How often do you defragment?

Hello all, i'd like to know how many of you actually make it a point to defragment your drive as part of system maintenance and how often? Built in or other tools? Thanks.

With the built in XP defrag which is actually made by the Diskeeper Corporation, once a month, before updating my backup drive images and after deleting the contents of the prefetch folder and generally cleaning up the drive.

If you install Diskeeper 9 Professional you can leave it on Smart Scheduling and have it defrag seamlessly in the background, but I would advise you to have between 512 and 1024 MB of RAM.

Diskeeper 9, Professional version, has the advantage of incorporating Frag-Shield, unlike the Diskeeper 9 Home version, which is useful if the Master File Tables ever need to be adjusted.

Diskeeper 9 Professional version with Frag-Shield can be used on XP Professional or XP Home Edition.

[Moderator]

In Windows once a month. In linux never.

I do it once a month, But the longer you leave it the slower it will take.

i remember defragging a friends PC and it took about 2 hours!

R0SS

Game computer - every time a program/update is installed
Internet computer - After major changes have been made to the file system.

Thanks everyone for ur quick replies. I have myself experienced the performance improvement thru defrag ( the workstations and servers at work are defragged using an automatic tool) and it seems to be doing a great job.
On my home PC i run the XP tool and am considering shifting to the automatic one..for the very features that Mac mentioned. I find the system loaded with crap even after just sessions of browsing and the system seems to slow down so fast.
I'd been curious to know the defrag schedules that everyone else follows and its cool that u all defrag regualrly!

[Moderator]

I find the system loaded with crap even after just sessions of browsing and the system seems to slow down so fast.

That's a worry  

[Moderator]

I have DisKeeper and it is scheduled to do it weekly at 4 A.M.

The only thing you should never defrag are image files.
They Hate That.

patio.  

Why not?

Image files are just binary code spreadout over many a cluster.

Wow, I've yet to defrag my 7 month old system and I see no slow-down in performance.

In the past 15 years I've probably defragged two, maybe three times. Guess I'll have to try it out one of these days.  

RayG

[Moderator]

As I understand it a HD is made up of zillions of little elements that can be either magnetised or demagnetised thus forming the 1s & 0s that a computer uses to store/delete/overwrite information.

I read that over time these little elements can loose their magnetism and consequently the information can be corrupted.

In effect defrag reads each element & rewrites it, resulting in a freshly magnetised or demagnetised element.

That all sort of sounds feasible but I can't say I know it from 1st hand experience.

If that's how it works then defragging is more that just shuffling things around.

Any thoughts?

I've always heard the conventional wisdom that frequent defrags are a necessity, but I've never personally seen a noticeable increase in performance from doing one.

Hi again everyone, this is a great forum, thanks for all ur views. I was readin up some papers on defrag on the net and from what i understand, if the drive is badly fragmented, not defragging it could lead to more wear and tear of the HDD than that caused by defrags. i guess there cant be a consensus on how often as it wud depend on how fragmented ur drive gets, your usage etc.
I believe the third party tools run on the system daily but just defrag when needed. The daily defrag paper has kinda convinced me to spend a little time on this maintenance task, why not?

More important than the actual defrag itself is to clean out all the junk files. I run CCLeaner and EmpTemp before I shut the computer down.

Cleaning out all of the junk means less to defrag.

Mac, yes ofcourse, disk cleanup before the defrag, definitely.
I use CCleaner as well, nice utility.

I dont defrag since I dont really see the point in it.. My computer can't get any slower or faster then what it is now I defragement once in my life time and really see no diffrence gor rid of alot of fragements whatever that means..

[Moderator]

Why not?

Image files are just binary code spreadout over many a cluster.

This is just from personal experience...i was a Ghost user for years until Symantec ruined it. I now use Acronis True Image.
I have had both images become unstable after defragging the partition they were stored on...so i just don't do it anymore.

patio.

which files can be considered junk files and how do they get on the hard drive?

Which files can be considered junk files and how do they get on the hard drive?

Old .tmp , .bak , .chk , .log files, etc. which are no longer in use.

Old temporary internet files and all manner of stuff including old system restore points...

Click on the link below and run through the Disk Cleanup routine.

This is just from personal experience.

I was a Ghost user for years until Symantec ruined it. I now use Acronis True Image.

I have had both images become unstable after defragging the partition they were stored on, so I just don't do it anymore.

patio.

I use Image for Windows and burn the compressed image to a data DVD which is bootable.

I don't defrag since I dont really see the point in it.

My computer can't get any slower or faster then what it is now. I defragmented once in my lifetime and really see no difference.

You should be using defrag.exe from ME and probably a faster drive with a bigger buffer. An 8 MB buffer will run defrag four times faster than a 2 MB buffer.

I have seen '98se computers crawl to the desktop with drives 90% full with 85% fragmentation struggling on 64 MB of RAM and PII processors.

A good clean up, faster drive, more RAM (512 MB) and at least the type keeps up with the speed at which you press the keys.

You can always use Diskeeper Lite on '98se and then you have the same defrag as XP Home and Pro.

DISKEEPER LITE

gor rid of a lot of fragments whatever that means.

I'll drink to that!  

As I understand it a HD is made up of zillions of little elements that can be either magnetised or demagnetised thus forming the 1s & 0s that a computer uses to store/delete/overwrite information.

I read that over time these little elements can loose their magnetism and consequently the information can be corrupted.

In effect defrag reads each element & rewrites it, resulting in a freshly magnetised or demagnetised element.

That all sort of sounds feasible but I can't say I know it from 1st hand experience.

If that's how it works then defragging is more that just shuffling things around.

Any thoughts?

How are you calculating the bits per byte?

How many zillion per bit?  

Just installed the new CCLeaner with the natty new interface.

Came across this just yesterday...



...which matches nicely, and might make a nice Graphical User Interface colourscheme for Vista.

[Moderator]

I didn't mention the number of bits per byte but if you feel the need to know then Google is your friend.
It's just a number like 8.

How many zillion what per bit?

Is this a trick question?  

My computer with fragment files... Nothing really all that great... I don't feel a diffrence with computer speed when I defragment. Which I am not going to because it takes an eternity.  PS my computer only has 2 RAM Slot
64MB +32 MB

Might as well put the swap-file back on C: from the look of that.

What is the max for the two slots? 2 x 256 MB?

Yep, my computer can hold 2 slots of PC100 @ 256MB. The thing is 256MB PC100 is super expensive at store. Being very careful with things I do not own a credit card.. Maybe I can send checks?   Any way im not concern with buying RAM now. Since XP home edition requires a minimum of at least 64MB and I have 92 MB.   How much if a preformance can I possibly get? When I got the 32 MB RAM from a computer at school they were throwing out and I put it in I did not see any preformance diffrent at all. Well maybe a little my applications open faster... some applications I can't even open in XP because I do not meet those application requirements  

Will paging file C boost preformance at all? I only have it on D: Since the operating system is installed on that drive for some funny reason instead of C:

C:
Windows 98SE
Windows 2000NT

D:
Windows ME
Windows XP (home edition)

P.S. They are not partion drives I just hit clean install when installing them.. OUCH that really took up alot of space. Looks like reformating for me..... again. Well I reformat every year anyways..