Q. How can I monitor the status of a command line defrag in Windows 7 and above?

A. The Windows 7 command line interface for the disk defragmenter has some new options that can help you track the progress and make the defrag run at a higher priority than normal so it finishes faster.

The /U switch displays an ongoing progress of the defragmentation progress, /C performs a defragmentation on all volumes on the system, and /E defrags all volumes except those specified. The /H switch runs the defragmentation at normal priority instead of low priority. The /M switch runs the defrag on the volumes in parallel and /T tracks an operation already in operation.

An example execution is shown below using the higher priority and ongoing progress display.

C:Usersjohn>defrag d: /h /uMicrosoft Disk DefragmenterCopyright (c) 2007 Microsoft Corp.Invoking defragmentation on Data (D:)...Analysis: 100% complete.Pre-Defragmentation Report:Volume Information:Volume size = 1.36 TBFree space = 587.31 GBTotal fragmented space = 0%Largest free space size = 577.75 GBNote: File fragments larger than 64MB are notincluded in the fragmentation statistics.Performing pass 1:Defragmentation: 16% complete...

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