Constantly Defragging HD

[bigal40]

Is it OK to defrag a hard drive almost constantly? I use my laptop top like a desktop, so it is on 24/7 and I have it scheduled so that O&O defrag defrags the HD every time the Screensaver goes on.
Doing this seems to keep the computer running very quick and snappy, it feels as fast today as the day I first used it, but is this going to cause major problems with the HD down the line?
The hard drive is a 7200rpm notebook HD, in my sig, and it never goes above 60C.

 

[Throckmorton]

Unnecessary wear. A defrag every time screensaver goes on is overkill, and also you should be shutting off the backlight rather than wearing it out.

 

[jaqie]

Wear? feh. the drive is spinning all the time anyway, no additional wear, wherever you got that idea, it's wrong. The head assembly is moved by magnetism, as well.
I set up defrag to run every two hours on my windows partition, every morning on my storage partition, as I have for years.

 

[Davegod]

It will wear more. By default hard drives turn off (well more like standby) after a period of inactivity (by setting, probably set quicker on a laptop) plus the head moves off to the side reducing chance of a crash (contact with platter) should there be a jolt. Primary drives usually don't get chance to spin down except when you're away from the machine - which is when screensaver comes on.

While I'm not quite so sure since it's a laptop drive, the amount of wear is unlikely to make a difference to you. You're much more likely to be replacing the drive as part of an upgrade than because it died, regardless of whether you change your defrag setting. Further, if you're defragging that often it's unlikely to be defragging very much each time unless you're using some overly aggressive 3rd party software. I wouldnt do it so the sake of battery if you were going mobile with it, but you're not.

 

[jaqie]

Originally posted by: Davegod
Primary drives usually don't get chance to spin down except when you're away from the machine - which is when screensaver comes on.

You are discounting a whole lot with that single statement. First, a very large percentage of people run apps that write to the drive even when the system is idle and unattended, especially those running p2p apps, but even windowsupdate does this though infrequently. Then the plain hard truth is windows itself does this quite often as well even when supposedly completely idle, causing the whole argument you made to be prettymuch moot.

And if someone is bumping the system hard enough to cause a drive head crash then they have bigger worries then if they defrag or not, especially with the operational G forces that modern laptop drives are designed to handle.... and especially considering most people when using laptops in a non-mobile config (at home) are using them on a desk.

 

[Zap]

Heh, ever since I started using NTFS (with XP) I've never bothered to defragment my HDD that much. Past couple years with faster HDDs, I've NEVER bothered to defragment my HDD. Ever. Doesn't really seem to make much of a difference.

Of course I typically don't install a ton of software that I later have to uninstall, plus now I use a secondary HDD for data. Maybe that's why I don't see any performance hit?

 

[T9D]

Well you can only defrag it if it's fragmented. So if you defrag a lot it's not like there is much there that is fragmented anyway right. And if it's fragmented it's going to mean much more seek time and grinding anyway. So I don't see how you could possibly defrag to much.

 

[jaqie]

That's another angle on it which I didn't actually cover. the once every two hour defrags on my machines take just a few seconds unless I have done some major changes to the OS, and I run a 20GB partition for windows and all my installed apps except games... game installs and all data goes to the second partition on the drive, similar to Zap, I'd wager. I have found that my system runs a tad bit faster if I keep it this way, but not much of a change I'll admit. I see the biggest difference when running games with the data partition defragged versus non defragged.

 

[Davegod]

A hard drive will wear more if you have it running disk-intensive activity more. It can't possibly not. I said it's not going to matter so I don't know why you bother being combative when someone leads to the same conclusion via a slightly different path.

 

[imported_sandman]

I use Diskeeper Pro 2008 set to auto and most days it defrags 0 files but if you download and install programs a lot it will show up as more files fragmented works great have used Diskeeper for years the lite version with XP Home .

 

[Rubycon]

It may possibly make it wear faster but I'm not listening. I drive my drives to the MAX 24/7. There's nothing like hearing the sound of the drives at work. In the future when storage is solid state us oldtimers will probably need a device to make a clicking noise when there is disk i/o just to break the silence! :laugh:

 

[v8envy]

You realize spinning a hard drive up out of power saving is probably 1337x the wear of using it lightly but constantly, right? Plus read/writes at a constant temperature all over the drive should keep it in far better shape than occasional intensive activity on a cold drive. I'm not making this up -- the number of starts is a stat SMART tracks and reports on. Number of reads and writes, not so much.

This is similar to driving a car on a highway at a fairly constant speed vs. doing short trips combined with turning the engine off.

But considering a cool hard drive is likely to last far longer than you want with either usage pattern the point is somewhat moot.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Zap
Heh, ever since I started using NTFS (with XP) I've never bothered to defragment my HDD that much. Past couple years with faster HDDs, I've NEVER bothered to defragment my HDD. Ever. Doesn't really seem to make much of a difference.

Of course I typically don't install a ton of software that I later have to uninstall, plus now I use a secondary HDD for data. Maybe that's why I don't see any performance hit?

i'm the same way. I never defrag. Having enough RAM in the system for a disk cache somewhat negates the need to defrag.

Edit: Using a HD more (reading/writing), will NOT wear it out. Seeks do not wear out the drive. Start/stops of the platter do. Turning your HD on and off every day puts far more wear and tear than keeping it spinning up 24/7 and under constant load.

 

[jaqie]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Using a HD more (reading/writing), will NOT wear it out. Seeks do not wear out the drive. Start/stops of the platter do. Turning your HD on and off every day puts far more wear and tear than keeping it spinning up 24/7 and under constant load.

Exactly. My systems (sans laptop) are all on 24/7 except when I am working on them, and ive even got old 4GB drives (and many more, a whole array of old used drives) that work just as well, even with my 'constant' defragging when they were new to when I stopped using them. I still have a 20GB WD in my server that has never missed a tick, and it is one of the more active ones.

start/stop cycles are much, much more wear and tear on drives then activity ever could be. Heat also is the enemy of drives - I keep mine well-ventillated, as well.

 

[Tweakin]

Originally posted by: Davegod
It will wear more. By default hard drives turn off (well more like standby) after a period of inactivity (by setting, probably set quicker on a laptop) plus the head moves off to the side reducing chance of a crash (contact with platter) should there be a jolt. Primary drives usually don't get chance to spin down except when you're away from the machine - which is when screensaver comes on.

While I'm not quite so sure since it's a laptop drive, the amount of wear is unlikely to make a difference to you. You're much more likely to be replacing the drive as part of an upgrade than because it died, regardless of whether you change your defrag setting. Further, if you're defragging that often it's unlikely to be defragging very much each time unless you're using some overly aggressive 3rd party software. I wouldnt do it so the sake of battery if you were going mobile with it, but you're not.

I thought everyone turned this off. This is one of the first things I do when I configure a system. I don't want the drive spinning down and starting up several times a day as this is unnecessary wear on the motor assembly, and in all my years of working with systems I have never seen a drive fail from defraging...but I've seen lots of laptop drives wear out due to starting and stopping many times a day. Things that make you go "hmmm"

 

[Rubycon]

Here's an interesting blurb on MAID.

http://www.copansys.com/blog/?mode=viewcat&cat_id=2