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

[BC_Programmer]

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

your guess is as good as mine.

[patio]

hehehe...first vote/reply.

Ridiculous...

[kpac]

Never. Takes too long with a 1 TB HDD and only 150 GB used. PC's only six months old anyway and I probably wouildn't see any speed difference.

[Allan]

Never. Takes too long with a 1 TB HDD and only 150 GB used. PC's only six months old anyway and I probably wouildn't see any speed difference.

Yeah, there is that. Given the speed of today's processors and hd's any performance increases will be negligible. Of course you will gain some added space by making the files contiguous, but again - nothing major. On the other hand, there is a bit of a wear & tear advantage to having the hd heads travel a little less.

[michaewlewis]

Don't remember the last time I defragged a hard drive.  It was probably a windows xp box, though..... maybe five years ago........ I don't really see the point.

[Cityscape]

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

Are you talking about Windows or all operating systems? I know that Windows needs defragging, I have proved it to myself. When I defrag a Windows computer that has like 10% fragmentation, I know does. I get a performance boost.

Linux is completely different though. Would you defrag a Linux box, patio?

[michaewlewis]

In Linux, the hard drive defrags you.

[Cityscape]

In Linux, the hard drive defrags you.

[rthompson80819]

I've have always defragged on a regular basis and have never seen a noticeable change in performance on any of my machines but that's probably because I do it on a regular basis.

However, a friend asked me to look at his computer because it had a hard time playing a certain game.  The game would start and stop constantly.  It was almost unplayable.

He had the computer for 3 or 4 years.  I asked him when the last time he defragged.  He said what's defrag?

I did a diskclean and defragged twice for good measure, and then the game ran fine.

It depends on the circumstances, but defrag can make a difference.

[Helpmeh]

    In America, you can always find a party.
    In Soviet Russia, the party always find you.

    In America, you drive the car
    In Soviet Russia, the car drives you

    In America, you listen to the radio
    In Soviet Russia, the radio listens to you

    In America, your job determines your marks
    In Soviet Russia, Marx determines your job

    In America, you assassinate the president
    In Soviet Russia, the president assassinates you

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Smirnoff#Russian_reversal

In Soviet Russia, music downloads YOU!
In Soviet Russia, Waldo finds YOU!
etc, etc.

[SilentAssasin64]

I haven't defragged mine in over 2 years.  During one of those years I didn't have access to my machine so the need was non-existent.  The other year I've been running Linux. 

[overthehill]

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

I defragged earlier this week and typically defrag every couple of weeks. I never really cared for the the defrag program that came with XP, so I took Broni's lead and downloaded SmartDefrag. I checked it over and ran the program. Looks like a keeper. Thanks Broni

[victimofgrace]

I defragged sometime in may. Can't remember which day though...

[soybean]

I use SmartDefrag, which defrags my drive on the go - anytime my computer is idle.

Same here. 

Never. Takes too long with a 1 TB HDD and only 150 GB used.

That's a reason to partition your HD.  Then, you can defragment only your OS partition or select any individual partition.  It takes less time than defragmenting an entire HD.

[Allan]

That's a reason to partition your HD.  Then, you can defragment only your OS partition or select any individual partition.  It takes less time than defragmenting an entire HD.

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"

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.