defrag procrastination

[nboy22]

Does anyone else here not defrag their HD?? I probably haven't in a year or so, i tried once a few weeks ago and I left it on for a whole day, and to my surprise it hadn't even started. oh well lol, i guess it's time to reformat the old HD.

 

[VBboy]

Uh-oh. Reformatting to solve problems? Uh-oh.

Defrag definitely improves performance. By how much depends on your hardware.

In your case, what do you mean "defrag hasn't even started"?! It analyzes the file fragmentation, then begins to defrag it. Use Norton SpeedDisk for better results. It's better than Windows's cheesy defragger.

 

[DanStp]

You could try another defragger that doesn't run as slow as Microsoft's. I use Norton Speed Disk, VOPT, and Diskeeper are good ones too. Defragging is much easier than reformating and reloading everything.

 

[Zugzwang152]

Definitely defrag I think you didn't hit the "start" button hehehehehe. prolly just the analyze option, which tells you how badly your hd is fragmented. results depend on how much of the drive is fragmented, and how much of it is fixable (i dont think windows allows you to defragment anything in the windows folder, which is usually a siazable portion of fragmented blocks).

 

[Stig]

You may also have had a program running.. hence defrag had to keep starting over and over and over never getting anywhere...

..you might even have a virus writing to disc.

I defrag twice a week with Norton Utils.

 

[Derango]

Originally posted by: Stig
You may also have had a program running.. hence defrag had to keep starting over and over and over never getting anywhere...

..you might even have a virus writing to disc.

I defrag twice a week with Norton Utils.

Twice a week is a bit excessive, IMHO.

But if you have windows 2k or XP, you don't have to worry about the defrag starting over. It does a much better job of making sure nothing accesses the disk during the defrag/scandisk/ect.

 

[BeefcakeVA]

Depending on your disk usage, installing/uninstalling, etc., I would defrag at least once every 2-4 weeks. Unless you have crazy excessive usage and fragmentation, I think defragging more often than that is unnecessarily stressing your harddrive.

 

[Mavrick007]

I agree that you should defrag routinely, at least once a month if you use your computer heavily like lots of internet browsing, downloading files, and installs/uninstalls. I found a very good defrag to use is Diskeeper. It's much better than Defrag in Windows but I believe the new defrag in WinXP is actually a form of Diskeeper that they use except it's an older version than the current one available.

Download it and try it for 30days and see if it helps out. Defragging will give you some extra performance and sometimes a bit of minimal space.

 

[herbage11]

I also defrag atleast once every 2-3 weeks. I use Norton Speed Disk because it is much faster and is not interrupted and start over like the regular defrag. Another thing I did was go to download.com and get Power Defrag. It will reboot your machine and use only the minumum drivers then runs defrag. After done it reboots back regular. This is faster.

 

[dullard]

I defrag before I install any new program or after I uninstall one. You can only get fragmented files if you delete several small files and then write a large one in that same place. So if you don't delete many files - defragging does virtually nothing.

But I really don't think it matters that much. I've done extensive benchmarking before and after defragging and the most I've ever seen is just under 5% improvement in one program. Most of the time though, it was 0% to 2% improvement and we all know that 2% is within the margin of error of a benchmark. If I remember right, that 5% was when running from floppies - when a program takes 2 minutes to load 5% was almost noticible (it saves a whopping 6 seconds). But now that hard drives are much faster a program that takes 2 seconds to load will speed up by as much as 0.1 seconds. Really, is that up to 0.1 second noticible?

I find it silly to have your hard drive work so hard which can lead to earlier failure, to make your computer unusable for quite some time, and to use the extra electricity for less than 5% disk speed improvement. So to me, anything more frequent than 1 month seems like a real waste. People (often those with less computer knowledge) think you must defrag weekly or daily and it is some mystical cure to computer problems. I can't count the number of times I've heard someone complain that something doesn't work and then heard someone ask, "did you defrag"? Defragging only changes the speed (marginally) - it doesn't fix anything...

 

[TheWart]

Diskeeper has been the fastest/least hassle for me.