Poll: Is defragmenting worth it? And how bad has your drive ever got?

[Rigoletto]

- if it isn't then you can post your idea of the biggest waste of time in existence! (Witty ones preferred).

I don't claim I know even half of what there is to know but I think I wasted my time defragmenting! I defragged in Win2000 my WinME partition which had gained 3Gb. It seemed to take 2 hours for the 24% fragmentation. All that time churning up my hard drive and no noticeable benefit!
I don't know how often one should defragment or what the borderline is. Does anyone have any ideas on this? Is fat32 relatively robust here? I see NTFS partitions have little files scattered absolutely all over the place on the disk. God knows how I would fit a really big file on it.
Personally I like to use lots of partitions and put data and applications on other partitions. My ME has ME-only stuff and games on it. When it f***s up hopefully I shouldn't have a serious problem on my hands. It can get as defragmented as it likes for all I care.

*I am not really pleased at the wear of defragmenting on my drive. I think that constant activity for two hours going to wear my drive like 4 days of normal usage, maybe more. Just an instinct.

 

[compuwiz1]

I don't know what the point is here, but I have 8gb of one of my 9.1gb cheetahs filled. It takes less than 12 minutes to defrag. I do it bi-weekly. BTW, I also use Norton Speed Disk, with my swap file on the beginning of the drive, rather than where Winblows puts it.

 

[err]

Disk defragmenting is not the biggest waste of time. In fact it is very useful and increases your disk performance.

You might be getting long defrag time because your disk is heavily fragmented, or you are running some background appz that increases your defrag period.

I would suggest that you use another product, such as diskeeper lite (free for download from executive.com. You can automatically schedule a defrag period and run it only while you're not using your PC.

I am a sys admin at a webhosting company. I would say defragmenting hd definetely improves performance and is not a "waste of time" at all.

hope this helps.

eRr

 

[err]

btw, I defrag my personal pc every 2 nights.

I takes about 10 minutes to defrag one partition. (up to 20GB)

eRr

 

[soulm4tter]

defragging is very important, just do it before you go to bed or eat or anything. i defrag all the time.

 

[hans007]

defragging is important, and its a lot faster with speed disk too. Dont do that "arrange my programs to load faster" junk, its default, unselect it. Or go to win2k where you dont have to defrag

 

[Mday]

i use speed disk, don't buy norton utilities, get systemworks...

anyway... defragging IS NOT THE BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME IN THE UNIVERSE.

before i had this system, it once took me 3 hours to defrag a 3 GB partition with win95's defragger ;-)

i now have much larger partitions and it takes me less time.

 

[soulm4tter]

hans, are you saying win2k doesn't cause any fragmentation?

 

[TechMaster]

Defrag may help to keep your HDD running for many years (less head movement) - and I see quite a big speed boost afther I defrag my drive... also it helps to recover from some "FAT Meltdowns" - sometimes you can't "re-build" your FAT correctly if your drive is too fragmented....

 

[Goi]

Defragging is only slow if you use MS's default Defrag defragger. I use NU Speeddisk, and it takes just a few minutes to defrag my 20.5GB HDD(4 partitions). Admittedly, I defrag quite often(whenever I'm free and not using my comp much) so it isn't very fragmented to start with(80-100%), thus its faster to defrag.

 

[Technonut]

I also use Norton Speed Disk. It does a very good job, fast and efficient. I defrag both of my drives once a week.

 

[PliotronX]

Fragmented drives can cause random GPFs, and this plays a number on overclockers' heads because they think they're applying too much voltage when in fact it's the fragmented drive. For all the hours of time you use your computer, don't you think it deserves to take a few hours off and fix itself up into optimal performance?

I've got 27Gigs, and I defragment often (about weekly), thus it takes very little time to defrag. The longer you wait, or the harder you use your computer, the longer it takes to defrag, but it is not a waste of time.

 

[hans007]

ntfs manages it better, you really dont have to defrag, i dont think nt4 even came with a defragger.

 

[TheCorm]

I have to agree with Err & others on this.

Disk Defragmenting is a good way to get a performence boost out of an older system. Many people never defrag and it really speeds things up when you do.

I hadn't defragged for about 3 months, I then did and My ME based system loaded up in less than half the time.

 

[BIGGDOG]

if you are referring to defragging under win 2K then I see the problem.
The version of Diskkeeper that comes with 2K is a slower and striped down version.

Norton Utilities Speed Disk rules.

Just my .02

 

[Rigoletto]

Thanks to you all especially to Techmaster.
The suggestions for alternative defraggers have been good. Windows defragger is certainly inadequate; half an hour and more per gigabyte is unacceptable nowadays.
What is the most fragmentation ever seen on your drives? I wouldn't have had a clue my drive was 24% fragmented until the defragger told me.

 

[culex]

Also keep in mind that 9x kernel OS or basically FAT32 OS has some issue with a heavily fragmented drives in terms of calculating space. Sometimes it tends to report you have 10gb of free space when actually you have 5 gb of free space. Or it could even be the other way. I guess 9x kernel counts space by cluster sizes so a heavily fragmented drive could cause this frequently...

I say it's important to defrag, keeps yer sanity and performance at a high level

 

[BChico]

I defrag evey week, and it runs faster after i do

 

[Madcowz]

where are all of you guys getting speed disk? Is it a free utility or do you have to go out and buy norton ultlities?

 

[Taz4158]

Defragging is a very important part of computer maintenance. I run SpeedDisk every Sunday morning.....

 

[zerogear]

Or by Raxco -- PerfectDisk 2000 for Win9x & ME .. I like that program very very much. If you're using Win2K or NT use O&O's Disk Defrag

 

[odog]

why defrag? when you can reformat

 

[PliotronX]

I had this 6.4Gigger as a little crapdrive for temporary storage, and the constant deleting/copying/deleting/etc., got it up to 47% fragmented :-O

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

LoL e-phex, some of us want to keep out programs and files and such. (oh and pr0n too)

 

[Zorba]

Well I defrag all four of my partitions every week. The highest I've ever seen one of mine get was 2%. Now that I defrag every week they are always 0% (probably more like .000001% but you know how programs like to round things ).