How often do you defragment your drive?

^ Same here. I just got rid of some spyware/virus, and I had to download several new programs to get rid of all of it. So today I analyzed it on PerfectDisk and it was all the way up to 14%!!! That is way more than I usually keep it at.

 

I defrag whenever it is needed, lets say the fragmentation hits 10%. It's done with O&O pretty quickly.

 

I usaully look to see if its needed once a week,but its only has to be done about once a month.

 

I usually defrag once aweek I use O&O Pro

 

What do you guys think of Auslogics Disk Defrag? Its free.

 

I do it once a month because constant defrag will probably lessen the life of an HDD. I mean the head is moving all the time. Too much stress IMO.

 

Running your HD when it is fragmented puts more wear and tear on it than regular defragmenting does.

 

why is it everytime i defrag my hd it says one or more files could not be defrag bla bla and then there is no files left to defrag !!

 

Once a month and after, I download/install/uninstall/delete files programs, ect.

ucb9999

 

when i felt that it is necessary. usually about 5-7 times a week, i usually tend to do it a bit too frequently, reason being; if i do it frequently, the hard drive never becomes fragmented enough so that the next fragmentation doesn't take that long to defragment, if you know what i mean? i use perfectdisk 7 btw.

 

I'm using it right now on my Vista machine. It appears to do the job, and anything is better than the native Vista defragger (even XP's is better). lol

 

I run scandisk, defrag, spybot, micro trend, avast anti spyware/virus, and Norton 05 everyday.

 

Once in a while.
I did it today, because I wanted to try a new O&O Defrag ver. 8.5 and a HD Tune showed me some strange things I tried a defragmentation option called "COMPLETE/name"

(quote: " Files are sorted alphabetically from the beginning to the end of the partition. This leads to quick access to files in a directory. When Windows starts up, many system files will be read in sequence from the \WINDOWS and the \WINDOWS\system32 directories (DLLs, system drives, etc.) and the start-up time will therefore be shorter. This method is particularly recommended for computers on which the files rarely change. This reduces the reorganization time that is needed for every defragmentation."

and I think that programs are loading a little bit faster than earlier.

 

I have Smart Scheduling enabled on my Diskeeper 10 Premier Pro so its defrags based on my usage and when it deems defrag is required. Very unintrusive. Only a taskbar icon shows up.

 

I've read that defragging isn't really necessary in XP because XP automatically defrags your boot files anyway. In any case, I'm way too lazy, and it doesn't seem to make a difference.

 

Well, i'm scared to defrag, my lappy say's it need it (Fragmentation is 43%) but my mind says: NO, because i read that defraging the hdd causes wear and tear.
I don't want to make my HDD life shorter with defragging, but at the otherside he has to search always en there is always a disk activity.
So i don't know what to do.
I have Diskeeper 2007 ProPremium en PerfectDisk 8.0
Both say it is needed, but i'm to scared to do it

 

^ Do it.

It does no damage to your HDD.

Your loss if you dont.

Ive done it on my desktop weekly for 4 1/2yrs and no problems their.

 

i downloaded o&o and set it to automatic and it keeps defragging a drive that im not even using, i have 3 harddrives and i was testing the auto defrag and it keeps starting every hour defragging the same drive. is that normal?

 

i defragment my comp every 3 or 4 months or when i start getting really bad proformance.

 

i run scandisk, ccleaner, defrag every month

 

Put it this way, if your hard drive is that fragmented then whenever you need to open a file or program, it is likely the hard drive is searching all over the platter for the information, thus taking longer to load the program, and meaning your hard drive is spinning and seeking longer than it should. Which of course is no different than defragmenting your drive, except after you defrag your hard drive info is in order, and your hard drive will be working less when operational as a result.

In other words, defragment!!

 

Just wanna share this:

As always since Windows 98, I have always partitioned my drive to lessen the burden of fragmented file system. This technique is also discussed slightly in the Windows XP help documentation for optimizing drive and moving the paging file system.

This is how I handle my file system in order to prevent too much file scattering/fragmentation/etc since windows randomly put files of any sort in your drive.

I partition my drive into four and the spaces allotted. Namely

C:SYSTEM, 25% - Where I store my Windows or OS partition alone
D ROGRAMS, 40% - Where I usually put all my programs or software application and the temp files
E: DATA, 25% - Where I commonly store my documents
F AGEDISK, 10% or at least 2.5Gb - Where I move and map the paging file system or virtual memory system.

According to Windows XP help, it is best to store the paging file or virtual memory drive on a separate partition where other programs will not interrupt accessing it. Another advantage is that, when you separate a partition for your documents and data, when you have to reformat or run application recovery for such a reason, you can always choose C drive recovery only thus, making the data partition intact so you will not likely backup your data in the process.

Last, mostly the fragmented area is the OS partition because of system file access overtime. Whenever I analyze other partitions, they are always quite alright and well aligned. In this regards the only drive a commonly run Defrag is on drive C. Of course faster since it is the only drive being fragmented without running through all the files in the other partitions.

 

That's really big for a paging file, f_alejandro. 2.5GB of paged out data... your system will be completely unresponsive before you fill that much. The max you should ever really need is a gig or two. Check your pagefile usage, I think you'll be surprised. And if you're using 10% of a 160GB drive, that's like, 16GB you're wasting for no reason.

And partitions don't help much with pagefiles, anyway. It's all on the same physical drive, with the same reading head, so it interrupts it no matter what. Storing the pagefile on a separate physical drive will help, though. Separate partitions for data is a good practice though, as long as you can predict how much space you'll need reliably. It's very hard for novices to do so. System drive files get moved around more, which is why you see more fragmentation going on there.

You know that you can map your My Documents folder and others to point to your DATA partition, right? That's something I've done in the past.

 

i end up defragging my hdd every month or so
provided that it needs it

 

I'm very forgetful about it, but when I do remember, once every... 2 months?

Matt

 

I try to do it once a week, but I usually forget; so it gets defragged about every two weeks, which seems to work fine.

 

I defrag whenever I start to notice slow downs in windows performance. I first delete all browser cache files and all temp directory files (don't want to be defraging these) and then I do my defragmentation run. I only defrag the system partition as my data partition usually has very little or only negligible fragmentation.

 

I used to do it alot on Win ME. It was a must for the horrible OS.

But I barely do it a all on XP, and also being that I fresh reinstall about once every 5 months.

I haven't done it on Vista yet.

 

hmmm. ya. i understand. well i don't want my system to always warn of "your computer is low in virtual memory... blah." so i always set 2048 of max paging size and minimum to be 1024. it it works really fine for me. i also understand the heads tha read each partition and you are right, it is wiser to put paging in different faster medium like the ready boost and a separate SCSI drives.

being said all those. with this setup on my part, mostly it is the C drive that is always affected most. the rest as i run analysis with degradment tool/s is always intact and well aligned compared to what i have on a single partition before. so mostly, it is C drive that i always run defradment tool.

 

I defrag whenever I uninstall a program or install/download anything large.

 

I used to defrag almost every day when I had my notebook new, or maybe I should say every hour

Now I do not defrag because I have 1% of room left, so defragging is a bit difficult then.

 

Yikes. Your right, it won't be able to run anyway. Time for a bigger drive.

 

Diskeeper 2007 -- Set It and Forget It defrags pretty much every day w/o me knowing about it

 

Using Vista's built in set-it-and-forget-it defragmenter set to once a week.

 

Once a month

Although I will do it as necessary if I do a massive video encoding session

 

I've stopped Defragmenting now that I've attributed my last hard drive failure to Defragmenting regularly and perhaps using some kind of anti-virus which scans all files as they are used. I think those two in one way or another increased the usage of my hard drive which led to a quick downfall (The problem I had was that my hard drive randomly loss data, like I could just have downloaded a 100MB file and it would be corrupt...)

(On a side note, I've also stopped using SETI@Home as it increased temperatures )

 

LFC, is that you in your avatar.

 

I have tried over the last year but the message is always defrag not needed.

 

LOL!!! LFC's name is Steven - I have yet to see a girl named Steven, but if she looked like that, I think she could pull it off.

 

My older HP notebook always said that too. Don't pay any attention to that. You absolutely should defrag. It may take quite a long time since it hasn't been done in a year.

 

I defragment mine once files and applications are really slow.XD

 

I recently downloaded diskeeper lite and after I installed it, and tryed to open it a message comes up saying "diskeeper lite does not allow access via terminal services. Purchase the full version and ou can be using this feature within minutes." What does this mean? I thought that diskeeper lite was free.
Any ideas
Thanks

 

I used to defrag my Win XP machine every week. I almost always noticed a speed boost. Now that I'm on Vista, I've run into problems related to either Diskeeper or RegistryFix. So can no longer defrag.

 

Once a week, when I do all my other scans and maintenance stuff.

 

I have an automatic defragmenter on the job and feel that it definitely lends my system the speed and smoothness of a new system. I think its a common misconception that defragging can kill the HDD or that its more stressful than letting it be fragmented. If you defrag regularly,each time the defrag does not takes more than a few minutes, thats hardly any disk activity compared to say reading files off a fragmented drive for hours on end. And if you are going to protect the HDD from the latter, then the only solution is to not use it.

 

I defrag my XP drive when booted on Vista, and Vice Versa. It's quicker being that no process of the drive you are defraging are running.

I do it like once every 2-3 weeks.

 

The fact that you have to worry about it at all is a complete failure of the OS. All I can say is that on Linux (and other UNIXes), you never defrag, and NTFS should also be smart enough these days not to need it. You may find tools that tell you that you need to run one, but those tools have a vested interest in telling you that, so you'll buy their software.

The only thing I have really found it is necessary for is for bittorrent or other p2p downloads. In that instance, there is a tool called "contig" from sysinternals that allows you to defrag one file. This makes a HUGE difference on those files, when doing video playback or burning an ISO.

My vote is for once or twice a year. Otherwise you're putting more strain on the drive than you need to.

 

Complete failure of an OS is a valid risk, but for the majority of cases is highly unlikely to be a result from defragmentation. Whenever it is seen as 'necessary', defragmentatino should be done. Whether that is once a year or once a week will depend on the user.

 

It's funny how people read things differently . What I mean is it's a failure of the company who wrote the OS in that they make a user deal with it. IMO, you should never worry about it, because... you should never HAVE to worry about it.

Defragging is a relic of DOS days with really small hard drives. People only still do it because they are in the habit, not because of a large need for it.

 

I voted Never...the reality is almost never.

I did defragment my Windows 95 laptop within the past week, because I had it booted up and decided, "Why not?" But other than that...

A few months ago I checked the C drive status on my Windows 98 desktop:

"You last defragmented this drive 1061 days ago."

Windows couldn't determine when I last defragged my other drives.

And when I analyzed my C drive on my XP desktop a few months before that, I had 57% fragmentation. At the time, I'd had that computer about 1200 days.

But even after getting the 57% fragmentation down to 0%, I couldn't notice a difference in performance. Same with defragging the 1061-day C drive on Win 98 - I couldn't tell a difference.

Right now I have 12% fragmentation. Windows recommends defragging; I don't think I will. Not like I'll be able to tell the difference anyways.