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Author Topic: How often do you defragment?  (Read 33277 times)

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alphac

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How often do you defragment?
« on: October 30, 2005, 09:38:09 AM »
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. :)
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Mac

  • Guest
How often do you defragment?
« Reply #1 on: October 30, 2005, 10:47:13 AM »
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.

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GX1_Man

  • Guest
Re: How often do you defragment?
« Reply #2 on: October 30, 2005, 10:56:51 AM »
In Windows once a month. In linux never.
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R0SS

  • Guest
Re: How often do you defragment?
« Reply #3 on: October 30, 2005, 12:43:06 PM »
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
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Raptor

  • Guest
Re: How often do you defragment?
« Reply #4 on: October 30, 2005, 03:39:08 PM »
Game computer - every time a program/update is installed
Internet computer - After major changes have been made to the file system.
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alphac

  • Guest
Re: How often do you defragment?
« Reply #5 on: October 31, 2005, 02:45:17 AM »
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!
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Fed

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    Re: How often do you defragment?
    « Reply #6 on: October 31, 2005, 02:54:16 AM »
    Quote
    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  :o
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    patio

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    Re: How often do you defragment?
    « Reply #7 on: October 31, 2005, 10:50:14 AM »
    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.  8)
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    " Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined. "

    Raptor

    • Guest
    Re: How often do you defragment?
    « Reply #8 on: October 31, 2005, 10:56:38 AM »
    Why not?

    Image files are just binary code spreadout over many a cluster.
    « Last Edit: October 31, 2005, 10:57:34 AM by Raptor »
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    RayG

    • Guest
    Re: How often do you defragment?
    « Reply #9 on: October 31, 2005, 07:33:24 PM »
    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.  :D

    RayG
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    Fed

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      Re: How often do you defragment?
      « Reply #10 on: October 31, 2005, 10:02:41 PM »
      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?
      « Last Edit: October 31, 2005, 10:04:33 PM by Fed »
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      Hopester Doofus



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        Re: How often do you defragment?
        « Reply #11 on: October 31, 2005, 11:51:53 PM »
        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.
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        There’s no limit to what you can achieve if you don’t mind who gets the credit.

        alphac

        • Guest
        Re: How often do you defragment?
        « Reply #12 on: November 03, 2005, 02:26:13 AM »
        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?:)
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        Mac

        • Guest
        How often do you defragment?
        « Reply #13 on: November 03, 2005, 02:48:50 AM »
        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. :)
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        alphac

        • Guest
        Re: How often do you defragment?
        « Reply #14 on: November 03, 2005, 09:31:07 PM »
        Mac, yes ofcourse, disk cleanup before the defrag, definitely. :)
        I use CCleaner as well, nice utility.
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