Does deframenting a hard drive offer any advantage?

[HondaF1]

Hi,
does defragmenting a hard drive, in todays computers, offer any advantage? I heard somewhere that it did does not really show performance gains in data access. But some people say it does. Does it?

 

[Chaotic42]

If the data for an application is physically in the same place on the drive everything will move along faster. If you have a block here and a block way over there, your drive has to go around looking for the blocks everywhere.

I defrag every couple of weeks in Windows. I don't think I've ever done it to an ext2 file system.

 

[dudeman007]

Degfragmenting is very important. The defragmenter found in windows is very useful. Defragmenting on a consistant basis will up the life of your hdd before you have to reformat it. In case you didn't know its recommended to reformat about every 2-3 years to keep everything clean. Anyways, defragmenting makes things easier to find for your comp and will improve the performance. You can find out when you need to defragment your drive by using the built in tool found in windows and choosing anaylze, or for instance if you have norton, it will tell you the percentage of optimization. This is something you definitely should remeber to do to keep your computer running clean!

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: dudeman007
Degfragmenting is very important. The defragmenter found in windows is very useful. Defragmenting on a consistant basis will up the life of your hdd before you have to reformat it. In case you didn't know its recommended to reformat about every 2-3 years to keep everything clean. Anyways, defragmenting makes things easier to find for your comp and will improve the performance. You can find out when you need to defragment your drive by using the built in tool found in windows and choosing anaylze, or for instance if you have norton, it will tell you the percentage of optimization. This is something you definitely should remeber to do to keep your computer running clean!

2-3 years?

No one would ever reformat. I've only known one person that has kept a computer for 3 years.

 

[dudeman007]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: dudeman007
Degfragmenting is very important. The defragmenter found in windows is very useful. Defragmenting on a consistant basis will up the life of your hdd before you have to reformat it. In case you didn't know its recommended to reformat about every 2-3 years to keep everything clean. Anyways, defragmenting makes things easier to find for your comp and will improve the performance. You can find out when you need to defragment your drive by using the built in tool found in windows and choosing anaylze, or for instance if you have norton, it will tell you the percentage of optimization. This is something you definitely should remeber to do to keep your computer running clean!

2-3 years?

No one would ever reformat. I've only known one person that has kept a computer for 3 years.

LOL!

 

[nageov3t]

I degrafment and run chkdsk once a month. I've never noticed a huge improvement after doing it, but it gives me peace of mind.

it's not as if it takes a huge effort to do. just start defragmenting, go to bed, and everything will be finished by the morning.

 

[Algere]

Let it fragment to about 50% or so on your main partition and see how it performs before and after a defrag.

 

[Mem]

No one would ever reformat. I've only known one person that has kept a computer for 3 years

I never reformat unless I need too,like motherboard change,good registry cleaner keeps my PC fast and stable even over years of use.


As to defragging ,I use Diskeeper 8 Pro and have it set to defrag in Screensaver mode,that way I can forget about it,defragging gives you best performance,reliability,and less wear and tear on your HD being it doesn`t take so long to find your files etc.

 

[Vernor]

Has anyone ever run before/after benchmarks with a modern file system like NTFS ?

 

[sisooktom]

Make sure that Disk Defragmenter actually recommends that you defragment before you do it. I read somewhere about someone doing benchmarks, and it made very little difference unless the disk was heavily fragmented. Also, defragging too often causes more wear and tear on your disk, and can actually shorten disk life.

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by: Vernor
Has anyone ever run before/after benchmarks with a modern file system like NTFS ?

There are no filesystems including NTFS that can avoid file system fragmentation unless they self defrag. NTFS along with other more advanced file systems can minimize individual file fragmentation which helps, but even NTFS will benefit from disk defragging if you do a lot of file manipulations and movements.

Also, defragging too often causes more wear and tear on your disk, and can actually shorten disk life.

That's a myth. Defragging does nothing unique to cause undue stress to the drive.

 

[corkyg]

Full optimization does better than plain defragging. It simply makes data access more efficient. Aside from performance, it looks neater.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: dudeman007
Degfragmenting is very important. The defragmenter found in windows is very useful. Defragmenting on a consistant basis will up the life of your hdd before you have to reformat it. In case you didn't know its recommended to reformat about every 2-3 years to keep everything clean. Anyways, defragmenting makes things easier to find for your comp and will improve the performance. You can find out when you need to defragment your drive by using the built in tool found in windows and choosing anaylze, or for instance if you have norton, it will tell you the percentage of optimization. This is something you definitely should remeber to do to keep your computer running clean!

2-3 years?

No one would ever reformat. I've only known one person that has kept a computer for 3 years.

Try a PC that's never been defragmented in over 4 years sometime. Throw in that it had Win98, and only 16MB RAM. Opening Internet Explorer took nearly 2 minutes. Unfortunately, I was there to do a school project (very slowly), so I couldn't give it the many hours it probably would need to defragment.

 

[xenos500]

Defrag will fix every problem with your computer.
It has been known to remove viruses, re-create deleted system files, and even make your hard drive bigger.

or so my mom thinks...

 

[sisooktom]

Originally posted by: Pariah
That's a myth. Defragging does nothing unique to cause undue stress to the drive.

No it's not. I didn't say defragging did anything unique, but it does often have to move LOTS of files in order to unfragment things, even when relatively few files are fragmented. Lots of unnecessary reads/writes = more wear.