Do I need to defragment my external HDD?

[D3x3me]

I have a 1 TB external Seagate HDD but it takes more than 1-2 hours to defragment the thing....

I always delete/copy new files to it so it is fragmented most of the time...

do you think it's ok to leave it teh heck alone and not defragment it?​

 

[lxskllr]

I'd defrag it every so often. Once every couple months should be sufficient.

 

[D3x3me]

I'd defrag it every so often. Once every couple months should be sufficient.

ah ok. so no need to defragment it everytime I copy a big file to it....just every month maybe

thanks d00d

 

[Harvey]

Yes, defragging your drive is good practice, and eventually, necessary to keep your machine running smoothly. Two things you can do to speed up the process:

1. The more often you defrag, the less fragmentation will have accumulated so defrag more often.

2. Use a better defrag program than the one in Windows. I like the free version of Auslogics disk defragger. Here's a link to it on File Hippo, which will avoid having to enter an e-mail address when downloading it from the company's site.

Three things I like about it:

1. Just launching the program and clicking the "Defrag" button does a quicker defrag that's much faster than the Windows defragger and will give you most of the benefits of defragging. I use this when I'm in a hurry.

2. Clicking the Action tab at the top left brings up options including "Defrag & Optimize," which they tell you is slower and recommend doing once per week. Essentially, it's a more thorough process that tries to optimize the location of various data on the drive. I do this most of the time, and like regular defragging, doing it more often reduces the amount of time it takes to complete the process.

3. It includes a nice animated graphic display of the process and progress.

Two more things I like about it -- It's free, and it has never screwed up my drive.

 

[D3x3me]

Ah ok, thanks Harvey

 

[Nothinman]

No, just leave it be. Windows Vista and up will defrag on their own in the background, there's no point in wasting time worrying about something that will have no appreciable impact on performance.

 

[Phynaz]

USB2 - No reason, the wire is your bottleneck.

USB3, FW or eSATA - yep, it's a good idea.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

No, just leave it be. Windows Vista and up will defrag on their own in the background, there's no point in wasting time worrying about something that will have no appreciable impact on performance.

guess what,


i have winxp

 

[corkyg]

I too have Win XP. I defrag/my external every morning as a matter of routine - that way is takes less then 2 minutes - usually 30 seconds at best (500GB). I use PD12.5, and all in manual mode.

 

[Matt1970]

USB2 - No reason, the wire is your bottleneck.

USB3, FW or eSATA - yep, it's a good idea.

This x 100. Keep in mind an external drive is not doing the kind of file transfering and updating your system drive is so the data is a lot less likely to get fragmented.

 

[Nothinman]

guess what,


i have winxp

A) That's your problem to fix.
B) And that doesn't change anything. Just leave it alone, defragging is almost completely worthless.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I agree. Why waste time defragmenting. Chances are, the time you spend defragmenting, will NOT be gained back during usage.

 

[KirklandBrand]

I agree. Why waste time defragmenting. Chances are, the time you spend defragmenting, will NOT be gained back during usage.

+1 on this guy. Honestly if the bus supports a huge throughput than go ahead but why bother when most usb2 externals are glorified usb stick?

 

[sm625]

How much free space do you have? If it is less than 10% then you're going to give it a serious workout that might not be worth the trouble. If you can delete some stuff and get it under 75% full then the defrag doesnt take near as long.

 

[corkyg]

I agree. Why waste time defragmenting. Chances are, the time you spend defragmenting, will NOT be gained back during usage.

I dunno - I rather enjoy it. The same thing could be said about playing games, which in my view are an even greater waste of greater time. Complete optimization takes me less than 10 minutes a day for 4 drives. Been doing it for nearly 20 years (started with Norton Speed Disk.)

 

[Nothinman]

I dunno - I rather enjoy it. The same thing could be said about playing games, which in my view are an even greater waste of greater time. Complete optimization takes me less than 10 minutes a day for 4 drives. Been doing it for nearly 20 years (started with Norton Speed Disk.)

Games are designed to be enjoyable time-wasters, defrag software is sold as a performance increasing tool. If you find watching the blocks shuffle around during a defrag a cathartic experience, that's good for you but it doesn't mean that you can't get the same effect from staring at a screensaver and that'll cause less wear on your hardware and you don't have to spend any time and/or money messing with 3rd party defrag software.

 

[corkyg]

To each his or her own. It is simply a daily routine - takes less than 5 minutes for all drives, and performance has been steady for over 20 years. Other than OS upgrades, I have never had to do a clean install, or endure a HDD failure. I don't buy optimizing software for increased performance - I use it for neatness and keeping things orderly. As for screen savers, I never use them. Years ago I learned to simply turn the monitor off when I am not using it. I see drive optimization similar to automotive preventive maintenance.

 

[Nothinman]

To each his or her own. It is simply a daily routine - takes less than 5 minutes for all drives, and performance has been steady for over 20 years. Other than OS upgrades, I have never had to do a clean install, or endure a HDD failure. I don't buy optimizing software for increased performance - I use it for neatness and keeping things orderly. As for screen savers, I never use them. Years ago I learned to simply turn the monitor off when I am not using it. I see drive optimization similar to automotive preventive maintenance.

I don't have any performance degradation without defragging my drives either and it takes 0 minutes for all drives. And frankly, why do you care about the neatness and orderliness of the data on the platters? You never see it, it's up to the OS to manage that.

The difference being that automotive preventative maintenance has proven effectiveness, defragging doesn't and if anything increases the wear on you drives.

 

[corkyg]

Like I said, whatever turns your crank. Been doing it for many years, I guess I'm just a neat freak.

BTW, I don't defrag . . . I optimize to place things where the OS can access them most efficiently. Wear on drives? No evidence of that has ever appeared in any of my systems.

 

[MrDuma]

I also have an external hard drive that has 500 GB in in general i store only music and movies on it. when it comes to i have done it twice until now in its two year life in my hand and it works like charm

 

[DaveSimmons]

I use external drives for backups, and for that it's pointless to defrag.

I'd argue it's pointless for media streaming to 1 or 2 devices as well, since any fragmentation won't affect read rates enough to matter.

For an eSATA setup where you're serving files for multiple users or run applications directly from the drive then fragmentation might matter.