How many passes does Defrag take in Windows 10?

How many passes does Defrag.exe take in Windows 10?

New laptop, and I started a while ago and it's now up to Pass 14

SteveC

Posted 2015-08-29T15:33:41.203

Reputation: 1 830

I have seen some systems do 15 passes before completion. Depends on how bad the fragmentation is. Consolidating free space seems to take the most time. Your 24 passes is a record breaker! – Moab – 2015-08-29T16:35:12.090

Answers

Disk Defragmenter might take from several minutes to a few hours to finish, depending on the size and degree of fragmentation of your hard disk. You can still use your computer during the defragmentation process.

Microsoft never specifically says, because Windows auto-detects the needed settings. The amount and time is different for every situation.

Ulincsys

Posted 2015-08-29T15:33:41.203

Reputation: 779

Blimey, I'm used to the old 2 or 3 passes, not this new stuff. Thanks for the info. – SteveC – 2015-08-29T15:44:05.347

1No problem. I should probably point out that Windows 10 manages files in a way that greatly reduces the need for defragmentation. – Ulincsys – 2015-08-29T15:49:21.823

8And in the end, it did 24 passes !! – SteveC – 2015-08-29T16:11:27.547

"few hours" my foot ... here I'm at step 4 and time spent so far "only" 30 hours, but I needed it, surface test of the hdd and overall speed test GOOD but transfer speed both write and read was becoming really poor (3-5M/s down from the initially over 100M/s) so, defrag was the only idea I was thinking it may be the problem and first analyse was 75% fragmented (which I google and seems to be ... CRITICAL) and disk is (a laptop - 2.5") 1T with 50G free so I guess it may be right but still ... "few hours" my foot :P – THESorcerer – 2016-02-11T14:30:38.150

@TheSourcerer You should clean up at least 100 gigs free - ideally 200 gigs - Windows takes a performance hit when your filesystem is > 80% full, which gets exponentially worse as it approaches 100% – davidgo – 2016-02-17T07:02:35.407

"You can still use your computer during the defragmentation process." hahahaha... unless you are waiting for it to finish so you can shut it down (for instance, to move the computer somewhere else)! – Michael – 2018-07-07T00:04:53.967

Windows 8 and up auto-detects the number of passes required depending on the SMART status, number of errors, size of disk, time since last inspection, etc. You can keep it running in background and does not affect your performance much on a decently speced device. It can take anywhere from 1-2 passes to 40 passes and more to complete. There is no set amount of defrag. You can also manually set the passes required if you use third party tools. Ho much fragmented was your drive?

Roh_mish

Posted 2015-08-29T15:33:41.203

Reputation: 235

Can't remember the exact numbers, but it was a fresh installation on a new drive, so I'd assume not very fragmented – SteveC – 2015-10-25T19:38:51.203