dish defrag program

[Mark Lamutt]

I am running Win98se, 256 mb RAM, and have a 160GB Raid 0 partition. I need a cheap (or preferably free) disk defragmentor that will defragment my raid drive. I can't use the win98 one because I don't have enough memory to run it on that drive. Any suggestions?

[invaliduser88]

Look at what's running on your system. You might want to kill off some processes to allow defrag to run. Just reboot again afterwards.

Or, move to an NT kernel based OS like Windows 2000 or XP.

[Steve Mehs]

Did you try defraging in safe mode? Another suggestion is if you have Norton or McAfee, their system maintence suites come with defrag programs that let you defrag even when writing to the hard drive.

[Mark Lamutt]

I haven't tried defragging in safe mode. That's a good idea - I'll give that a shot. I have very few processes running, and I'm specifically avoiding going to 2000 or XP because this computer only has 2 functions - high definition television recording and dvd scaling/playback, and both of them are very stable under Win98.

[MarkA]

Go to Windows 2000 or XP, it will still be much better, for everything. Don't avoid them - they are great, especially XP. Plus, if you reformat as NTFS - you can have files bigger than 4GB (great for the HD recording)

[James_F]

Search for an old version of Norton SystemWorks on Ebay. You can find it really cheap. You don't need a new version since you only have Win98...

[Chris Blount]

Mark,

I have an original copy of Norton System Works 98 if you would like one.

[Steve Mehs]

Originally posted by Mark
Go to Windows 2000 or XP, it will still be much better, for everything. Don't avoid them - they are great, especially XP. Plus, if you reformat as NTFS - you can have files bigger than 4GB (great for the HD recording)

Okay off the point here but Mark said his HTPC is running great under WIN98, and becasue of some of his components may be unable to work properly in XP or WIN2K. Myself Id rather have Win2K but 98SE suites me fine. But anywho, the Norton Defragmentor works greats and as I said before, it can be used while accessing or writing on the HD.

[Mark Lamutt]

I really was hoping to not get into the "you really should upgrade to 2000 or XP" discussion here. I actually have both of those operating systems so upgrading is a possibility, but the fact is while my hipix would definitely work to record the HD material under either of them, I would run into problems with the DVD playing and scaling. Not unsolvable problems certainly, but right now with my ATI radeon 7200, the driver version I'm running for 98 is very stable. I have zoom player working very well using the video filters from the ATI MMC 7.6 and the audio filters from PowerDVD XP 4.0. It took me working on this many hours to get to this point, and I'm not ready to reinvent the wheel yet to change operating systems. Also, the HD is recorded in 1 minute files which are about 137 MB each, so I never run into a maximum file size limit. Basically, as Steve said, I'm currently very happy with my setup under Win98. When MS releases Freestyle with SP1 for XP, I may reconsider.

Anyways, thanks for all the replies everyone.

[Chris Blount]

I agree with Mark. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[lee635]

RE: "I agree with Mark. If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I still have a machine running an original copy of win 95, never upgraded, not on the net, never locked up, very stable product.

At work we have a DOS based product for a particular application that still works great -- no Y2K problems either. And that pc has been in use for about 10 years now -- saving the taxpayers and students of Oregon on upgrade costs.

Why spend the money just for a new set of problems...

[MarkA]

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

See, I'm more a fan of "If it ain't broke, DO fix it:) so it can be better:)" But to MarkL, in that case, Norton should work for you.

[Mark Lamutt]

In my younger days, I was definitely in your camp, Mark. I can't even remember how may different beta versions if DOS I installed - always had to have the latest and greatest. These days, I'm happy when things work the way they are supposed to, and couldn't care less if it's 1 day or 1 decade old.