To defrag, or not to defrag, that is the question.

Defragging;- I get conflicting opinions about this, some say that you should/must do it on a regular basis, then you get the extreme;- people that say that they never defrag. My hard drive is always about 25% full [25% used, if that's the correct terminology] I did do it once on a "friend's" advice, & soon after it had to go into a workshop; freezing often, oversized, thus unusable icons [overflowing the screen] the only thing that could be done, I was told, was to re-load Windows & as I hadn't the Windows Professional disc, [another "helpful" friend loaded THAT for me] Windows Home, my original system, was re-loaded, & things went back to normal, or as near normal as my PC ever gets.
So, to sum up,what's the general consensus on de-fragging? & did the above system change possibly cause mayhem when I did de-frag?
I am now nervous about doing it, although I am told that it "will speed everything up" in view of my 25% used, would that be true in my case?

I dont see how defragging could be bad, but my HD is using 28GBs out of 30, and I never defrag ;) Too lazy :p

I dont see why not to anyways.

Defraging's purpose is to increase computer performance by placing and re-arranging your files in proper order for better access.

I don't see how defraging is bad, I've been lazy with it, but before, I used to do it once a week. The more often you do it, the less time you spend doing it after a long time.

Some experts think that you shouldn't defrag unless you have to... I challenge that idea myself but it's just you.

Only defrag every couple of months, or after installing new software. Defragging is necessary every now and then, but can lead to problems if files get damaged during the defrag process.

Data errors do happen every once in a while, and if it happens to vital files you could end up with problems that are very difficult to diagnose (e.g. damaged dll files).

Defrag when required, but don't overdo it, as each time you risk data corruption, even though that's rare. Data corruption can/does happen when moving gigabytes of data around, and it really is only a matter of time before it happens to you.

Defrag programs these days don't seem to verify files after they are written, and so cannot guarantee that your files will not be damaged during the defrag process, unlikely though this may be.

i've never had a problem with defragging.

on older OSes (win9x) i made a point of defragging almost weekly but newer ones (winxp) do a lot better job with the file system than before so it's not as necessary (monthly). that said, if you install/uninstall/delete things that are significant in size defragging then wouldn't be a bad idea. at any rate it certainly wont hurt anything (unless some higher power hates you and wants to make this hatred apparent through your computer) so defragging isn't bad.

Defragging is a required action that you must take. The frequency at which you do it, depends on how much you use your computer an how.

If you move files around frequently then you need to also defrag frequently. If not then you don't have to do it as much.

You should run defrag about once a week and see how fragged your files actually are. Anything above around 15-20% then you need to defrag. By checking this often you can begin to tell how often you will need to actually defrag your files and from that information, you can create a schedule so that you can keep your hard drive under 15-20% fragmentation.

I've set a schedule in Task Scheduler to defrag one partition per day, once a week. Anything more than once a week is usually overkill unless your running a busy server.

Also, if you have a large hard drive you might want to create partitions to confine fragmentation strategically.

For example, my setup is as follows:

C:\ Windows XP & Program Files
D:\ Games
E:\ Web Design & Graphics
F:\ Misceallaneous files, downloads, etc

then theres G: for my DVDROM and H: for my CDROM.

I have created batch files (.bat) for each hard drive partition. In each batch file it contains a line such as "Defrag C:\". In Task Scheduler I have setup daily tasks for each partition to run the correct batch file. These tasks run at around 5am.

Example batch file: (defragC.bat)

defrag.exe C:\ -F

..a defrag C:\ should suffice.

It's worthwhile, but only in moderation. Doing it too much is usually a waste of time because the difference between 94% fragmentation and a perfectly defragmented disk is neglegable. :)

Originally posted by Rick
It's worthwhile, but only in moderation. Doing it too much is usually a waste of time because the difference between 94% fragmentation and a perfectly defragmented disk is neglegable. :)

Rick, I think you mean 6% fragmentation.

Also, defragging every day or even every week is not only a waste of time, it puts unnecessary stress on the HDD.

I suggest doing it about once every two months unless you notice the machine starting to become sluggish before then. I have partitions that need a good defrag around once a month because they have a lot of activity(moving, adding, deleting) Others can go much longer, my OS partition gets one about every three months.

It depends on what you are using to defrag with. If you are using the standard windows defrag tool, then doing so once a month is sufficient although IMHO windows defragger does a poor job.

If you can afford it a wise investment would be to get execurtive software's diskeeper. In 2K and XP it replaces the windows defragger in the MMC and you set it to run what they call smart defrag, or screen saver defrag. Smart defrag will run a few times a day on each hard drive until it learns how often its necessary, after a few days to a week it settles out at about once a day. Screen saver defrag only runs when your screen saver is active. But even in smart scheduling it uses little system resources while running and you will hardly notice it.

It's amazing how much difference there is between windows defrag and diskeeper. It's about 2-4X faster then windows defrag and does a much better job. I highly recommend it. Been using for 4 years now on my servers workstattions and desktops with not one issue........And you never have to worry about if you need to defrag as its done automatically.

I use Norton SystemWork's defrager (Speed Disk), what do you guys use?

Defrag system drives well, and then only do so again if you have made software changes that altered over about 100MB or so of stuff.

On data partitions, downloading and deleting mp3s, videos, etc regularly will fragment a drive like this badly. So make these partitions LARGE and defrag them regularly.

Create a seperate swap partition for the swap file, it will never get fragmented on a partition with no other files!

Do an overall defrag of all volumes about 1-2 months, maybe longer if you keep up the steps I have mentioned.

Thanks to all of you who tried to help with the defragging problem, & it seems that all of your views on this are so diverse, it's a case of eenie-meenie miney-mo, I shall leave mine for a while, as I don't do much moving of files, etc., as witness my usage of the HDD, it hasn't varied much from the 25% level in a year, a year being the time I've had the laptop from new.
A note for you TS bosses here, had a quick [& I mean quick] peep at "Acer" purporting to do roughly the same job as TS, .......absolutely hopeless, if you want a good laugh, have a look!

Originally posted by Maurice
Thanks to all of you who tried to help with the defragging problem, & it seems that all of your views on this are so diverse, it's a case of eenie-meenie miney-mo, I shall leave mine for a while, as I don't do much moving of files, etc., as witness my usage of the HDD, it hasn't varied much from the 25% level in a year, a year being the time I've had the laptop from new.
A note for you TS bosses here, had a quick [& I mean quick] peep at "Acer" purporting to do roughly the same job as TS, .......absolutely hopeless, if you want a good laugh, have a look!

Well for my laptop for work, with it being a slow disk in it (4200rpm) I find that it being nicely unfragmented does show quite a decent speed increase. I often find that after many databases being worked on on the local machine and downloads and updates etc... etc.. my laptop will start chugging along (1.7Ghz P4-M, 512MB PC2100, 30Gb hard disk, GF4Go 32mb). Defrag usually speeds it up and bit, and for me this is noticable. Saying that I consistently put 200-400mb database files on my pc then when finished working with them delete them. So this, for me is a necessary procedure ;)

I defrag my computer and I degfrag often. I have a 100GB WD SE HDD. And I always see a boost in performance after defragmenting...I've NEVER had a problem with defragging and always recommend everyone I know to do it....:grinthumb my opinon....

Here is some more info http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2587

I defragged a few days ago, first time in probably 7 months, and after many downloads, extractions, and deletions, to my surprise I wasn't that fragmented. But I defragged anyway, and haven't noticed all that much better performance.

But at the same time, you need to be aware of fragmentation as a possible performance issue, certainly.

The hard drive is the slowest link in the link - where everything slows down, and nanoseconds become milleseconds, etc. A nice fast, well defragged HDD will make a difference, I swear.

I am sure it will, I have read quite a bit about it. I think I just didn't notice a difference because I wasn't looking for one.

I might try to keep an eye out next time and see.

I think I am going to change my task schedule to defrag about once every two weeks and see how that goes. I set this current schedule a few weeks ago to see how it goes. When defrag starts, usually files are only about 1-5% fragmented.

Back when I was running DOS on a 33mhz 386sx I never once ran defrag for at least a few years. I didn't know there was such a thing. Now that I do, I wish I had because it would have made my long nights playing DOOM against friends in the area much more enjoyable ;-).

I never defrag. Ever.

And all my partitions are at less then 1%

It's more planning - If you plan smart, you won't have to perform that sort of maintenance.

Originally posted by Soul Harvester
I never defrag. Ever.

And all my partitions are at less then 1%

It's more planning - If you plan smart, you won't have to perform that sort of maintenance. That's because you've got 26 computers on which you spend your time. By the time you do anything useful on just one of those 12 months have past. Give yourself a few years between defrags. :p

Originally posted by Soul Harvester
I never defrag. Ever.

And all my partitions are at less then 1%

It's more planning - If you plan smart, you won't have to perform that sort of maintenance.

I'd like to see a rundown of the partitioning scheme that allows this. I think I have a pretty efficient setup and I still have a couple of partitions that need regular partitioning. the partition used for CD burning and scratch disks gets pretty fragged after a month or so, as well as my downloads partition(which I know I could actually eliminate by sorting files when I dl them, but this is just the way I do things)

Originally posted by StormBringer
I'd like to see a rundown of the partitioning scheme that allows this. I think I have a pretty efficient setup and I still have a couple of partitions that need regular partitioning. the partition used for CD burning and scratch disks gets pretty fragged after a month or so, as well as my downloads partition(which I know I could actually eliminate by sorting files when I dl them, but this is just the way I do things)

On my primary machines, Celia, Phaedra, and Soulbox (click the "my darlings" link in my sig) I follow pretty much the same partitioning scheme. Here is what I have on Celia, which is the box I use for all net-related activities, downloading and video editing, et cetera(note: This is for XP only, machines that multiboot are a different story altogether):

note: this is what it WAS a few days ago... I've since reinstalled XP and the partitions are slightly different although follow the same pattern

Mount Size Purpose
C: 2GB XP install, locked hibernation file
D: 5GB Windows Applications Only
E: 1GB swap
F: 540mb Windows Temp(requires registry hack)
G: 50MB Temporary Internet Files
H: 18GB Movies(Finished)
I: 10.08GB To Burn (files I want to burn to a disc)
J: 32G Audio/Video Editing Temp (I only edit 1 file at a time)

K: 1GB NETWORK DRIVE - Download Temp (before I put it where it belongs)

P: 10GB NETWORK DRIVE - My Documents
R: 1GB NETWORK DRIVE - Application Data / User Data / Desktop
Y: 6GB NETWORK DRIVE - Program Installs / Patches
Z: 30GB NETWORK DRIVE - mp3s

Originally posted by Soul Harvester
... I've since reinstalled XP ... Aha, so thats how you do it. Why defrag when you can reinstall. :p

Originally posted by Nic
Aha, so thats how you do it. Why defrag when you can reinstall. :p

That wouldn't make any difference on a fragmented hard drive :-P.

Wow that is a large setup. I need to reset up my drives once I reinstall, but I just don't feel like doing that. I think I'm too lazy.

Originally posted by acidosmosis
That wouldn't make any difference on a fragmented hard drive :-P. Read 'reformat and then reinstall'. Also, I was being sarchastic. ;)

That isn't much different than the scheme I use Soul, I do have a couple of those combines, such as Temp files are on the same partition that contains scratchdisks and Nero Cache, and the Temp folder for PVCR.

Nic did make a good point in his sarcasm though. Having a partitioning scheme like this does make it easier if you have to scrap the OS and start again. Since you already have all your data separate from the OS partition, in the event of an OS disaster, you can easily format that partition and reinstall if necessary.

If you manage your partitions properly, in a multi-OS boot setup you can add and remove operating systems just like modules. You also keep thing pretty under control in the fragmentation area, as well.

Originally posted by Phantasm66
If you manage your partitions properly, in a multi-OS boot setup you can add and remove operating systems just like modules. You also keep thing pretty under control in the fragmentation area, as well. \

hehe.... yes... excellent point! On the machine(s) that I multiboot with, I typically do an install, shrink it to fit on a CD or a smaller, then keep that CD as a "fresh" install for that machine. A "reinstall" takes only a few minutes that way!

Even better, start keeping a partition just for drive image files on your system. Create drive images of virgin installs, and then keep a copy of your last 3 or so snap shots of each OS. Burn the smaller, virgin images to CDs for restoration as Soul Harvester describes.

Thanks again, but you forget, I'm prehistoric by you peoples' standards, I bet that you all have re-write, without exception..........I haven't!!! [sounds of disbelief & "tsk tsks", you have to understand, this old guy got into computers exactly a year ago, & friends reckon I've done well, I even had to tell an experienced pal how to get rid of the NT virus, he was astounded, how come this ametuer was telling him????? then when I gave him the floppy with the solution he DID thank me, I even had to give the local computer workshop the name of the site from where they could get the solution to make me a floppy.......then they had the nerve to charge me for the floppy, whilst making AND selling more than 50 more at £2 each!
But with all that, I am still nervous, & like to keep things simple in case I **** something up, so, partitioning;.......... WHAAAAAAAT!!!
One old jittery guy signing off.

Just keep plodding away and trying stuff. Familiarity breeds comfort. The more you do, the better you will become.

And don't be afraid to screw up :=).

I am an expert on all Windows operating systems and all kinds of networks. Defragging the system volume is perfectly healthy. The only version where this could cause a problem is in Windows 95. This has to do with the fact Microsoft failed to realize that users might want to do something while the defrag process did its job. As any user who has used 95 and tried to defrag it, this process could take days! Windows XP does a great job of keeping its volumes at a contiguous point, except when making movies because the rate they are created are extraordinarily fast for the drive and operating system to keep up with. As far as loosing files or the system booting up slowly, that has to do with other operations that might have occured during the process, such as downloading files or browsing the internet. Also I read on the post that there sometimes is a small portion of the drive that is always fragmented, which is because that portion is not allowed to be touch at all by any operation. That's it for now!

vsparzak, as you can see, I am not the instigator of this thread, see my posting, above, I am chipping in just to welcome you to Techspot, it's a great site, many, many times the guys have helped me out over the last two years, I know that you'll thoroughly enjoy the camaraderie & positive help, stay with it.

Maurice

i think defragging is good every now and then. however it takes too long. if you want it done faster than windows defrag tool, check out diskeeper. like 10 times faster. still a hassle though i think

Well, knuckleball, I too don't de-frag very often, but when I do, it seems quite fast, I click, & it's done in about a minute or so, I have an 80gig hard drive, & it copes OK, I look at the pie chart now & again, & it hardly changes, but then I do very little d/loading, no music, no DVD's etc.
Have I welcomed you to TS, if not, consider it done!

Maurice. [have a look at my PC specs in my profile, click on my name to get the drop-down]