SOLVED Disk Needs Optimizing

[Norton]

Disk defrag is run on a weekly schedule. After lasts weeks update I noticed that the disk was 41% fragmented, I have never seen fragmentation greater than 1%. I manually ran the defrag program last night and when complete it says "The disk is 24% fragmented and need optimization" Click on optimize, it goes through the process again and comes up with the same message, "The disk is 24% fragmented and need optimization" I ran chkdsk/r/f overnight, no change. Any ideas?
Note: The disk is a spinner.

 

[Trouble]

Is this an entire physical drive or a single partition on a physical drive containing multiple partitions?
What is contained on the drive? Is it hosting the operating system or data? IF data, is it typical data are very large files, as produced by disk imaging / backup software?
How much free space is available on the drive?

ran chkdsk/r/f overnight, no change

What were the results? Did you check the Event Viewer Logs -> Windows Logs -> Application Logs -> do a find (search) for chkdsk and see if it reported any KBs found in bad sectors, near the bottom of the report.

 

[Norton]

Trouble Thanks for your time.
It's a single physical drive hosting 2 partitions Win 10 OS and a Dell recovery partition.
Event logs show no disk bad sectors, 0kb in bad sectors, and that storage optimizer successfully completed de-fragmentation of (C) scan disk also shows no resource integrity violations...
I'm wondering if it is data files created by disk imaging and back up software. Although I haven't had any problems with Win 10 update, to be safe I have been creating frequent (every Monday) images on an external USB HD.

 

[Trouble]

So.....
Is the fragmentation that you are seeing on C: (presumably your OS partition
OR
Is the other partition showing up (listed) in the defrag utility and is that partition showing the fragmentation.
AND..... I'll ask again or perhaps more specifically.... on the partition that is showing the fragmentation... how much free space is there?

 

[Norton]

Sorry about that.
The C: OS partition, I have 90GB of free space.
This is the partition that shows 24% fragmentation after optimization.
As found last night 42% fragmentation, after optimize 24% fragmented.
The recovery partition indicates 0% fragmentation. The 42% fragmentation took me by surprise, I've never ever seen it greater than 2%.

 

[Trouble]

I think I would start by zeroing out the
swapfile pagefile.sys
hibernation file hiberfil.sys
system protection / restore points
Manually defrag, examine the results and then switch them all back on again.

Failing that you may want to look into a third party solution to see if that produces the same results
http://www.piriform.com/defraggler
http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/

Couldn't hurt to have a second opinion.

 

[Norton]

Trouble I gave system restore a thought this morning but avoided going there. Believe me I've tried everything, gone through all files and looked in system files for unusual files or activity. Found nothing obvious.
I finally gave in and disabled (turned off) C: "System Restore" attempted to optimized again the 24% of fragmented drive with success. The drive arranged the fragmentation from what was originally 42% to what is now 0%. fragmentation. The problem was "System Restore", I believe the last update this past Tuesday had an impact on the Restore program? The first thing that was obvious when I opened "Restore" was the % of the HD dedicated to restore points. I have always set mine at 10% enough for about 15-20 restore points, somehow that had mysteriously jumped from 10% to 40%.? I reset Restore back to 10%, turned off restore, and defragged (24%) successfully then turned restore back on.

Thanks for your help. Again!
Norton.

 

[Trouble]

No problem. Glad you managed to figure it out.
Now you have a plan of attack for the next time.

 

[Norton]

No problem. Glad you managed to figure it out.
Now you have a plan of attack for the next time.

I just created a new System Image and I noticed one anomaly. I compared the new image to the image I made after last Tuesday's update. The new image contains 4 "Users" Folders Robin(user me), Administrator, PC Administrator, and Public. Last Tuesday's image Administrator (hidden) was missing from the image it somehow disappeared?