point in time. It is recommended that you run Diskeeper online Defragmentation processes on this drive.

So, is it really not possible to run a boot-time defrag on an external USB disk? (I have Diskeeper 9.)

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Thinking in terms of another program, Acronis, that has to load USB drivers from its own boot disk before it will install a backup from a USB drive so, yes, I think what you have been told is correct.

Are you able to remove the drive and connect (temporarily) via IDE or SATA?

What I would be inclined to do, though, especially with a drive of uncertain provenance, would be to copy anything I wanted to keep to another drive and then do a full reformat.

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