Defrag before partition?

[alfhead]

I'm planning on doing a clean install on winXP. I want to partition my main drive first, sine there are files I want to keep. I was wondering if there was any 'safest' way of doing this.. should I bother defragging my drive first? I'm kinda impatient, and don't really want to wait up for a defrag to finish before installing XP.

 

[sohcrates]

well, it's crazy to defrag before partitioning because partitioning and formatting kills all your files that you just waited to be defragged! there's really only one way to partition, and it's safe (as long as you have your data backed up and don't care about losing it)

 

[scottrico]

I agree,
do not waste your time defraging.
you need to back up your files, fdisk, and start fresh.