Defrag Good ?

[aviwil]

I have the impression that sometimes , disk problems may be caused by the fact that only a certain portion of the disk is being accessed regularly , and those other parts , even though they may have data stored on them , because they are hardly ever accessed are the source of the problems .
If this is so , then would it be right to say that Defrag is not a good thing in such a case ?
i.e. there is a better chance that most areas of the disk will be regularly accessed .

 

[Blain]

SSD = No

 

[aviwil]

Thanks Blain - but didn't understand the answer - could you please elaborate .

 

[Blain]

sorry

 

[aviwil]

Sorry Blain - no comprehendo .

 

[hclarkjr]

if you are talking about defragging a solid state drive he is telling you that you do not ever defrag those as it is not neeeded

 

[aviwil]

Oh , thanks hclarkjr , actually referring to a regular disk drive on this laptop .

 

[hclarkjr]

Oh , thanks hclarkjr , actually referring to a regular disk drive on this laptop .

what operating system are you running? if it is NTFS most people will tell you that defragging it is waist of time as it has little fragmentation. have a look at this link http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100306182847AAAHZXg

 

[mv2devnull]

I'd say that degragging is better for both performance and overall wear of spinning disk.

 

[taltamir]

windows vista and XP contain an excellent automatically on defragger that takes care of your spindle drives (win7 auto excludes SSD drives, win vista I am not sure if it does, if it doesn't you need to manually exclude them).

Anyways, spindle drives don't really suffer from spot wear-out the way SSDs do, this is why spindle drives do not have and do not need wear leveling. Logically, it probably exists, but if it does, it is so small as to be insignificant. The only reason to defrag is to increase performance... defrag actually increases wear and tear on the drive (but not significantly so).

SSDs should never, ever, under any circumstances, be defragged.

 

[aviwil]

Thanks everyone - I have Vista 32 on this laptop .
Hclarkjr , my understanding of that article is that there is fragmentation ( and when running defraggler , this is what I see too ) , but that the NTFS is sufficiently efficient , that fragmentation does not really affect it .
Mv2devnull , you're saying that the disk will have to work less to access files ?
Taltamir , are you saying that , apart from the standard Disk Defragmenter in Accessories-System Tools , that Vista is automatically running some sort of defrag in the background for regular (non SSD) drives ?

 

[taltamir]

Taltamir , are you saying that , apart from the standard Disk Defragmenter in Accessories-System Tools , that Vista is automatically running some sort of defrag in the background for regular (non SSD) drives ?

yes. unless you explicitly disabled it.

 

[aviwil]

Taltamir . where do you enable/disable it ?

 

[taltamir]

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/1598/automatic_defrag_disable_and_enable_vista/

Also, you should disable it for mechanical drives.
Starting with vista, defrag is limited to only consolidating fragments up to a certain size, based on actual testing to see performance increase / decrease. so it does not do lots of unnecessary defragging which slows you down and happens with programs that just defrag every single file to 1 continuous chunk.

 

[aviwil]

Taltamir , I have Vista SP2 , and can't find a selection to "Run Automatically" . Some of user's comments there say similar . Article is from 2006 - this feature appears to have been removed .

 

[taltamir]

Taltamir , I have Vista SP2 , and can't find a selection to "Run Automatically" . Some of user's comments there say similar . Article is from 2006 - this feature appears to have been removed .

looking at user comments:

I have Windows Vista and I followed the above steps and do not see a selection for run automaticaly. I see run on a schedule. Is that what you mean by automatically? I am looking for something to defrag constantly

This means that either in SP1 or SP2 it was upgraded from just run automatically (with only 1 preset schedule) to a full scheduling capability allowing you to set when it runs automatically.
Use "run on schedule"

 

[aviwil]

OK - the default is once a week , Wednesday at 1 am . So , it can probably be ignored .

 

[Blain]

OK - the default is once a week , Wednesday at 1 am . So , it can probably be ignored .

It depends on how much you add to and delete from your HD.

 

[Nothinman]

I have the impression that sometimes , disk problems may be caused by the fact that only a certain portion of the disk is being accessed regularly , and those other parts , even though they may have data stored on them , because they are hardly ever accessed are the source of the problems .
If this is so , then would it be right to say that Defrag is not a good thing in such a case ?
i.e. there is a better chance that most areas of the disk will be regularly accessed .

That's a new take on why to defrag, but I don't believe it has any more merit than the other reasons presented by people trying to sell you defrag tools.

 

[aviwil]

Nothinman , my intention was that this would be a reason not to defrag .

 

[Nothinman]

Nothinman , my intention was that this would be a reason not to defrag .

Well that doesn't make sense because much of the data on your drive is static for large periods of time. Most of the OS files stay the same and aren't updated for months at a time.

 

[Modelworks]

If this is so , then would it be right to say that Defrag is not a good thing in such a case ?
i.e. there is a better chance that most areas of the disk will be regularly accessed .

Theoretically what you are talking about could happen but it isn't likely to for most users. If a user were to buy a 1TB drive and only use the first 1GB and repeatedly erase and write just those sectors then it would wear out those sectors and kill the drive even though the other sectors were still good. There are free sectors on drives for making up bad blocks but not that many.

The easiest way to extend drive life is not delete anything or wait till the drive is full before making room for another program. Constantly saving and erasing and moving data does wear out the heads quicker. When they do MTBF testing on drives they do it with a standardized test that isn't writing and reading from the same sectors repeatedly but simulates what an average user would experience.

That is why enterprise drives cost more. They are designed with the idea that the user is going to constantly use the drive so they are built a little better.

 

[aviwil]

Nothinman - exactly - I would say more than that - most people are probably not even accessing the greater portion of their data , let alone the opsys . So , I am saying that , assuming the disk is close to full , if you access say , 5% of your data regularly , then if that 5% is totally defragmented chances are , you're not accessing much of the disk total area ( not sectors ) . But , if that same 5% will be fragmented , then there's a pretty good chance that you will access most of the disk area .
Same thing Modelworks - I'm not referring to what you describe - but the above - the average user may fill the disk - but only access a small 5 or 10 % - or even more if you like - but it'll still be far from 100 % . This may be , in fact a reason , why disks do fail , as people may be reusing the same areas all the time .

 

[mv2devnull]

The only reason to defrag is to increase performance... defrag actually increases wear and tear on the drive (but not significantly so).

The performance increase is due to the non-fragmented being sequential, which means that the head can read them in single pass and without hopping around the spindle, doesn't it? The less the head have to move, by logic the less will it wear. There is naturally the NCQ too to compensate some swinging.

Every filesystem that I know of can fragment. Some just show it more prominently.

From the long-term storage viewpoint the untouched data is unknown data. One should refresh (and check) all data periodically. More wear and tear just to find out that nothing has worn out. 😉

 

[Emulex]

vista to 7 will leave defrag scheduler on :O