After installation of CIS (which I had been waiting for like a kid waiting for his decoder ring in the mail ;)), I find I am unable to defragment the drive it’s on (c:), because “some files could not be compacted” (or something like that). When I click on the “Show Report” button to display the problem file(s), it displays the file “sfi.dat” in the Windows\System32\Drivers directory. I am unable to even copy the file (it complains that the file may be already in use…?!?), and I have reproduced this error on two separate clean installs of the OS (and, by default, CIS) on two different machines. Is this file dynamically created? If so, how do I delete it and allow CIS to create a new, clean one? Thanks!
I got the message in the XP defragger that sfi.dat could not be defragmented but the defrag did complete. I really don’t care if only one file doesn’t get defragged. I ran Auslogics before that and it defragged everything.
well window defrager with 3.9 AV set to startful on my PC made a huge slow down and some hang like pausing for all applcaitons. I wonder if adding Defrager program to excultion list will help.
I prefer the Auslogics defragger. It’s also free and just received a major update. I had problems with SmartDefrag scattering files across my disk when it was supposed to be optimizing it.
I’m a defraggler fan. Why you ask, well because after using it and using other paid software they declare that the hard drive is perfectly defragged, who can argue with that. :a0
I use the Windows XP defrag utility (I know, I know…), which has always works fine. CIS caused several additional problems, which required me to uninstall it (the defrag worked fine after that). I guess it’s back to the ol’ drawing board for me…
I’ve been using DiskKeeper Lite (the older free version) for a couple of years. I had downloaded SmartDefrag several months ago but never used it. I finally decided to give SmartDefrag a chance and downloaded the latest version. I fired it up and had it do a deep optimize, then I’ve been having it use its auto defrag for about two weeks.
After reading your post, I decided to download Auslogics Defrag and see what it thought about SmartDefrag’s abilities. Auslogics defragged in seconds. The only files it found that were fragmented were in my browsers cache from this session. So it seems that SmartDefrag is doing a good job as far as Auslogics is concerned.
You can now with the new 2.0 version that just came out.
I never said that SmartDefrag didn’t do a good job of defragmenting. What I said was that the optimization routines did anything but optimize on my system. It scattered my files all over the drive with huge gaps in between them. The XP defragger did a better job of keeping the files compacted.
I find Auslogics to be faster and I have no use for scheduled or auto defrags. That puts too much wear and tear on the drive. The only thing Auslogics doesn’t have is an optimizer, but I run the xp defrag periodically to compact things. Not having an optimizer is better than having one that doesn’t work.
I’m having the same problem. Windows and Auslogics defrag will only get the OS drive down to 4/8% fragmented in normal or safe mode. This concerns me, as no software should be able to prevent the OS from functioning normally.
I think you have other issues than CIS. On my system, both the XP defragger and Auslogics will finish the defrag and report 0% fragmentation. Auslogics will say that sfi.dat was skipped because it was locked and XP will say it was unable to be defragmented. Everything else on the drive is processed.
Windows Defragmenter ran fine here too, it completed the defragmentation task although it skipped sfi.dat (1.5 Mb)
It is likely sfi.dat is locked for use by CIS and thus Windows Defragmenter ought to skip it like it usually does for windows swap file (pagefile.sys).
AFAIK locked files, like pagefile.sys, are not usually defagmented although some defrag appplications may not explicitly report about them.
i use perfectdisk 10. sfi.dat is showing up in the boot files area. if another file bumps up against a locked file it continues on the other side thus leaving fragments. i dont know if sfi.dat belomgs to comodo or not. i uninstalled cis to see if i could solve the fragmentation problem. sfi.dat did not go away. if it belongs to comodo it is not deleted on uninstall. perhaps it is a windows file and cis just locks it. i searched the web for sfi.dat and could find nothing. would a comodo tech person please kick in here and provide any information?
i use perfectdisk 10. sfi.dat is showing up in the boot files area. if another file bumps up against a locked file it continues on the other side thus leaving fragments
Yes, Perfectdisk will do that,other defraggers don’t. Auslogics looks for a space that will hold the entire file it is processing and will not have the problem of bumping up against something that is immovable. This will cause some empty spaces in the drive however. I tried Perfectdisk and I have to say it was the worst defrag program I have ever used. It tries to compact everything to the front of the disk and will churn away constantly moving and replacing things. I have games like Team fortress and World of Warcraft installed and in the process of “optimizing” my files Perfectdisk fragmented the large game files into at least 4 times as many fragments as they were before it started and would fragment files around the immovable ones. I’d rather have the empty spaces between things since due to the speed of today’s drives,the need to optimize file placement and consolidate free space after a defrag is pretty much unnecessary.
PD takes way too long to defrag. PD will do both my drives in about an hour. With Smart Defrag about 10 minutes. Then I will use Page Defrag to do my boot files. Best thing…both are FREE. Also no back round service needed.