Windows defrag compressed files

I think it's related to NTFS compression. Was this reply helpful? Yes No. Sorry this didn't help. Thanks for your feedback. Today I tested it. The file is okay, no hex DF at the end. The other compressed test files are still okay too. For security reasons, I have stored some folders of a friend of mine on my system - never used, nothing opened. I checked it and I saw that a lot of files are corrupt, e. JPEGs, zip archives, excel files. Perhaps special malware? Is there good fast way to get image file defragmented yet keep it compressed or compress it without causing extreme fragmentation?

May it be some utility to quickly defragment file to continous free space, or some utility or method to create non-fragmented compressed file from existing non-compressed? External to windows kernel compression tools are not an option in my case. They can't decompress file on-the-fly to decompress 10 Gb file I need 10 Gb free, which isn't always at hand; also, it takes a lot of time ; they're not accessible when system is boot from DVD for recovery it's exactly when I need the image available.

Please, stop offering them unless they create transaprently compressed file on ntfs, like compact. NTFS compression is not that bad for system images. It's rather good except for fragmentation. And decompression does not take much CPU time, still reducing IO bottleneck, which gives performance boost in appropriate cases non-fragmented compressed file with significant ratio.

Defragmentation utilities defragment files without any regard if they are compressed. The only problem is number of fragments, which causes defragmentation failure no matter if fragmented file compressed or not.

If number of fragments isn't high about is already ok , compressed file will be defragmented, and stay compressed and intact. I have witnessed that myself. Palcouk Volunteer Moderator. In reply to Jeff Berg's post on January 28, It would seem to me to be more prudent to defrag prior to imaging. Acronis TI, if you are interested. In reply to Palcouk's post on January 28, Acronis TI, if you are interested Without? I was going to defrag prior to imaging.

That is my standard procedure. In reply to Jeff Berg's post on January 29, They aren't, and can't be the best at everything, and one size fits all does not suit everyone's taste or needs.

The only responsibility MS has is to deliver a solid basic operating system, and they have enough trouble making everyone happy in their attempts to do that. Take little things like Win7 removing the ability to disable auto arrange in folders , for one example.

Add to that what many consider bloatware - AERO and Libraries and it's easy to see the needs of various users is vastly different. I've not even bothered with Windows imaging tool. I also use the Acronis WD free version to image my Win7 install. CCleaner is a good option to do a thorough clean before a backup image.

Disk Cleanup - XP used to have the option to compress unused files, so yes I'd probably use that tool before a backup image. It's only supposed to compresses files that don't get a lot of use. When I did that in XP and checked defrag afterwords there was always lots of fragmentation, so in that regard compress then defrag seems the go.