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Defragging a partition of a VHD file?
We have a VHD file that lives on our Dell NAS. That VHD file has partitions that are used by one of our Windows 2008 Servers for storage. The server is reporting that the partitions are extremely fragmented. Before I defrag I just want to make sure it's OK. Can I defrag a partition within Windows that is actually a VHD file that lives on our NAS?
Thanks!!
xetremex
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June 8th, 2015 06:00
I've read arguments both for and against defragging a VHD, and can't say I'm convinced either way. Are your VHD's dynamic or fixed as that was one concern raised by a few articles I read, that it could grow your dynamic disk during the process?
That said, mine are dynamic disk I did choose to defrag both my VHD's last week for the first time in a couple years of converting them from physical servers. Currently they are on the local disk of an R710 running Hyper-V 2012 Core server, but I'm getting ready to implement a MD3200i where these VMs will be relocated to. I haven't had any problems and didn't notice any negative effects.
pcmeiners
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June 9th, 2015 16:00
In general as to defragging.......
Been using defragmentation programs since approx. 1985 on everything from Novell onward. Hundreds of servers, thousands of desktops, never did I have an issue caused by the defrag programs I have used. Generally defragging will give you a >5% performance increase if done regularly, if rarely done much greater than 5%. Best done with a program which can also do a boot time defrag, as this will defrag open files which normally can not be defragged, this can increase performance greater than 5%, on files in the OS, SQL etc.