June poll - When was the last time you defragged your hard drive?

[Computer Hope Admin]

For the month of June we thought it would be interesting to see when the last time you defragged your hard drive was, either using the Microsoft Defrag tool or a third-party defrag tool. Feel free to talk about any success you've had with degragging your hard drive, what third-party defrag utility you enjoy using if any, how long it took, or the highest percentage of fragmention you've dealt with on a hard drive.

All past monthly polls and results can also be found on the Computer Hope poll page.

[Helpmeh]

hehehe...first vote/reply.

[rthompson80819]

I defrag at least once a month, and more often if I add or remove many programs.

BTW, I have been using defraggler for a while now and like better than the standard windows defrag.  I think defraggler gives better feedback than the standard defrag.

[Broni]

There is no option for me to check
I use SmartDefrag, which defrags my drive on the go - anytime my computer is idle.

[BC_Programmer]

The last time  I defragmented a hard drive was the last time it made a non-negligible difference to speed- when I used MS-DOS 6.

[styxbound]

I've seen it make a big difference too many times to debate its'  usefulness.

[Computer Hope Admin]

There is no option for me to check
I use SmartDefrag, which defrags my drive on the go - anytime my computer is idle.

Good suggestion. Added.

[Broni]

[Cityscape]

I voted "several months ago". Last time I defragged was Nov/Dec 2009 when I had XP installed.

I now use Linux which never needs drefragging (due to a better filesystem) so I doubt I will be defragging again in the near future.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Hmmmm.....Do Macs have a defrag utility?

[BC_Programmer]

Hmmmm.....Do Macs have a defrag utility?

I know originally they didn't have one... (mac classic) the system disk came with "disk first aid" which was pretty much like chkdsk/scandisk. I don't think it came with a defrag though.

In an interesting twist- Apple said that the HFS filesystem they used "didn't need defragmenting". Considering that NTFS is pretty much a superset of HFS and conversely, is considered to need regular defragmenting... They can't both be right.

Anyway, not surprisingly, Apple still claims the very same thing nowadays:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375?viewlocale=en_US

It's curious to note that even though they say "you probably wont need to optimize with OSX" they still continue to provide instructions for what to do if you think you do. Which isn't bad but just seems odd. "You don't have to waste your time, but here's how you can if you think you need to" type thing.

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a filesystem that can't be defragmented. Eventually, clusters from the same file are going to to be become noncontiguous, and wether the filesystem driver works to avoid such scenarios by essentially defragmenting on the fly or if that work would need to be done later by a third party program is redundant. The question is how does one define when a filesystem/drive "needs" to be defragmented?

out of curiousity (and expecting rather high fragmentation rates) I started disk defragmenter, only to find that the only drive on my system with a non-0% fragmentation rate was my external drive, sitting at a whopping 1% fragmented. Considering I've had this system for a good 6-8 months and used it extensively in that time, that's a tad strange for an OS that "requires constant defragmentation".

[Allan]

Once a week on all systems (with Perfect Disk). Even though it really isn't required with NT file systems, I've been doing it since 1985 and it's simply habit now.

[Cityscape]

Hmmmm.....Do Macs have a defrag utility?

Os X and Linux are both Unix and both don't need defragging. Although in recent months I have heard people claim that OS X does need defragging.

[Cityscape]

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a filesystem that can't be defragmented. Eventually, clusters from the same file are going to to be become noncontiguous, and wether the filesystem driver works to avoid such scenarios by essentially defragmenting on the fly or if that work would need to be done later by a third party program is redundant.

Ext partitions on Linux can be defragmented but it is very difficult. I is normally done during startup because it it impossible to defrag the system drive on Linux  while the OS is running.

out of curiousity (and expecting rather high fragmentation rates) I started disk defragmenter, only to find that the only drive on my system with a non-0% fragmentation rate was my external drive, sitting at a whopping 1% fragmented. Considering I've had this system for a good 6-8 months and used it extensively in that time, that's a tad strange for an OS that "requires constant defragmentation".

How do keep the fragmentaton rates so low? All windows pc's i see have at least 5%

[patio]

I never bought into the myth that an OS never needs defragging...and still don't.
I run mine weekly on each machine and sometimes more often under heavy use