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

[BC_Programmer]

Not really. The defrag utility will only concern itself with occupied space unless told to do otherwise, and even then it takes not time to "compact free space"

And btw, I'm a HUGE proponent of lots of partitions, so please don't think I'm arguing against that. It's just that it will not effect defrag time.

well, it probably wouldn't effect overall defrag time, but defragmenting a 500GB partition as opposed to a 1TB one will be faster.

[Allan]

well, it probably wouldn't effect overall defrag time, but defragmenting a 500GB partition as opposed to a 1TB one will be faster.

Marginally if only 150 Mb is occupied.

[BC_Programmer]

Marginally if only 150 Mb is occupied.

That's not the point. let's say your OS, files, and programs come in at around 40GB. if there is 40GB on a single partition, it will take longer then it would if you had the 15GB of windows on one drive and everything else on another, or some similar arrangement. the fact is, wether you partition a drive or not you will usually end up with the same files- the only difference is if you don't partition then the files will be more fragmented as well as there being more of them.

They will be more fragmented simply because that one large partition will be accessed for everything- the OS updates, program updates, personal data- but when the two are separated the fragmentation is lessened on both drives simply because the writes are segregated.

Let's say you write a word document, perform a OS update, and then add to that word document. In the single partition scenario your word document is probably fragmented. if you have your OS and data on separate partitions, then it won't be. compound this for thousands of various operations on each drive and the effects become quite noticeable*.


*(I mean as in the amount of fragmentation, speed almost never suffers in any non-negligible amount)

[soybean]

Not really. The defrag utility will only concern itself with occupied space unless told to do otherwise, and even then it takes no time to "compact free space"

OK, in that case, kpac should see no significant difference in defrag time whether his HD was 1TB or 500GB or 320GB, right? 

Also, let me clarify a point from my previous post.  I was assuming most or all of the partitions would have significant used space.  For example, if I have a partition for photos and I generally add photos but do not delete photos, then that partition will not become defragmented. So, I have no need to run disk defragmentation on that partition.  If, on the other hand, my OS partition normally experiences some defragmentation, then I could only defragment that partition.

Edit: I just read BC_Programmer's post, which my comments somewhat overlap. 

[kpac]

I will be partitioning the hard drive in the next few weeks so we'll see...

[alyoob]

I defragged my hard drive last month but do not use the built in windows defragmenter. I use smart defrag because it not only defragges your hard drive but also optimises it. The software is currently free. Here is the website.  http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html I also have a mac and the good thing about mac is that you do not need to defrag the copmuter.

[Allan]

Actually, Vista and W7 will place frequently used files at the beginning of the disc without a third party utility (what you refer to as "optimizing" in your post).

[macdad-]

I rarely defragged before I found Priform's Defraggler 

Now it's every month.

[naturegurl]

I haven't defraged in a while. Perhaps tonight.

[rockerchick1990]

i havent done mine for a while cause i havent been able to get to it. i live with mother in law who will not let me hook it up. anyway i have to work on it and get viruses out

[naturegurl]

I haven't done my for a while.  Soon!

[overthehill]

i havent done mine for a while cause i havent been able to get to it. i live with mother in law who will not let me hook it up. anyway i have to work on it and get viruses out

Hi rockerchick1990 and welcome to CH. If you think that you may have encountered a virus, this would be a good place to start.
http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,46313.0.html

[Starwind51]

Is there a difference between defragging and runing Disk Cleanup?

Anyway, last week I got fed up with my computer running in slooooowwwww moootttiiiooooonnnn, and I made a note of the amount of free space I had on the hard drive (in kb), ran Disk Cleanup, checked again, and I had less free space than I did before!  How is that possible?

Anyway, it turns out my slow motion problem was due to the anti virus service I was using and when I switched, everything perked right up. 

I'm in the process of taking files off my hard drive and putting them on a flash to sort out because I have some files that are too similiar and I want to combine them to make them more useful, and whenever I have a significant reduction in free space I'll do a Disk Cleanup again, but other than these recent events I go years without thinking about it.  Maybe it's because I have a lot of files, but they're all pretty small, they don't really fragment?

[macdad-]

Defragment - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defragmentation

Disk Cleanup just deletes temporary files, Windows log files and etc, where Defragmenter moves the files physically on the hard drive to make them faster to access.

And if you only have a few hundred KB of free space then no wonder you are in slow-mo.
Your hard drive has allocated space for the Virtual Memory(A backup for your Physical RAM), as well as allocated space by other programs and Windows itself for necessary operations.

[naturegurl]

I defragged last night.  You got me thinking when the last time I defragged was so I immediately did it.