Gaming while defragging

tigersty1e

Golden Member
Dec 13, 2004
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So if I'm defragging my hard drive, is it okay to do some gaming (provided I don't save any games)?
 

Slugbait

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
3,633
3
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Your game still needs the hard drive, so defrag will continuously restart...it will never finish. You should see a bit of a perf decrease in the game as well.
 

corkyg

Elite Member | Peripherals
Super Moderator
Mar 4, 2000
27,370
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When you are optimizing your drive, you should go chill out and watch a ballgame. Let the defragger work without interference - i.e., any other competing use of the drive bening optimized.

That is why the best time to defrag is to schedule it while you are fast asleep - i.e., 0300. :)
 

Cutthroat

Golden Member
Apr 13, 2002
1,104
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Since you are using Vista, you should just leave it alone and let it defrag whenever it wants to.
 

martensite

Senior member
Aug 8, 2001
284
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With the automatic defraggers, which use CPU load and disk I/O sensing are usually less resource-intensive than the older scheduled-run defraggers, it should be safe to play while defrag runs in the background. I use a third party defrag utility on my XP Pro desktop, and I play COD4, Mass Effect etc, while it's defragging some drive, but it has never affected the FPS. Very transparent.
 

shabby

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
5,779
40
91
Its fine, but do a virus scan and burn some dvd's while you're at it...