Hello FX:
The issue that you are experiencing is not related to the power or effectiveness of your computer's hardware but is a result of the Windows file system and their default program for defragging which they license from Diskeeper and is known as Diskeeper Lite. It is an inferior product and as you found an aftermarket defragging utility is a superior choice. Although the "Defraggler" product is written by an outstanding company, I have not found it to be the best choice of alternatives. I would recommend that you download a product called "Smart Defrag" from the Internet that is produced by a company called IObit. I have found this application to be a very superior free defragging utility that is both safe and swift in performance. Just Google "Smart Defrag" or go to this url:
http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html
Once you install the program you will find that it has 3 optional modes to run it in that can be accessed in the drop-down box immediately to the right of the Start button. By default it is set to "defrag only" but also has a "deep optimize" mode that will rearrange the file table and file location according to file size, name or usage. The poor Windows behavior you are experiencing is "UNIVERSAL" and remains the main reason that nobody defrags their computer as I've seen some computers take 2 days to complete the defrag operation.
To be honest, much of the problem relates to the fact that as computers age they build up a tremendous amount of extraneous files that accumulate in the Windows Temporary folders (known as directories) and the 1st time that defragging is attempted the time lag becomes very evident.
So I recommend to schedule defragging your computer every week to not only speed up that activity but the entire performance of your computer will be very noticeable. Additionally, to achieve the greatest performance boost to both the defrag process and the system itself, it is advisable to run a cleanup utility that rids your computer of the unimportant and laggard TEMPORARY files that build up quickly whether surfing the internet or running an application on the desktop.
The best cleanup utility that is also freeware is called "CCleaner" which can be downloaded from here:
http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/
After this tool is installed I recommend that it be configured in the following manner:
1) double-click the large red "C" icon that was placed on your desktop during installation, to start the program
2) once it opens UNCHECK all the boxes that are initially checked and once that is done RECHECK only the 2 boxes labeled below:
TEMPORARY INTERNET FILES and
TEMPORARY FILES
3) then click the analyze button at the lower left of the screen and the program after some time will present you with a list of the unneeded files for your review.
4) after your review and approval next click the "Run Cleaner" button in the right corner of the screen to delete these detritous files.
5) overtime you can experiment with the other checkboxes but sometimes if you remove cookies for example it may remove files that contain passwords for websites and their related shopping carts for example. But never anything more serious do you need to worry about.
This will take some time to process as well the first time it is run but works rather fast if you schedule it to run weekly once again.
Lastly, the egregious length of time you are experiencing tells me that proabably this is the 1st time this computer has been defragged and as I have already said this laggardness is universal to every computer that is not defragged regularly.
To recap: 1) run CCleaner and then 2) run Smart Defrag in defrag only mode and this should accomodate your expectations probably in less than an hour for the whole process and considerably shorter for the weekly routines from then on.
To dispel a couple of rumors concerning the posts above:
Although the size of the hard drive partition does effect the defragging process, if for example you were only using only 40 GB's, this defrag process would take no longer that 40 GB on an 80GB hard drive...in other words it's the size of the file system and it's related Master File Table that controls the outcome and not the absolute size of the physical hard drive. Additionally, large files are not a problem in themselves, as whether files are small or large is not nearly as important as to the TOTAL size of all files on the drive. In other words, 1 large 500 MB file (such as a video) should take no longer than ten 50 MB files as the total amount of processed space remains similar. And no, Defraggler does not have an option to redirect files from one partition to another...you can simply "cut and paste" in Windows to change a file's location.
Changing the partition for large files would be of limited help (might help boot up time if placed on a different partition than the operating system) in that isn't your purpose to defrag the files whether large or small for better performance? Changing the location would simply leave large files un-defragged....kinda' defeating your whole purpose!
I hope that this has been of some help to you.
d316