Does defragging really help?

[duragezic]

I'm not sure if this is really considered highly technical but I guess it could be, but if its locked I'll post in software.

I was reading through the newest PC World (for free, thx hot deals), and on page 77, column 1 it says:

"We used to say that defragging would speed up a system, but with today's large, faster hard drives, that no longer seems true. The PC World Test Center's test reveal that defragger's don't acualy improve performance. And Steve Gibson, president of PC consulting firm Gibson Research Corporation, confirmed our findings."

From what I understand about defragging, it seems logical that it would speed up a system. And I understand that with faster hard drives, it might not be as much of an issue, but surely defragging once every 2 or 3 weeks would be beneficial wouldn't it? Or does it mean that hard drives have very fast seek times to the point where fragmentation isn't an issue?

 

[AndyHui]

Steve Gibson is about as reputable as Van Smith.

While I agree that it is no longer that much of an issue with very fast hard drives, presumably it does still add up at some point.

In any case, check out the FAQ: Defragmentation Explained.

 

[pm]

Andy, I don't know that I'd go as far as to say that. Steve Gibson has said a few preposterous things, but usually he isn't completely wrong in what he says. It's like he exaggerates for effect, but the core thing is usually somewhat reasonable. In this case, however, I'd probably disagree with him slightly.

Defragging does help when a drive is badly fragmented. But I don't think frequent defragging helps. It doesn't need to be done weekly, or even monthly. Having said this, a lot of the newer defragmenter programs use usage information to determine where on the disk the files should be located. Having the frequently accessed OS information in the faster portion of the disk can lead to some improvements. And I personally move MP3's and digital photos to the slower part of the drive to make room for programs that can use the higher bandwidth.

 

[rimshaker]

It's true to a point nowadays. Defragging was a big fad (and necessity) back when drives were still well under 1GB using the FAT16 structure. Drives were much slower, so defrags were the most popular solution that anyone could do. Todays higher rotational HD's, much improved head units, physically using less disks, and larger caches pretty much do away with slow access due to fragmented data.

I still defrag like every few weeks. It never hurts to defrag... never.

 

[Zoltarc]

Agreed. It may not benefit you as much as it used to thanks to faster PCs, HDDs and file systems but it doesnt hurt to run a defragger every two weeks or so.

With modern programs such as Diskeeper and fast PCs, you can work and defrag so there is no excuse not to