ASPGuru Posted February 27, 2008 Share Posted February 27, 2008 Won't do any harm to run it and see what it reports about your disk. Most tools will analyse the disk first and then you can decide if it needs doing or not. Personally I defrag every couple of months or so simply because not a lot changes on the PC so it does not need doing more often. Other than that, I'm in the 'defrag is a good idea' camp. Be warned that if you have a large disk it can take some time if it's getting full, and especially if it's badly fragmented. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottf Posted February 27, 2008 Author Share Posted February 27, 2008 ok - will try it tonight how long does it take? its not a Huge disc- just an entry level Dell model. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savannah2 Posted February 27, 2008 Share Posted February 27, 2008 ok - will try it tonight how long does it take? its not a Huge disc- just an entry level Dell model. The worst HD I defragged took 27 hours. What software are you using to defragg? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
punk Posted February 27, 2008 Share Posted February 27, 2008 The worst thing for drive fragmentation is using BitTorrent, by design it downloads files in none-sequential blocks. If you download a lot of bit torrent files you can end up with hundreds of gigs of fragmented data. The best way to avoid this (and also to save some wear on your main hard drive) is to use a second smaller old drive as a scrap drive for bit torrent downloads. Once you copy a file off the drive it will be stored as sequential data on your main drive (and it doesn't matter when the second drive becomes fragmented). Most clients will also give you the option of pre-allocating disk space for files, this does cause a slight delay (depending on the size of the file) before downloading commences but will stop fragmentation. If you're downloading to a single hard drive on your main PC then it's definitely worth ticking this option. I have to say though; I'm also of the opinion that defraging is overrated. Back in the days when hard drive space was at a premium and operating systems were constantly writing/reading to a swap file it was useful. Now that PCs are often sold with 750gb/1tb hard drives and 2/4gb of memory it's relatively rare for a computer to be constantly accessing (swapping) a full/fragmented hard drive. A fragmented file may add milliseconds on to load times for applications or opening a document but for the average user it's not going to make a noticeable difference on modern hardware. It may be worth doing once in a blue moon but anything approaching daily/weekly is overkill. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
esme Posted February 27, 2008 Share Posted February 27, 2008 The worst HD I defragged took 27 hours. great ceasers ghost! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jezzyjj Posted February 27, 2008 Share Posted February 27, 2008 I have to say though; I'm also of the opinion that defraging is overrated. Back in the days when hard drive space was at a premium and operating systems were constantly writing/reading to a swap file it was useful. Now that PCs are often sold with 750gb/1tb hard drives and 2/4gb of memory it's relatively rare for a computer to be constantly accessing (swapping) a full/fragmented hard drive. I have 10TB+ of HD space, mostly pretty full. A fragmented file may add milliseconds on to load times for applications or opening a document but for the average user it's not going to make a noticeable difference on modern hardware. It may be worth doing once in a blue moon but anything approaching daily/weekly is overkill. I've noticed big differences. But I always fill my hard drives as fast as I buy them and am moving data around a lot, so defragging can be a big benefit. Not sure why people are so against it. It's not as though it takes any effort on the users part. And the defrag often, simply means it takes less time to do so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottf Posted February 27, 2008 Author Share Posted February 27, 2008 The worst HD I defragged took 27 hours. What software are you using to defragg? Isn't there one on windows xp that i can use? *can anyone tell im a fragging novice* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pattricia Posted February 27, 2008 Share Posted February 27, 2008 Ive heard Savannah talking about defragging. What exactly does it mean, and how do you know your PC needs it ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ASPGuru Posted February 27, 2008 Share Posted February 27, 2008 Isn't there one on windows xp that i can use? *can anyone tell im a fragging novice* Yes there is, and it's fine for a basic defrag. However, all it will do is defrag any fragmented files - it does not re-arrange free space to fill in the gaps, so new file writes could just as easily end up fragmented again. Some of the other tools mentioned can reorganise free space, or even rearrange the files on your disk to allow for various optimisations. For example, by accessed date, so most used files are on the most easily reached/faster part of the disk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ASPGuru Posted February 27, 2008 Share Posted February 27, 2008 Ive heard Savannah talking about defragging. What exactly does it mean, and how do you know your PC needs it ? Your disk drive is formatted into clusters - think of them like pigeon holes in an old fashion mail room - and each cluster has an address and a set size. When the OS writes a file to disk the disk hardware slots it into these clusters. If the file is small, then the whole cluster is taken up with that file (why disk usage does not always match the size of the data stored - lots of wastage!). If the file is larger than the cluster size it gets split up and stored in multiple clusters. Ideally these are all adjacent to each other so they can be read back from disk most efficiently. However, the disk may only have free clusters that are spread all over the place. Thus, when the file is being read off the disk the drive head has to leap all over the place to retrieve it. Which is slower and less efficient. Defragging simply identifies these files and moves them to somewhere on the disk where all the parts of a file are in adjacent clusters. Theres probably more to it than that, but thats the basic idea. If you hear your disk making more disk noise than usual, or it seems sluggish, then it's one thing that might make it better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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