Defragmentation is useless!

[TechnoPro]

Controversial title, yes.

PC World Magazine, February 2004, P. 81:

...our analysts found no evidence that defragmentation enhanced performance.

The article goes on to basically state that degragging your HDD is not neccesary for performance or maintenance.

Despite whatever tests were run, I don't buy it.

What's your opinion?

 

[zephyrprime]

I had a file I downloaded from kazaa that took 3 minutes instead of 20 seconds to copy because it have a gazillion fragments. Kazaa fragments like ak-47 in a china shop.

I think defragging helps a lot with simple file browsing. File browsing is something that most benchmarks don't do.

But since fragmenting takes so long on todays big drives, I think it's something that is only worthwhile to do infrequently. I use Diskeeper's screen saver defragmentor. All the benefits fo frequent defragging while taking essentially none of the user's time. I don't know why MS doesn't just buy that company and bundle it invisbly with Windows.

 

[Adul]

BS I call!

There is always a noticable performance improvment when you degrag a HD that s so badly fragmented it takes forever to open up apps that should only take a few seconds.

 

[VTEC01EX]

Perhaps you missed that "Disk Defragmenter" link on your Start menu... the Disk Defragmenter that is a watered-down version of Diskeeper.

Edit: Although, without the screen scan feature... which would be great. I'm all about automating tasks that no one would perform otherwise!

 

[thorin]

Their analyst have a problem understanding powers of 10 (ie: 10 vs 100).

Thorin

 

[Special1Sauce]

Defragging I think helps a ton with games and other important information.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: TechnoPro
Controversial title, yes.

PC World Magazine, February 2004, P. 81:

...our analysts found no evidence that defragmentation enhanced performance.

The article goes on to basically state that degragging your HDD is not neccesary for performance or maintenance.

Despite whatever tests were run, I don't buy it.

What's your opinion?

Confirming once again that yes, PC World writers don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.

They can tell that "defragmenting is useless" load of hooey to the admin crew. Once we're done bludgeoning them with the hot-spare SCSI drives, we'll string them up by some Cat6 and drip-dry em.

- M4H

 

[boran]

this is why I utterly hate computer magazines,

I mean, ppls buy it, never defragment their drive in their entire life (if they even ever did before that but they certainly wont do it now)
and then when u gotta troubleshoot em (cous you allways will have to) their system is slower than a mac (insult intended)

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

That's almost on the same level as MaximumPC recommending a celeron to a guy who wanted to do video encoding

 

[Jeff7]

Yes, defragmentation is useless...
For making coffee
For getting the mail
For deleting spam
To a cat
If you want it to increase your framerates in games

Other than that, if you can decrease the agonizingly long miliseconds it takes your drive to find the data, especially if it's got to go all the hell over the place to find it, then I'd say that defragmentation is very good. But hey, we're not columnists here, so what do we know?

 

[jhu]

you only ever hear about defragmenting in the world of windows. do you even need to defragment in the unix world? i've yet to come across a useful one.

 

[Texun]

I got a new company issue laptop 14 months ago. It has Win2K with NTFS and it took FOREVER to boot up. I couldn't run defrag or even check the drive due to policy restrictions, but I finally gave in and surrendered it to our IT department. They gave it a good defragging and now it boots like it did when it was new.

 

[Abhi]

Originally posted by: Adul
BS I call! There is always a noticable performance improvment when you degrag a HD that s so badly fragmented it takes forever to open up apps that should only take a few seconds.

 

[WobbleWobble]

Originally posted by: jhu
you only ever hear about defragmenting in the world of windows. do you even need to defragment in the unix world? i've yet to come across a useful one.

I don't see why not. You have to keep in mind that NTFS does not fragment as much as FAT/FAT32 did. The levels of fragmentation on NTFS would be much much lower than FAT, so the differences may not be as noticable as it was a couple years ago.

But I disagree with PC Mag's conclusion. I believe it is useful and can significantly boost a system's responsiveness.

 

[tallman45]

They found no evidence because they did not know where or how to look. In any disk storage device, be it a PC or Tandem/Sun midrange or even an IBM mainframe, disk's become fragmented. Running a disk defrag definately is not only beneficial but if you skip it long enough the drive will be come so fragmented that the data will not load.

 

[Sheriff]

Going from:
A
to
B
after defrag is quicker then
A












to













B

Before defrag

 

[Sheriff]

 

[Megatomic]

That "finding" of theirs is absolutely ludicrous.

 

[WobbleWobble]

I'd like to play Devil's Advocate and read the article. Is it available on-line? I can't find it.

 

[Megatomic]

Just stop by the magazine rack at your local grocery store, I see PC World on the shelves frequently.

 

[WobbleWobble]

Yeah, then I'd have to buy it. Can't read magaziness without Apu bugging me about how it's not a library and if I want a Squishie or not?

 

[tk149]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Yes, defragmentation is useless...
For making coffee
For getting the mail
For deleting spam
To a cat
If you want it to increase your framerates in games

Other than that, if you can decrease the agonizingly long miliseconds it takes your drive to find the data, especially if it's got to go all the hell over the place to find it, then I'd say that defragmentation is very good. But hey, we're not columnists here, so what do we know?

I disagree. My cat loves defrag!

PC World is basically crap for reviews.

 

[erikistired]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Yes, defragmentation is useless...
For making coffee
For getting the mail
For deleting spam
To a cat
If you want it to increase your framerates in games

Other than that, if you can decrease the agonizingly long miliseconds it takes your drive to find the data, especially if it's got to go all the hell over the place to find it, then I'd say that defragmentation is very good. But hey, we're not columnists here, so what do we know?

my wife's cats are all about the defrag.

 

[vshah]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Yes, defragmentation is useless...
For making coffee
For getting the mail
For deleting spam
To a cat
If you want it to increase your framerates in games

Other than that, if you can decrease the agonizingly long miliseconds it takes your drive to find the data, especially if it's got to go all the hell over the place to find it, then I'd say that defragmentation is very good. But hey, we're not columnists here, so what do we know?

i put lost sectors in my coffee to spice things up

to think i used to read that magazine religiously....

-Vivan

 

[ScottMac]

Defragging a drive will generally help, depending on the OS.

For Example, Novell actually performs better in normal conditions with the disk left fragmented. The "elevator seek" for one user's data will pick up (and send) fragments of other requested data as they are passed (assuming no decompresson ...). Novell also caches the writes. If the system is sized out properly, it shouldn't have much, if any, effect on performance.

Unix generally shouldn't care, if the system is sized right, because most Unix systems operate through memory cache and write back to the disk in the background. I haven't looked at the Linux file systems, but I'd believe their probably similar in operation to Unix.

Microsoft doesn't do any hashing or caching to speak of (do they?). For a MS OS, defrag is a "Good Thing."

Apple users wouldn't care ("Music no work" ..... "picture no move" ... "Mongo sad" ....) (Just kidding, Mac people, save the flames :beer: ) If you're running the BSD-based OS, it shouldn't care much about fragging either.

It's been a while since I checked, but that' the way I remember it......

FWIW

Scott